Latest / The Curve / Chlöe Swarbrick on Power, Money & the Systems That Divide Us.

Transcript

Chlöe Swarbrick on Power, Money & the Systems That Divide Us. · The Curve

• 0:00
  Welcome to Raising the Curth, a podcast designed to teach you everything that you need to know
• 0:05
  to be better with your money.
• 0:06
  Come and learn alongside me, Sophie Hallwright, a total beginner from the finance expert Victoria Harris.
• 0:12
  So I've asked all of the questions you wish you could so that finance, investing and growing
• 0:16
  your wealth actually makes sense.
• 0:18
  Yes, it's expert education, but with promise will not be boring.
• 0:21
  And in the wise words of sheer,
• 0:23
  My mom said to me,
• 0:24
  You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.
• 0:28
  And I said, Mom, I am a rich man.
• 0:30
  Come and talk and learn and laugh with us because together we really can raise the curve.
• 0:36
  Chloe, I'm sort of excited and nervous to be speaking to you in all honesty.
• 0:40
  Firstly, it's 7 a.m. in the morning for us and where you have had to get up early for this one,
• 0:46
  which actually our guest booker was like,
• 0:48
  Okay, so I'm going to try and get Chloe,
• 0:50
  how like what times would you make work?
• 0:53
  And I was like, we need to do anything or make anything work.
• 0:57
  Night, morning, we will get up, we'll stay up late.
• 1:00
  So thank you so much.
• 1:01
  It's fine, it's fine.
• 1:02
  It's 3 a.m.
• 1:03
  It's no worries at all.
• 1:04
  It feels a little bit more civilised, right?
• 1:06
  Yes.
• 1:07
  Thank you so much.
• 1:08
  I really appreciate you not making me stay up until the moment.
• 1:11
  Well, I got a margin, just demanding.
• 1:14
  I have got to start this interview by being very honest and the fact that
• 1:18
  I am not anywhere near as schooled up on politics as I would like to be.
• 1:23
  It's an embarrassing thing to admit that at 33 I have still not,
• 1:28
  I don't know what it is.
• 1:29
  Maybe it's because I just fundamentally really disagree with a lot of what my parents think
• 1:34
  when it comes to politics.
• 1:35
  But I haven't really ever known how to respond in an educated way.
• 1:40
  And I think that for the last few years, like the curve has been obviously our focus
• 1:45
  in terms of money and educating about investing.
• 1:48
  And I think as Trump has become part of every day conversation,
• 1:52
  one of our podcasts that we do every week is the curve weekly.
• 1:55
  It's talking about like the economy, what's happening in the world,
• 1:57
  what's happening with stock markets and businesses and just increasingly
• 2:02
  realizing how unbelievably intertwined politics and money are.
• 2:06
  So could we just like start with a really basic overview of that for anyone
• 2:12
  who also is kind of maybe not as educated in the space as they would like to be?
• 2:17
  Yes, for sure. And I think it's a really valid question.
• 2:20
  And actually, I was talking to some people earlier today about exactly this.
• 2:23
  I feel like some of the intentional strategies that facts and people
• 2:30
  and suits have run for a really long time to try and turn regular people off with
• 2:34
  politics as by making them think that you need to understand all of this
• 2:37
  terminology and jargon, but you really don't.
• 2:40
  So I used to really basic level, the question should be what is the economy?
• 2:45
  The economy is just all of us. It's the stuff that we produce.
• 2:48
  It's the planet that we live on and the relationships between all of those things
• 2:52
  and the rules that we put in place to govern those relationships.
• 2:55
  So to really basic level, that is why everything that you talk about
• 2:59
  when you're talking about money is inherently political.
• 3:02
  And by politics, I'm not using it in a way that's like synonymous
• 3:05
  or interchangeable with political parties or partisanship, which is the nonsense
• 3:09
  of throwing out the baby with the bathwater when someone comes in.
• 3:12
  And then all the real stuff that people say with politicians going at each other.
• 3:15
  I'm not talking about power and I'm not even talking about government.
• 3:18
  Politics is literally just about power and it's about resources.
• 3:22
  And it's about who gets to make decisions that saturate and shake our daily lives.
