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What I've Learnt - Evan Thornley · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Evan Thornley is an entrepreneur in technology and the non-profit sector, as well as a former parliamentarian for the Australian Labour Party.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thornley co-founded and led the online search company LookSmart, then listed it on the Nasdaq, where it delivered huge profits to venture capital investors and made him millions, some of which he reinvested in new ideas.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thornley believes electric cars are destined to become ubiquitous and with this in mind became global CEO of Better Place, an electric car charge network startup.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: The company is no longer, but Thornley remains a fervent believer in the technology.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: As the instigator of the Goodstart Consortium, Thornley was instrumental in the establishment of Australia's largest social enterprise.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Following the purchase of the ABC Learning Chain of Childcare Centres, he was a founding director and founder of Geta, Australia's premier online activist network, which now has a 650,000-strong membership.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thornley is now chair of the centre-left think tank per capita, whose research interests include long-term economic reform, climate change, population policy, energy, and neuroscience?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: He seems on a deep-seated search for improving his community with his fingers in many pies, many of which thrive, some of which have stalled, but all with a mission to change the world.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: A visionary, a futurist, a believer, a utopian, a progressive?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: What motivates this entrepreneur, politician, and philanthropist to do good, to do better, and to improve this world.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, Evan, I'd like to welcome you to the What I've Learned podcast.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I know there's still lots of other things that you're working on, some of which we'll discuss today.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're quite the multitasker, without doubt.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: You seem to be quite diverse in um in the things that you do, which is great because it makes for um for interesting listening.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there is a theme in your work, the sense that you want to make your world a better place.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Where does that drive come from?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I think a lot of people have that drive.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I guess, you know, I had a fairly difficult childhood for a range of reasons.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think when you're fortunate enough to escape that and have life treat you well, then you know what a difference it can make.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Elaborate a little bit for me.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm interested.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: What sort of um challenges did you face growing up that fueled your desire to improve things for others?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, well, it's interesting.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I used to think that it was principally driven just by um, you know, poverty.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I was on the board at the Brotherhood at St.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Lawrence, Tony Nicholson, who was the exec director there for a long time, coined the sort of slogan, you know, poverty humiliates children.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that was, you know, that was definitely true for us.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: We we didn't have a lot of money.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: My mum was on, you know, uh on welfare with four kids on her own.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that that was difficult.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that was much less common then.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the welfare system, frankly, was less well developed.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think the real challenge actually was the emotional poverty of our upbringing.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess my sisters and I have really come to realize this later on in life.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: You only know what you know and you accept what you have when you're a kid.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and I've I've since come to learn, I think, that, you know, the depth and strength of your of your strong relationships, your intimate relationships, your close family, friends, close community really are central to your well-being in life.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that a lot of economic consequences actually flow from that not being good rather than the other way around.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: The assumption, I think, most people in sort of public policy debates is, you know, they're very economic determinist, that the economics determines what happens in the relationships.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, that can also happen, but I would say that the reverse is even more true.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that relational poverty often leads, among other things, to economic poverty.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that that your mum, for example, was trying to, she was so busy surviving that she didn't have the luxury to form those intimate relationships?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Was that your take on that?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, that is as a practical matter, that is certainly true.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but but then I think it also she she ended up in that situation, I think partly because she didn't have the benefit of a strong fabric of intimate relationships.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think my sisters and I worked out years later when one of my nephews was diagnosed uh as being on the on the autistic spectrum, uh, you know, at sort of Asperger's type level.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't know much about it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And my sister explained what Asperger's was, and I went, wow, that that actually sounds like mum.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um and she said, Yeah, actually, that's exactly right.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think we realized, and you know, that's interesting because uh being on the spectrum is much more common uh for men than women.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: But but I I think our amateur diagnosis in retrospect, and my my mum passed away last year, so I'm I'm speaking in past tense, but was that actually, you know, mum for for whatever reasons had real trouble forming intimate relationships with other people and and and and getting an empathetic understanding of how other people uh felt uh and and why they acted the way they did.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so that put her once she went through the you know the cauldron of marital breakdown, you know, you get kept catapulted from the educated upper middle class to the welfare class real fast.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't have a fabric of intimate relationships to support you there, then you know there's not a lot of margin for error.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's where mum found herself.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very common story, and I think the notion that somehow the middle class, even well, somewhat the upper class, are protected.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Once again, women are very much uh your description is so appropriate.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: The slide down that that slippery slope is so quick.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: The epidemic of family breakdown has catastrophic impact and principally, but by no means exclusively, for women and their children.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, given the the magnitude of family breakdown in the modern West, um, you know, this is a huge, huge issue.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it it surprises me how little attention it gets in the public square.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because again, you know, everything's driven by economic determinist views.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so what happens in the domestic sphere, you know, inside the home is sort of considered out of bounds in polite discourse.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think that just leads to a very superficial understanding of the human condition and as a consequence, very superficial efforts to sort of bring about social change, which, if they don't, you know, if they don't attach to the things that really drive human flourishing, are going to be peripheral at best in creating better outcomes.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think broadly speaking, that's what we see of the limited utility of public policy.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's improving?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's a lot of discourse now around protecting women in in the context of you know domestic violence, but also as you point out, it doesn't have to be a domestic violence situation for things to be uh catastrophic for a woman.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think the discourse and and strategies around that are improving at all?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I I mean they're they're clearly and long overdue, thank thank goodness, starting to be at least acknowledged and partly addressed in terms of particularly violence against women and sexual violence.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: But beyond that, no, actually.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: I would say not at all.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I don't think, you know, it's remarkable every time a federal budget comes along, the total lack of attention to sole parents and and even Labour governments cutting funding to sole parents.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think the vast sway that what happens in the domestic sphere is still ignored.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's it's obviously long overdue that that these critical issues, particularly around violence against women and discrimination and and harassment, are long overdue.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: But again, is a lot of that's coming through workplace-related change, which of course is also long overdue.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: But but you know, part, I mean, domestic violence, yes, clearly there's a much greater focus and attention and more resources are being devoted.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: But that's about where it stops.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it's not just a gendered thing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Sole parents do it tough, whether they're men or women.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, the vast majority are women, but it it's no easier.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've been I was a single dad for 10 years.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it's it's it's uh I I think I can say with some authority, it's no easier being a single dad than it is being a single mum.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's just hard being a sole parent, period.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: End of story.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just not a topic that gets a lot of coverage.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: I totally agree with you.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and without getting too personal, I have also been a single parent in the past.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had a six-month baby on my hip when I found myself as a single parent.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And as if it wasn't for my family, my close relationships, which you point to, um, I probably wouldn't have had the courage to do what I did and to to find a new life and to go on my journey.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of infrastructure and resources, I mean, I was from a very strong middle class family, as you rightly pointed out.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can come from the higher echelons of of society and find yourself down that snake and ladder very quickly.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And unless there's someone there to catch you or guide you, it's actually impossible to navigate.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's huge, right?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, as a there's all sorts of practical reasons why having that close family support is, you know, incredibly valuable.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Just, you know, somebody to look after the child when you have to do something professionally or other things, you know, those basic things.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're not basic when you don't have them.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like they they really are incredibly difficult.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but all the more so emotionally.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, uh, you know, it's it's so much more difficult to be a sole parent if you don't have somebody else intimate that you can trust and talk about your challenges as a parent.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: So the magnitude of the safety net that is provided in strong families and strong close communities versus the lack of it in the atomized wastelands of Australian suburbs is profound.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Your sense of awareness, your incredible empathy, actually, which I can hear.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because when you hear about success in the corporate sector, you have this perception, you know, of somebody who's, you know, flying high and doing amazingly and thriving in the corporate world.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the way that you're reflecting is that you have actually gleaned a real understanding of where you come from in order to work out where you're going.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the corporate sector, as you say, the economic challenges obviously are difficult.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And to have economic success is great, but you've got to actually have a sense of self-understanding.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I spent my first few years uh in the workforce at McKinsey and Company, the the well-known management consulting firm, uh, you know, which which obviously hires extraordinarily capable people.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we also used to joke there that, you know, our our hiring profile was insecure over achievers.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: And um that yeah, it's true.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was a joke because it was true, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and I I I uh as a friend of mine often says, I resemble that remark.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I I would say that a lot of the things that I did in my professional life, whether that was in in business or in you know social ventures and and political activism, uh, was partly and and unconsciously at the time compensation on my part for the difficulties of my domestic life, both my childhood, but also, to be honest, my marriage.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was kind of wrongly motivated, to be honest.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I've spent the last 10 years reevaluating that and realizing that a lot of the things that I did, I did for the applause to make me feel better about myself because I wasn't feeling good about myself with you know where I'd come from and where I was in my family life.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's not healthy.