• 3:25
  Many of these one theory, clear manifestation of that.
• 3:28
  That was a mic.
• 3:29
  That was a Nick goosebumps.
• 3:31
  Nick goosebumps. Never knew that was a thing.
• 3:34
  God, it just explained it so simply.
• 3:36
  Do you know? It's so true.
• 3:38
  We get so caught up with the like the tiny things and everything that goes on.
• 3:42
  And like who's saying what?
• 3:43
  And it's so much more, I guess, simple and basic than that.
• 3:47
  It's social contracts.
• 3:49
  It's how we want to trade each other.
• 3:51
  Yeah.
• 3:52
  It's really interesting because the more that I delve into any industry,
• 3:56
  like obviously for me as someone that was not in finance, this is so for context.
• 4:01
  I don't know if you know anything about the curve, but that used to work in finance.
• 4:04
  I did.
• 4:05
  I was, oh my god.
• 4:07
  Did you?
• 4:08
  Absolutely.
• 4:09
  I googled you.
• 4:10
  Fuck did you.
• 4:11
  I hope you didn't see my.
• 4:12
  I got some.
• 4:13
  I got some.
• 4:14
  I can shock us out there.
• 4:15
  I actually was on hand the other day and someone was like, sorry, this is very off track.
• 4:19
  And we'll get back to it a second.
• 4:20
  But he had something about being in the Daily Mail for like a stock image.
• 4:24
  And it was a joke.
• 4:25
  And I messaged him.
• 4:26
  I'm like, I'll find my debut in Daily Mail too.
• 4:28
  And I googled like, it was literally this article.
• 4:31
  I was like producer, Carl and Jekyll told to fuck off and Bondi.
• 4:35
  It was like the photo of me parking across three parks and Bondi.
• 4:40
  And someone took duct tape and wrote fuck off my windscreen.
• 4:43
  And I sent it to him being like, ha, ha, ha, me too.
• 4:45
  And then just no result.
• 4:46
  I love it.
• 4:47
  Like we've been doing this for five years nearly.
• 4:50
  And that is still what keeps popping up in terms of the first thing on Google.
• 4:55
  It's so outrageous.
• 4:56
  I'm like, surely it is more interesting things about me.
• 4:59
  I was up in Northland.
• 5:01
  And I was walking out over the other day.
• 5:03
  And these kids who would like have been babies at the point in time that this happened in Parliament.
• 5:07
  Were all saying to me, okay, Boomer, okay, Boomer, do the things.
• 5:10
  Do the things.
• 5:11
  Do the, okay, Boomer thing.
• 5:12
  And I was like, guys, that was like six years ago.
• 5:14
  You were tiny.
• 5:15
  I don't know if you remember that.
• 5:17
  You were the thing on TikTok or what's going on?
• 5:19
  I have to tell you when I did my research for you, that popped up too.
• 5:22
  And I was like, I also missed this at the time because wasn't involved in politics.
• 5:27
  Anyway, the point of that ramble was just to let you know that the more that I realise every single industry,
• 5:34
  the jargon, the language, the way it's spoken about is super masculine.
• 5:38
  It's the opposite of friendly and welcoming, which just keeps people in these echo chambers of not understanding
• 5:45
  and not taking part actively and what's going on.
• 5:48
  And I think that if there were, and this is a hugely like broad sweeping statement,
• 5:52
  like I'm aware that there's a lot of very educated women who know a lot about politics.
• 5:56
  But I think that there's also a lot of us that feel embarrassed to say, I don't know enough.
• 6:01
  And I, and I think that if we all knew more and when we're taking part actively
• 6:06
  from a voting perspective, but also just understanding conceptually what goes on,
• 6:10
  we would probably see a very different world and very different people in power.
• 6:14
  Huge.
• 6:15
  I also think there's an element of it doesn't affect me, right?
• 6:18
  Like I'm so, so small and insignificant in the scheme of like votes, for example,
• 6:24
  or you know, what's going on in the world that like, why would, why would my vote count?
• 6:28
  And so particularly when you're younger and you probably don't have a good understanding of politics
• 6:33
  to begin with anyway, and then you're like, well, you know, that's why a lot of young people don't vote
• 6:38
  because it's like, well, how will it affect me?