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think there's a lot of people in that situation who are not aware that they're trying to compensate for what is missing in the fabric of their intimate relationships by, you know, taking the accolades, whatever they might be, financial or you know, other in good works as well as, you know, just garden variety, wealth creation, uh, to try and cover over the cracks of what's missing in their in their more intimate life.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think that's a fool's error.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and I I've probably spent the last decade thinking about that more thoughtfully and reflecting on it.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And hopefully it means whatever I do professionally now is based in a in a more solid foundation.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think triggered that realization?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've gone from, I mean, Look Smart was an extraordinary time.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was trailblazing.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um I'm I'm assuming and I understand from what I've read, although I'd be interested in your perspective on that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was a pretty big high and then a pretty big low.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and all over the shop.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: How how did that impact you?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know we're going back a little bit because I want to I want to make sure that we stick to what you were saying because I think it's really interesting, but that's back in the sort of the 10-year chapter you referred to as riding the high wave.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look, when you're running a$14 billion company at the age of 34, that's a blast.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's my point.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: That is no, that is no doubt true.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think what I realized now, which I probably didn't want to realize then, was how miserable I was.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh ultimately uh I was in a very unhappy marriage.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: And despite, I mean, we were business partners, we we we built the business together.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, you know, half and you know, the credit should be divided equally between Tracy and I.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: But but but our personal relationship was was was just not healthy for either of us.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you honestly you can have all the money in the world if you if you're in an unhappy marriage, just it they're different spheres, and there's there's you you know, we would all obviously rather be financially well off and have financial freedom.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: I get that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: And and I was incredibly grateful for it.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: We both were we both came from very poorer backgrounds, but it it doesn't ultimately uh, you know, satisfaction comes from relationships.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this is clear, and I you know, I've written and spoken about this.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's plenty of evidence for this, you know, the um the 75-year-long har Harvard study, you know, showed that, you know, for for people over the course of their entire lifetime that their life satisfaction, indeed, their life expectancy, was principally correlated with the strength of their intimate relationships and not with their other successes, whatever those might be or lack thereof.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it ironic though that so much of our education system, you know, I've got uh children obviously on their journey and I watch them, thankfully, they're all pretty grounded and they're they're driving in the right direction.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: One's doing medicine, and you know, there's a sense of being a better person and it's not driven by money.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: However, yeah, I think there's such a pressure to be economically or financially successful.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to be hailed, there's such a high form of measure.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: When I interview a lot of guests on my show who are extraordinarily successful in terms of their artistry, um, like we mentioned, Elliot Pearlman.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: He also wrote a book about this very interesting discussion, you know, which is about, you know, his main character is a successful lawyer whose whole life is not working, you know, his marriage and everything.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very much in tame with what you're talking about.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he he um we talk a lot about that notion that that uh why is the economics of life held as such a such a um a measure of success when actually, as you've rightly pointed out, it's the relationships and often the sense of personal achievement that, whether it be in the arts or otherwise, that really is so we need to reinform our young people, do you think?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oh, sure.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, but you know, that's the whole basis of our culture, you know, is competitive individualist materialism.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I started talking about this seven or eight years ago when I understood my own behavior, and and I think, as I sometimes am, I was probably a bit ahead of the curve.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: I would say increasingly now it's not just economic outcomes that are sought.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's, you know, the strong desire of people to be seen to be good people and to be seen to be doing worthy things and you know, purpose-driven and all of those uh high-minded ideals.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some of that is conspicuous virtue in the same way as you have conspicuous consumption, and it's driven by the same need, which is a desire to be seen to be worthy by others.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's ultimately equally unsatisfying because it's wrongly motivated.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: You you know, Christopher Lash, who's one of my favorite writers, uh, an American social historian who sadly passed away far too young in the mid-90s, uh, wrote about this a long time ago in Bell This Cat, and uh in a in a book that at the time was very popular but has sort of since faded, called The Culture of Narcissism.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: But his basic argument was that as people become more focused on external measures of success, and in those days it was more economic than you know, virtue uh signaling, their children learn that it's external measures of success that they should be attaining rather than you know an internal uh a self-possession of a sense of worth and value.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and so this becomes an intergenerational kind of factor that multiplies and multiplies, and and that's the basis of a narcissistic uh behavioral pattern uh and personality structure is when you you try to cover the void inside by ever more grandiose performances for an audience externally.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um so whether that's in economic success or or even in uh apparent good works, if you're doing that to cover the internal void, it's gonna end badly.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that, I suppose, has been part of my journey to understand that in myself.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, really, at the essence of what you're saying is authenticity needs to be a phenomenal driver if you're going to actually have longevity from whatever it is that you're doing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's got to come from the right place within.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: A truly authentic human being understands that they don't really exist outside their relationships with others.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I mean they're close relationships with people that really know them and love them and care about them and vice versa.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not the passing acquaintances or the or the or the followers on social media, um, but real, real relationships, you know, people you can actually trust, people who will tell you the truth, people who will actually be there when you need help.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there's any number of studies that show how scarce, you know, that is for so many people.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and that that can be somewhat independent of however successful you might be in the external environment, whether professionally or or otherwise.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you say is something that the younger generation are embracing and there is somewhat of a backlash, although one could argue obviously social media fuels that whole individualism and narcissism.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think from the young people that I know, many of them are reflecting on how they can make their world better and that their relationships are important.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's hope.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just on that note, um, you know, and I'm segueing to the get up movement because I think that in a way is a form of that, which is joining people or joining forces on issues that matter.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I gather that was um the motivation.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: How politicized is it?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you separate the good, the bad, and the ugly from that authentic mission of that organization?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously you're going to get people who are going to drive certain agendas, but you also, it's a great haven for people who want to take a position or a stand on things.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh a number of the the activist things I've done uh or political things I've done are now a ways back.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: So um I I you know I haven't personally been involved in GetUp for quite a long time, but I was very involved.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: But uh in the setup, yes.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and and likewise actually with per capita.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I was sort of one of the co-founders of Per Capita.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm no longer the chair of the board and I haven't been involved there for a while.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and and and uh probably that's partly because I wasn't sure that where those organizations were going was in line with my thoughts about what was most important to achieve lasting change.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not to say that they're not doing worthy things because they do, but increasingly within just a very polarized and partisan public square.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And since I think both sides of the political dichotomy uh have bankrupt views of the world, I'm less interested in playing a role on either side.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, I I most of my views about what what's going to ultimately deliver human flourishing is quite orthogonal to that very one-dimensional debate between progressives and conservatives as it's usually framed.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, for me, you know, we when we started GetUp, the there was a very particular political geometry in mind, which was to unite progressives to win the center.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And what I think has broadly happened is that GetUps decided to unite progressives to be progressive, and that's fine, but it's not really about changing anyone's mind.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it creates an organizational force, and that's a good thing.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh the whole idea was hey, you know, 100,000 people walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge demanding an apology to the stolen generation, and then they went home.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, how do we capture those people and put them together with other folks on other causes who share common cause and get an umbrella that covers that wide range of progressive movements and unites them into a single force?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that that was the organizational vision of GetUp, which I think it's achieved spectacularly.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there was also uh a tactical political geometry that was in mind at the time that I think has changed.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very interesting because I spoke to somebody recently um who's quite senior in the um in the gender lens movement, and she made reference to the notion that she felt like the feminist movement, as she referred to it, was being a little hijacked by so many other agendas, and it was diluting the mission.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: So in a way, are you saying that it's sort of like a bit of a runaway train that you're going to step out of the ring because that's not for you?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're not saying it's not a value.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're just saying it no longer serves your purpose or your your um your value system.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I I I certainly I'm not gonna try and be a commentator on what's happening in in gender politics because I don't claim expertise there.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I would give an example though that I do feel strongly about, which is climate change.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: And um that has become completely polarized to the point where the debate about climate change is seen as a wholly owned subsidiary of the debate about identity politics.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's not cool, as far as I'm concerned.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I blame the left as much as the right for this, because the extremes on both sides have a benefit in polarizing everybody.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but action on climate change is the victim of that.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you get a confusion between, okay, here is some harm that is happening in our world and in our society.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, can we agree that there is harm happening?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Question, yes or no.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Second question, what's the cause or causes of that harm?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's find answers to that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Third question, what solutions can we bring to those causes to prevent that harm?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's a way of breaking down an issue.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now, with climate change, when people disagree with the solution proposed, often by the far left, they are accused of not believing in climate change, back to square one, right?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, they often believe that because they don't agree with the solution.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: They think, well, I can't agree with the problem then.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And they actually accept that frame too.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: So then we've polarized a whole bunch of, for example, working people in regional Queensland into thinking that they're anti-climate change because they're anti-climate change action, because they're anti the particular climate change action that was going to destroy their jobs and communities.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: So the net result of that is a failure of climate change action.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And there's precious little benefit, frankly, in either blaming the working people who felt put upon or the activists who did it, you know, in my view, a misguided way.