• 6:39
  And it's not until a policy does actually probably immediately affect you
• 6:43
  that you probably start to kind of sit up and think about, you know, okay, who am I going to vote for?
• 6:47
  How did you get into politics, by the way, because you were like one of the youngest MPs in history.
• 6:52
  When you're like 23, it's like politics was not on my radar when I was, when I was 23, at all.
• 6:58
  The really truncated version, I finished my degree, so I studied undergrad philosophy
• 7:03
  and then I went on to study law, not even to be a lawyer, but for sake of understanding the kind of philosophy
• 7:09
  that I was interested in and practice.
• 7:10
  So I'm interested in something called Frankfurt School.
• 7:12
  Critical theory, which is basically looking at the structures of society
• 7:15
  and seeing whether unfair or unjust and then we go about, how we go about changing them.
• 7:19
  But I'm really fascinated with like social revolutions in that as well.
• 7:22
  And just like the more you dig into social revolutions, the more you come to understand
• 7:27
  that while they do tend to redistribute resources and slightly typically a more equitable way,
• 7:32
  they're incredibly awful and incredibly harmful for people who are already on the social margins.
• 7:37
  So I said, okay, cool.
• 7:38
  I'm like interested in this idea of the social contract.
• 7:40
  So what's the best manifestation of that law? That makes sense.
• 7:43
  So I studied law, which is when I first started coming up close and personal
• 7:47
  with just how insane it was or the gatekeeping that goes on in politics.
• 7:52
  The kind of jargon that you guys are talking about while I was doing all of that was involved
• 7:56
  and starting a few different small businesses with my partner at the time.
• 7:59
  So we basically like I'd never grown up in an inherently political household.
• 8:03
  I believe everything is political now, but we didn't talk explicitly about politics.
• 8:07
  Like I wasn't going to protest or anything like that.
• 8:09
  My old man definitely was like a business guy.
• 8:11
  I saw business as a means to effectively try and create change and to try and create spaces
• 8:19
  for particularly my musician and artist friends to have economic certainty
• 8:24
  to be able to do the things that they loved.
• 8:26
  That was the means that I had become familiar with.
• 8:28
  So it was kind of my first form of organizing in a way.
• 8:31
  Well, all of that was happening.
• 8:32
  I was at 95 BFN for about four and a half years originally right in the news
• 8:37
  and then reading the news and then producing this early carnivore show called The Wire
• 8:40
  and then eventually hosting it.
• 8:42
  And doing everything else at the radio station.
• 8:44
  Like playing the toilets and answering reception and producing a host.
• 8:49
  I had interviewed so many politicians and so many community leaders
• 8:54
  and so many academics and experts.
• 8:56
  And I was always just really like what is up with this gap between the people who know what needs to be done.
• 9:01
  IE people who've dedicated their lives to solving these problems
• 9:04
  and what their saying needs to happen versus what the politicians are saying
• 9:07
  versus what the politicians are actually doing.
• 9:09
  So all of this was kind of coming to the fore at the end of 2015
• 9:13
  and I was interviewing the top four candidates for the Auckland Merlty
• 9:16
  as kind of prescribed by the mainstream media.
• 9:18
  And we were funnily enough in a really similar space to where we are right now as a country
• 9:22
  where loads of people were leaving.
• 9:24
  And there was real kind of moral panic about the notion of the brain drain
• 9:28
  and I was watching my mates leave, you know, for lower customers living
• 9:32
  more functional public transport and God forbid flourishing arts and culture.
• 9:36
  And I was just like, guys, we have to stay here and fight.
• 9:39
  So this really came to the fore during all these interviews with these mural candidates
• 9:43
  and I was just really dismayed and really pissed off and really upset and frustrated
• 9:46
  by the fact that they didn't seem to really care about what was going on
• 9:50
  and they didn't seem to really be engaging with my communities.
• 9:53
  So I was complaining about it to my producer and she was like, shut up Chloe.
• 9:56
  Do something about it. So I went home and I googled how to become the mayor of Auckland
• 10:00
  and I found that yet to be over the age of 18, I waited till I turned 22.