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: The net result is by polarizing the debate on climate change and and misconstruing a debate about solutions with a debate about uh belief in the existence of the harm, we've ended up with a stalled debate, and the loser there is action on climate change.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there is a portion of the left that absolutely wants to dismantle capitalism and sees climate change as a useful uh tool to argue for that position.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a bunch of people on the right who smell that that's what's going on and want to protect capitalism and therefore want to fight against action on climate change.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they're both wrong.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we need action on climate change, regardless of your views on capitalism.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we need action through client through capitalism, and we need action by changing capitalism.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and all the more so when one's position on climate change is equated with and expected to be equated with one's position on, for example, a range of issues around identity politics.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the debate has got wholly out of whack when those things are seen as job lots where you have to take all or nothing on either side.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the more practical and tangible things that I think people can engage in, things like electric cars, which I know you were very involved with, and you've always said it was going to be huge, and it is huge.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: You were spot on, because you I think there's an element of you that's like a futurist because you were working on that many, many years ago.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a sort of a tangible let's do something for good for the environment that people seem to be able to grasp, as opposed to the big climate change issues.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, from your perspective, now I know um better place is no longer in its form, but what you were on to was completely in line with where we're heading.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think every car company you can think of is bringing out an electric car.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Every car company in the world is not just bringing out an electric car or two, uh, every car company in the world has stated or will shortly state that it will cease production of internal combustion engines within the next decade.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um that game is over before it's begun.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, the original pitch for better place, the elevator pitch was you know, the cost of batteries is getting cheaper, the cost of gasoline is getting more expensive.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: We know how the movie ends, remains true.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, batteries dropped in cost even faster than we were willing to publicly predict, although privately we suspected that was true, but we didn't want to sound too outrageous.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's amazing.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're very thankful, thank goodness that's that's all true.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and that battle will be won.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone will be moving two electric vehicles um uh over the next few decades, and they will all be running off a grid which is um increasingly driven by renewables, uh, all the more so because the battery capacity of those vehicles will help create distributed storage for those renewables.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it'll take out a lot of the complaints about solar and wind because actually it'll be able to be stored in the batteries of the vehicles attached to the grids.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: That battle is being won.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, the faster it happens, the better.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, Australia's a complete laggard in public policy on this area, which is why we've got the worst penetration of electric vehicles in the world, which um, you know, was to protect our domestic manufacturing industry, but we didn't manage to do that either.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, ironically, because the best chance that the domestic manufacturing industry had to move electric quicker was actually quashed uh by a Labour government and by Senator Kim Carr.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: This is breaking news because I've not spoken about this publicly, because we'd engineered the electric commodore with with in cooperation with Holden, with a view that the only way Australia had a survival position as a manufacturer was as a manufacturer of large, powerful electric vehicles, not tiny city cars, because we don't make tiny city cars here, and tiny city cars don't have the same economic benefits over gasoline as large gas gasoline cars do when they go electric.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: So the chance to have 20,000 electric commodores run off the line in Elizabeth and keep that factory open never eventuated.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the last best chance that we had of saving the Australian car industry.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: So how crazy is that?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, really uh so unfortunately that's been and gone, but but but but the the broader battle will be won on electric cars.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess part of the question you're asking is but what can the average person do now on climate change?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and obviously, you know, move m moving their own domestic electricity either to home home solar generation or or or buying green electricity off the grid is going to be a key to that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the tangible elements are the only things that can resonate right now as people try and thrive and survive through this pandemic.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it has impacted other agendas like climate change, but hopefully the broader agenda will come back into the foreground.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: But but you know, I think it's incumbent on the left to, you know, the progressive forces to listen and understand the concerns of ordinary working people and find ways around them rather than just say, well, you don't believe in climate change.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like I I sometimes say to my friends, um, you know, in the educated upper middle class left, okay, so we believe this is the greatest moral challenge of our time, right?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, we do.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: So how about we all take$120,000 a year extra tax hit to pay for all the changes that are necessary?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they quite understandably go, wait, hang on a minute, I didn't sign up for that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, that's really funny, because you just asked a bunch of coal miners in Queensland to sign up for that.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: You just wanted to take away their$120,000 a year jobs and give them nothing.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you can probably understand why they're not keen on that as a solution to the problem any more than you're keen on my bogus solution to the problem, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we're debating solutions here.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's not go around calling people climate change deniers because they don't want to pay$120,000 tax.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Let's find a better solution that means that working families and their communities are not going to be destroyed.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, maybe that isn't the intellectually perfect solution.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's not going to be quite as economically efficient as a carbon tax and a trading scheme and a bunch of Macquarie bankers earning$2 billion a year by trading carbon bonds.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: But last time I checked, that has not got the political support of working Australians.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got to get something that has the political support of working Australians that is as effective as possible, right?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: Then if we're the force of change, it's incumbent upon us to figure out what that solution is that working people will buy into.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: I actually think another very important issue that you've been involved with, which is pivotal, which is childcare.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you took over the ABC Learning Centers, and that's been quite a fortuitous because they were going to the wall.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about why you got involved, because that's something completely different, obviously, from other things you've done.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But you see childcare as critical to the health system and families, and coming back to what we talked about originally.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Childcare is pivotal.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can't be a working mum unless you got childcare.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty hard.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, and therefore, you know, how do we get the best possible childcare and early education?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: So probably the the one thing that I've been involved with that I'm most proud of is my involvement in Good Start.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I but I also want to make sure, and I always say this, and and Michael's always very generous enough to give me some credit, but Michael Trail, uh, in my view, deserves the bulk of the credit for what happened with Good Start.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it was my idea, and Michael's always kindly credited with me with that.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I was involved in the early days of forming the consortium, but then I got busy with Better Place.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Michael did a phenomenal job of taking that idea and turning it into reality, and he's left a lasting legacy that he should be proud of.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: But the initial motivation came from the work we did in the per capita think tank around human capital economics and around all of the data that shows that the years zero to six, what happens then, has a bigger impact on life outcomes than anything that happens afterwards.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And particularly the development of what they call non-cognitive skills.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's actually not about whether the kid can learn to play Beethoven at the age of four or speak Japanese.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's about whether children are learning how to relate with other human beings.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: Those core lessons of sharing, communicating, negotiating, you know, we begin learning those skills at that age.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: And if we don't, it has lifetime negative benefits on us because it impairs our capacity to form intimate relationships.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so the evidence on that is abundant and overwhelming, whether it's medical, clinical evidence, or longitudinal economic evidence.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's just overwhelming.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: So the work we were doing in per capita, uh, it was clear that that was the case, and therefore that early childhood was the number one place for intervention.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then the startling reality was every other part of the education system, there's huge political debates about public schools versus private schools, which type of university fees, all these other things, right?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Which are important debates.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: But there was basically no debate about not just the private ownership of childcare, but the private profit-seeking ownership of childcare.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, private schools aren't profit making, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you like them or hate them, they're not profit engines.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Childcare centers are though.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: The childcare centers were, right?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: Eddie Groves, you know, spent$3 billion of other people's money building this empire to try and make money, not to look after kids.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And for better or worse, you know, karma's a great thing.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: The GFC came along and he borrowed too much of other people's money to do it and went belly up.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we sat there, I sat there in my, you know, lonely uh desk in the Premier's office as I was then at the time in Victoria, saying, well, hang on a minute.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: The single most important asset in the space of early childhood is the biggest childcare network in the world, which was ABC Childcare, and it's up for grabs right now, and we're in the middle of a GFC.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: No one's going to buy this thing.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, the good people of the world could buy this for not much at all and turn it into a social venture.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I called Mike Trail and said, What do you think of this idea?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And Mike said, It's probably the best idea I've ever heard.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: We need to do this.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, like, you know, when you get a mission that has that much inherent value to it, it develops its own gravity very quickly.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so good people everywhere wanted to support that outcome.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, you know, KPMG did work gratis to help structure the thing.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: The Camp private equity guys helped pull it together.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: The PR firm helped make it happen.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, everybody did whatever they could to bring about that outcome because it was so self-evidently important that the early education of Australia's young people was done for the benefit of the early education of Australia's young people.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: And everyone could sign on for that.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And thank goodness it happened.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, Julia Davidson and the team have done a magnificent job with it in the last decade, and it's largely fulfilling its mission.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess for me, that's one of the ones that hasn't had uh, what do they say in the American military?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Mission creep.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's stayed totally on mission and is is making a really positive contribution to society.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so that as I say, I'm probably most proud of having been involved.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: And now you've moved, you're you're working with Longview and you're doing property.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So another step in a different.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Another massively screwed up ecosystem that is just completely distorted, right?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like everything about it is wrong.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's a terrible, undignified, insecure, inflexible environment for Australia's tenants.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: The mum and dad property investors who play by the rules, work hard, put a bit of money aside, and just try to secure a decent retirement and some something to pass on to their families are stuffed into the wrong assets and get poor quality returns.