• 10:05
  So my birthday is in June and you had to put in that application at the end of, at the start of July.
• 10:09
  I had to have 200 bucks for administrative fees and I had to have two people nominate you,
• 10:14
  which is like the sanity bar because there's some pretty interesting individuals who run for local body allegiance.
• 10:18
  I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but yeah, ended up talking to all of those people
• 10:22
  who I thought knew what, you know, the answers were.
• 10:25
  I was always really straight up about the fact that I was 22 years old, of course,
• 10:28
  I didn't know everything, but any politician who stands in front of you
• 10:31
  and tells you that they do know everything, is they go lying to you or completely letting self awareness
• 10:35
  and I'm not sure which is worse.
• 10:37
  I just tried by doing and holding myself to a really high evidentiary standard
• 10:41
  for producing these policies and ended up coming in third place.
• 10:44
  So there's just less than 30,000 votes.
• 10:46
  We fundraised like 5K selling this rip off vote for Peter O vote for Chloe,
• 10:49
  like Napoleon Dynamite.
• 10:51
  Actually, did this gig my mate?
• 10:53
  And so I pulled together this gig after that.
• 10:56
  I was approached by a few different political parties,
• 10:58
  the Greens were the only ones who couldn't promise me a place in a high place on the list
• 11:02
  because of how internally democratic they are.
• 11:05
  But it was just a values alignment and then yet ended up running for parliament
• 11:08
  and in 2017 was elected.
• 11:10
  So there's the truncated version.
• 11:12
  Yeah.
• 11:13
  I'm brilliant or and I was saying to Chloe off mic before we started recording.
• 11:17
  When I was looking at interviews and like just listening to you speak
• 11:21
  and listening to people speak to you,
• 11:23
  the way that questions are asked and like the speaking over each other,
• 11:28
  the most insane trolls I've ever seen.
• 11:31
  Like I was reading some of the comments on YouTube videos and stuff
• 11:34
  and I was like, this is the wild west.
• 11:37
  Like this is so nasty.
• 11:39
  I massively admire how I guess it just blows my mind that the concept
• 11:44
  of like having to put yourself in the firing line constantly
• 11:48
  for so much criticism, so much like I hate to make this like a gender thing
• 11:53
  but this like confrontational really masculine like approach to conversations.
• 11:59
  It must just be exhausting and to be like so genuine about the things that you care about
• 12:05
  and to show up every day and to be dealing with that kind of energy
• 12:09
  is just like hats off to you because I can't even I think that there
• 12:14
  would just be so many people that try.
• 12:16
  I would honestly walk out if I was spoken to sometime.
• 12:19
  Like you are honestly like sort of seen in the office.
• 12:22
  I'm just like, I'm gone.
• 12:23
  See you.
• 12:24
  Yeah.
• 12:25
  That's like, what was that see you later?
• 12:26
  I would not be a great politician at all.
• 12:28
  Yeah.
• 12:29
  I was the resilience.
• 12:30
  It's like wild.
• 12:31
  It is pretty wild and I think that that's where for me,
• 12:35
  like what's been particularly profound about this term apartment.
• 12:38
  So in alter hour, our terms are three years at a time not four years
• 12:42
  like many other jurisdictions and this is my third term.
• 12:46
  So 2017 to 2020 and then 2017 to 2020 and now 2023 and onwards.
• 12:51
  And since the change of government, the key thing is,
• 12:54
  of course you expect that everybody in parliament is going to have a different ideology
• 12:57
  that's like, by the by.
• 12:59
  Like all politicians are inherently ideological.
• 13:01
  I find it really funny when we accuse each other of being ideological.
• 13:04
  Of course we are.
• 13:05
  We all have values.
• 13:06
  We all believe in things.
• 13:07
  Can you explain what that means?
• 13:08
  I know it sounds so stupid to ask that.
• 13:10
  Ideology is just a value set basically.
• 13:13
  Like a framework for the things that you believe in.
• 13:15
  So, you know, the ones that people are probably mostly familiar with are the ideas of like socialism.