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Young people can't buy homes anymore, um, not because they can't borrow the money in most cases, because we've got the cheapest money in the history of the world, because if they don't have a bank of mum and dad, they don't have the equity to get the deposit.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, the uh we've got a lack of social and community housing that no government's got the commitment to.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, some are more than others now, certainly Victorian government's putting it a bit of weight behind our ball, but governments for so long have been so unwilling to invest in public housing.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's a mess.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, the biggest the biggest energy problems we have are the lack of retrofit of the built of the existing built environment.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's fantastic.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: People are new doing new developments that are eight-star, but that's like you know, one percent of the built environment and the and the existing dwellings is the 99% that's not been fixed.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: So there's so much broken about the property ecosystem that profits real estate sales agents, developers and banks, and no one else.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it's fertile ground to uh to be reshaped.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that's my current passion, as you can see.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: What sort of solutions do you see, if any, uh, to this complex uh property crisis, really?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'll I'll give you a complete answer, but it will take a couple of minutes.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I have an answer if you want one.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, Evan.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Take us there.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: You've I'm sure it will be knowing you, it'll be either revolutionary or it'll be quite insightful as to what we can see up ahead.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's start with tenants, right?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to get a different type of tenure in tenancy, right?
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: In Northern Europe and other parts of the world, you can be a tenant, so-called, but in a way where it feels more like it's your home, right?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: You can be there for the long term, you can have, you know, you can paint the walls purple if you want to, you can have pets.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: You're not in constant threat of, you know, maybe the landlord wants to sell next year.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, you don't have to worry about, you know, does the landlord feel like doing the maintenance or not?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to create a structure where the ownership of rental properties enhance where they are long-term holders of those properties so that people can have security and where consistent and rational decisions are made about uh about maintenance and about changes to the property.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what we need for tenants.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's look at where we are with the mum and dad landlords, right?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: The two and a half million Australian, largely mums and dads, who own a single investment property.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a startling fact.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: They're, on average, the average investment property is performing worse than the average of the property market.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, worse than the performance of people's own homes.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: So when they actually go out to invest in property for the sole purpose of making a financial benefit, they're actually doing less well than when they do it for the sake of their own lifestyle by nearly 3% per annum.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: So pretty soon you're talking real money.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, and why?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because by and large, they're conned into buying new build developments, newly built apartments or newly built house and land packages that, whatever their other qualities, they are generally speaking, uh poor quality investment assets that do not perform well.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: So uh the sales agents make double the commission selling them because the developers will give them double the commission because they want them sold.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: They all trot out a bunch of nonsense about not nonsense, it's true that you get, you know, uh higher depreciation levels on the materials.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you know why?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because the stuff depreciates in value, but you don't get the capital growth, right?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: So uh, you know, I uh we do case studies all the time of people who, you know, we looked at four clients who bought bought four properties 10 years ago, all for between 350 and 390,000.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: And 10 years later, the best of them sold for 930,000 and the worst of them sold for less than what they paid for it.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: So the difference between buying well and buying badly is half a million bucks for your average mum and dad landlord.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no one there to help them buy the right assets.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: So landlords are not doing well out of this either.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that we've seen is that the landlords who have the poorly performing assets then try and squeeze that lemon as hard as they can and make life more difficult for the tenant, more difficult for the property manager, more difficult for everybody, not because they're bad people, but because then they're not making the money they thought they were gonna be making out of this property.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the big problem is actually they bought the wrong asset.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got to help people be in the right assets if they are going to be investing in property for their retirement uh rather than uh being in the wrong assets.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, we need a systematic approach to um energy retrofitting the existing built environment.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: And again, you're not gonna do that one landlord at a time.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: You you need large-scale ownership with long-term view so that you can retrofit all of those houses with uh with domestic uh solar and batteries and electric car charge spots.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that has to be done at scale, and there's no way to do that like in hand-to-hand combat, one landlord at a time.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I mean, I've got three and a half thousand landlords already, and and you know, we work very closely with them, but it's it's a big job.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not gonna work.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then we're not building the social housing that we need.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: People talk about things like build build-to-rent, that's great.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: There'll be a small number of long-term rentals, secure rental properties built in that, and I think that's wonderful, but most of them won't be available as affordable housing.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and and but it'll be the pimple on the edge of the world, right?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like maybe there'll be 50,000 build-to-rent properties 10 years from now, you know, out of tens of millions.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, so none of those things work.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, what do we need?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we need large-scale real estate investment trusts in the residential sector uh rather than just the commercial sector.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: Where the mum and dads own units in the REIT rather than individual properties, they will get uh a much higher rate of return because they'll be bought into better properties.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: They'll have liquidity, which they don't have now.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: You can take out 10% of your money or put in 10% more rather than just sell the property or not.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: You'll have diversity.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't buy one property with this little black box on it called capital growth.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: And when you open that black box 10 years from now, hope it's got a good number in it.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: You'll be spread across different housing types in different markets so that you'll get, you know, the market average or or better.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got so you've got liquidity, diversity, and better performance.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: So the landlords are going to be better off.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: You've then got a long-term owner of those positions, which can then deal with the tenants and their daily needs and the needs of that building and built environment on a long-term and consistent basis.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you can address the tenant experience.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, if a tenant's settled in and they're good and their kids are happy in school and they're about to have another child and they want an extra bedroom, then they should be able to go to the owner of the property and say, hey, would you guys be willing to build an extra bedroom?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we should come back and say, sure, let's work it up together.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you want it?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, how does it work?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that'll be an extra 45 bucks a week.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: You want that?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, great.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's build it for you.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: So just so I'm clarifying, is it like you know, you have a stock portfolio?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: In effect, what you're suggesting is you have a property portfolio of which you are part of.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're part of a consortium of brilliant idea.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: These exist in every other class of property and in and in every other class of assets, right?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: You can buy the index if rather than buying individual shares, right?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you usually do better, as it turns out, right?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can buy into real estate investment trusts in commercial property and industrial property and whatever.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's only one asset class in Australia that you can't buy in that way, and that's the single biggest asset class in the country by a factor of three.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's called residential real estate.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's three times bigger than the Australian stock exchange combined, right?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: $7.9 trillion of assets.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: The ASX is$2.9 trillion of assets.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: And there's not a single professional funds manager in the entire asset class.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in every other asset class, in Australian equities, international equities, fixed income, all forms of commercial property, industrial property, there's a whole professionalized system.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: There are all of these index funds or REITs or other aggregated structures that you can buy.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: And yet nobody does that in Resi, which means the investors, the mums and dads of Australia, get on average much poorer quality assets.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: The tenants get caught up in the ringer between the individual owner and their needs and aspirations rather than the long-term need of the tenant and the property.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if you had a large-scale REIT, then um with hundreds of thousands of properties in it, you could easily cut a deal with government and say, okay, portfolio into social housing.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to wait for it to be built.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's built already.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is with an agent, you're not building to rent, it's built to rent.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's already built, it's already there.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, let's cut a deal with the government and get a chop out on land tax in exchange for um a portion of the portfolio going into social and public housing, um, appropriately salt and peppered throughout the community where it should be, right?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: And with lots of different forms of housing that meet the needs of different family structures.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's all there, it's already there.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's just no way of bringing that outcome about.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, uh, and we energy retrofit the whole thing.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that's broadly where it needs to go.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then in terms of home affordability, uh, we'll be co-investing with particularly young families to help give them the equity they need if they don't have it themselves and they don't have a bank of mum and dad to buy the home they really need and help solve that access problem at the most critical time when people have got young kids and where it's most important to have the right family environment.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: You usually get to afford the home you really needed for those kids by the time they're ready to move out, right?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: Which makes no sense.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Evan, on that note, you you know, I've really enjoyed this interview.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have been, you've shone the light on so many interesting areas.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: I feel I'm sure we could speak for another hour, but at this juncture, I feel that we I've learned a lot.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: But we've learned a lot, and I can see you've learned a lot.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a great humility in the way that you have achieved so much and yet given so much, and also acknowledge that uh there's a greater force, whatever that might be.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I'm glad that you're enjoying life in the tribe.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it was really delightful to speak, uh, Deb, and uh and I hope I hope it was interesting to listen to as well.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting, and I'm sure we'll stay in touch.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: You take care.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Terrific, you too.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly, with new episodes released every Tuesday.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Love death.