• 13:20
  I eat sharing things more and the economy in particular,
• 13:24
  or potentially libertarianism, which is the notion that everybody should be left to their own devices
• 13:29
  with some potential caveats to that around the notion of the hampens.
• 13:33
  When I started out my learning and philosophy was really attracted to the idea of libertarianism.
• 13:38
  The notion that everybody should just be free to do whatever they want.
• 13:41
  Is it like capitalism or is it totally different?
• 13:44
  It can be associated to capitalism.
• 13:46
  Capitalism is a kind of economic theory by which, you know,
• 13:50
  a fair accumulation of more and more capital and kind of fit,
• 13:52
  which effectively can result in greater inequality and otherwise.
• 13:55
  But to come back to the libertarian point,
• 13:57
  the idea of libertarianism, which is effectively what's manifest
• 14:01
  and the idea that everybody should be free to do whatever they want with very little caveats,
• 14:06
  except for potentially harming other people.
• 14:08
  And originally I was really attracted to an idea like that,
• 14:11
  until I kind of came to realise that the idea of freedom is illusory.
• 14:15
  It's made up if you don't actually have economic freedom.
• 14:18
  To say that everybody has the freedom to behave well when, you know,
• 14:22
  certain families or certain young people are in poverty
• 14:25
  and they don't really have a choice like it's illusory.
• 14:28
  So for me, real freedom requires economic freedom as a base,
• 14:32
  which is why I probably am far more left wing now
• 14:34
  and my kind of economic views about things.
• 14:37
  You expect that everybody has different ideologies,
• 14:39
  different ways of seeing the world, different life experiences.
• 14:41
  That's kind of by the way.
• 14:42
  Of course, that's what you're going to experience in parliament
• 14:44
  and of course, people are going to feel those things quite strongly.
• 14:46
  Where things I think get problematic is when ideology transcends into dogma.
• 14:50
  Dogma is basically when people were really concrete about the way
• 14:54
  that they think about the world and are unwilling to basically perceive
• 14:58
  or put themselves in other people's shoes to try and understand different ideologies
• 15:01
  or different viewpoints.
• 15:03
  So being ideological is fine, being dogmatic is problematic
• 15:07
  because it means that you are unwilling to shift in change
• 15:09
  or see somebody else's point of view or to grow.
• 15:12
  On that mention of the idea of becoming really dogmatic
• 15:15
  and not being able to listen to each other.
• 15:17
  If we look globally at other structures and politicians and countries,
• 15:22
  the United States, the UK, like Australia,
• 15:26
  do you think that that's being reflected everywhere?
• 15:29
  Do you think that there's just way more separation
• 15:31
  between left and right?
• 15:34
  And is that kind of what the main reason is?
• 15:37
  Because from our view, I would say that the US is 10 times worse
• 15:40
  in terms of being dogmatic than New Zealand.
• 15:43
  Totally. So I think, man, a few different thoughts on this.
• 15:46
  One is that I don't think that the classic we're afraid to divide
• 15:49
  actually really explains all too much what we're going through at the moment.
• 15:52
  And just to actually pull apart like the States is a really clear example
• 15:57
  of something that I think we're starting to see percolate away
• 16:00
  and manifest in other countries.
• 16:03
  I think the kind of existential crisis that the left
• 16:06
  and particularly the Democrat took party is an over there
• 16:09
  where there's been years and years and years positioning themselves
• 16:13
  is kind of center left and arguably working people
• 16:17
  have watched their material conditions erode
• 16:21
  and equality has got worse poverty and challenges around homelessness
• 16:24
  and everything else and then climate change has exacerbated
• 16:27
  all of those issues.
• 16:28
  While all of that has happened and arguably people have seen
• 16:32
  the center left just slightly mitigate against that,
• 16:35
  but not materially transform those circumstances.
• 16:38
  People have simultaneously seen the likes of a lack of a better term
• 16:42
  kind of affirmative action policies whereby minority groups
• 16:46
  or groups that aren't typically presented in positions of power placed into spaces
• 16:50
  in ways that some could consider effectively tokenism.
• 16:53
  I was on this panel a few years ago to celebrate 125 years of women's suffrage
• 16:58
  with two of our former female prime ministers,
• 17:00
  Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark,
• 17:02
  and we were being asked about how we wedge more women into these spaces.
• 17:05
  And I was just like why are we trying to wedge women into these spaces
• 17:08
  that weren't designed for them?
• 17:09
  Why aren't we instead talking about the design of the system
• 17:11
  that inherently requires women either to conform
• 17:14
  or forget everything about what they want to represent
• 17:18
  when they come into those spaces?
• 17:19
  Why aren't we changing the spaces?
• 17:20
  Why are we asking the people to change?
• 17:22
  And I think that that's kind of what people have seen,
• 17:26
  that they've seen that women, people of colour, queer people, etc,
• 17:30
  have been put into these spaces.
• 17:32
  They haven't seen the material circumstances
• 17:34
  meaningfully improved, in fact, in many instances they have been eroded,
• 17:38
  which means that the only tangible thing that people can point to
• 17:41
  that those on the center left have been holding themselves as having achieved
• 17:44
  is effectively there's affirmative action policies,
• 17:47
  which then leaves really ripe ground for a far right kind of radical
• 17:51
  and extremist, strong man type of president to stand up and say,
• 17:55
  well, this intellect hasn't addressed any of these issues
• 17:58
  with regard to your material circumstances
• 18:00
  and they've simultaneously raised certain groups of people
• 18:03
  into these positions of ostensical power.
• 18:05
  Therefore, the problem is these minority groups
• 18:08
  and I'm going to solve everything.
• 18:10
  I feel like what we see on in the media
• 18:13
  and like every day is like this kind of 2%
• 18:17
  and what you just explained is like all of this that goes on behind the scenes
• 18:21
  or like the mountains I guess that need to be moved
• 18:24
  to actually bring about change.
• 18:26
  The basic thing is just inequality has got worse
• 18:29
  and while inequality has got worse,
• 18:31
  certain groups in society have seen other groups in society
• 18:36
  be tokenised into positions of power
• 18:38
  so particularly marginalized groups be put into these so-called positions of power
• 18:43
  and those positions of power, the system has not been changed
• 18:48
  so now you've got a perfect target for the far right to go,
• 18:53
  oh, it's the minority groups who are now in these positions of power
• 18:56
  who are the issue, who have been supposedly elevated beyond where they should be or otherwise
• 19:00
  and in fact all of what anybody wanted the whole time
• 19:04
  was just addressing those material conditions,
• 19:06
  just making sure that we actually improved people's lives.
• 19:09
  Can you use a really easy example?
• 19:11
  Like if we take women, for example, as a minority group,
• 19:15
  what can we do or what have we done to change the system in order to elevate women?
• 19:21
  Because that's essentially what you're saying, is that right?
• 19:23
  You need to change the system or the space for women to flourish.
• 19:27
  Yes.
• 19:28
  I mean, perhaps a really live example that makes a lot of sense
• 19:31
  is the way that currently cultural warfare,
• 19:34
  which has definitely been playing out in the States and the UK
• 19:37
  and in Australia is being imported here with regard to trans rights.
• 19:41
  We've got baseline, just inequality is awful,
• 19:45
  cost of living is through the roof.
• 19:47
  What does the Deputy Prime Minister decide should be his focus?
• 19:49
  Who should use what considered women's bathrooms?
• 19:53
  There has been this focus from the likes of the Democrats in the States or otherwise
• 19:57
  to go, we're going to do capitalism plus trans rights.
• 20:01
  So we're going to wedge trans people into this space
• 20:04
  which is not inherently changing the system necessarily,
• 20:07
  but we're going to add what looks like greater representation to that.
• 20:10
  But what the far right are able to say, well, it's the trans people who are the issue.
• 20:14
  Do you kind of follow what I mean?
• 20:16
  They're trying to fit around pegging to a square hole essentially
• 20:19
  and rather than changing the square hole.
• 20:21
  Why is there such a gap between what politicians say and what they actually do?
• 20:25
  In terms of not saying that they lie, but saying like their promises
• 20:30
  and actually what they get through in terms of actually doing.
• 20:34
  Like there's so much rude tape.
• 20:36
  There's so much like even what you said about the bathrooms.
• 20:39
  It's like, is that because it's something that can quickly get through
• 20:42
  and therefore they look like they're doing something?
• 20:44
  Whereas the bigger kind of policy changes or law changes take too long.
• 20:48
  They're only in power for four years, some of them.
• 20:51
  And therefore they want to be seen to be doing stuff.
• 20:53
  Because we kind of see that in companies from our lens
• 20:56
  when we're looking at investments, you get a CEO that's in there.
• 20:59
  They're only in there for a couple of years.
• 21:01
  They want to make short-term changes versus a founder who's there for generations
• 21:05
  and it's going to really, really grow and thrive this business.
• 21:08
  I have a few thoughts.
• 21:10
  So I think the incentive structure inside of politics is totally broken.
• 21:14
  So the incentive structure, like on a day to day basis
• 21:17
  in a really oversimplified way, politicians are basically choosing
• 21:21
  between change or career progression.
• 21:23
  Classic, controversial area of policy, drug law reform.
• 21:27
  Behind the scenes, I would go and talk to politicians across the aisle
• 21:30
  and all of them would agree that our misuse of drugs act is broken.
• 21:34
  It makes no sense that we should be taking approaches to it.
• 21:37
  They're very least decriminalised, if not legalised in certain circumstances
• 21:40
  because they've seen the evidence and they've heard from police
• 21:43
  and they talk to social service providers and they know
• 21:45
  that there are better ways to do things.
• 21:47
  But then you put them on the spot in parliament
• 21:49
  or in front of the cameras and they're not willing to say that anymore.
• 21:53
  And I think the reason for that when I talk to these politicians
• 21:56
  is that they believe that if they are able to retain their position
• 22:00
  for long enough to sit down shut up and wait 10 years
• 22:03
  until they have a certain position on the picking order,
• 22:05
  then they justify that they can do it at that point in time
• 22:08
  when this supposedly built the political capital or the trust
• 22:11
  of the people or the trust of their political party or whatever else.
• 22:14
  But what they're doing when they do that is they are inherently prioritising
• 22:18
  their career over the change, which means obviously inherently deep
• 22:23
  prioritising the change itself.
• 22:25
  And my argument would be that when you progress down that pathway
• 22:29
  you are actually losing the political capital
• 22:31
  to do the change that you say that you believe in
• 22:33
  because why the hell would anybody believe you
• 22:35
  when you come out 10 years later saying that this is something that you believe in
• 22:38
  if you haven't been campaigning and actively leading in that space
• 22:41
  to try and make that change?
• 22:43
  Basically if you wear the mask for long enough it becomes your face.
• 22:46
  So the incentives and politics effectively breed politicians
• 22:51
  who are talking typically in really ambiguous ways
• 22:54
  so that they're not crystal clear about what they believe in
• 22:57
  which leaves things up to interpretation of the viewer
• 23:00
  so that they're not annoying or pissing people off
• 23:02
  but it also then means it's incredibly difficult to nail down
• 23:05
  what they actually are doing.
• 23:07
  And then I think a whole other can of worms
• 23:09
  is the very perverse focus on particular metrics
• 23:14
  or particular means.
• 23:16
  And for example, we've recently just had our government budget release
• 23:20
  that we hear and there's a lot of discussion around
• 23:23
  kind of debt to GDP ratios and growth and productivity
• 23:27
  and otherwise and the rhetoric that we're hearing
• 23:30
  is really divorced from the reality
• 23:32
  if you look at the real world economic levers
• 23:34
  that are kind of being pulled.
• 23:36
  So yeah, I think it's largely just the matter of the incentive structures
• 23:39
  and on a day to day basis, politicians are incentivized
• 23:44
  to fight for political points and clickbait headlines
• 23:48
  and not to make long-term change.
• 23:50
  Oh, stunning.
• 23:51
  With these people running the world.
• 23:53
  So we don't need to.
• 23:56
  Amazing.
• 23:57
  Yeah, this is great to hear.
• 23:58
  This is really reassuring.
• 23:59
  So basically what I'm hearing is that they pretend
• 24:03
  or like kind of hide shit away that they actually care about
• 24:06
  for the sake of being in the spotlight for longer
• 24:08
  is kind of the general like boiling it down.
• 24:10
  How do countries like Singapore
• 24:14
  that have a seven percent tax rate
• 24:18
  have such a thriving economy
• 24:22
  in a capitalist sense, don't get me wrong.
• 24:25
  But like in terms of, you know, they just,
• 24:27
  they have such a low tax rate
• 24:29
  and they've seen from the outset to have it,
• 24:33
  quote unquote, sorters.
• 24:35
  I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on my debt.
• 24:39
  But I can definitely reflect on here in Altera
• 24:43
  as with many other Westerners nations.
• 24:45
  So particularly the states in Australia and the UK.
• 24:50
  You know, in the 30s and 40s,
• 24:52
  subsequent to world wars,
• 24:54
  where we saw some of the worst atrocities known to mankind
• 24:57
  and you know, following on from the Great Depression,
• 25:01
  there was a decision to create the wealthiest state.
• 25:04
  And that was pay for by higher taxes on those who had profited
• 25:07
  during a time of hardship for many.
• 25:09
  So that was where we saw the creation of public education,
• 25:12
  public health care, and the kind of 40 hour work week
• 25:15
  and all of those things again,
• 25:16
  paid for by proportionally higher taxes on those
• 25:19
  who could afford to pay for it.
• 25:21
  And then we had a period of actually, again,
• 25:23
  if you'd look at the data,
• 25:25
  relative flourishing, like even people who were doing it hard
• 25:28
  had the opportunity to get that social mobility
• 25:30
  and to get a hedge.
• 25:32
  But then, you know, 40 or so years later in the 80s and 90s,
• 25:35
  Ella, Margaret Thatcher, Reagan, Roger Douglas here
• 25:39
  and Alta Roza, Minister of Finance decided to shred that
• 25:43
  social safety net to sell off a bunch of our public assets.
• 25:46
  And you know, we've still been needed to over the course of other
• 25:49
  sell-offs with the likes of the energy sector.
• 25:51
  People still need energy and electricity.
• 25:53
  But when you add that profit incentive to these things
• 25:56
  that are really basic needs, the cost of living goes up.
• 25:59
  So yeah, we're now in this space right now.
• 26:01
  We're 40 or so years from those 1980s reforms.
• 26:05
  We have to confront the reality of the dual crises
• 26:07
  of the climate crisis and the inequality crisis.
• 26:10
  And that's where I come back to the need for that whole systemic change.
• 26:13
  When you were talking about public assets being sold to private
• 26:16
  to pay for things, like for an example of that,
• 26:20
  so if we'd be like meridian energy,
• 26:22
  that used to be a government owned.
• 26:24
  So this is a energy company in New Zealand,
• 26:26
  used to be government owned, and then it sold to,
• 26:28
  and now you can buy it on the stock exchange.
• 26:30
  So now you and I can buy shares in meridian,
• 26:32
  whereas before when it was owned by the government,
• 26:34
  we couldn't.
• 26:35
  So when they, when they sold that asset,
• 26:37
  they got billions of dollars,
• 26:39
  which they could then spend on other things.
• 26:41
  And again, for the short term,
• 26:43
  and this is where we kind of get into the idea of things like public good.
• 26:46
  Like I, I believe they're in order to have a flourishing society.
• 26:51
  And this is very much aligned with you.
• 26:53
  You'd be familiar with the idea of like measures hierarchy of needs.
• 26:56
  How people have like really basic things that we need to have.
• 26:58
  I got that one in order.
• 26:59
  Oh, great.
• 27:00
  So there are really, really basic things.
• 27:04
  That all of us need to be able to live a good life.
• 27:06
  And these are afflicted.
• 27:07
  And the UN decoration on human rights, for example,
• 27:10
  healthcare, education, housing, etc.
• 27:13
  So electricity is one of those things,
• 27:15
  which it makes sense to be a public good,
• 27:17
  because everybody kind of needs it to be able to participate in society.
• 27:22
  But when you, what you mean by that is like,
• 27:24
  there's lots of things that could be questioned marked around,
• 27:27
  is this actually needed?
• 27:28
  But everyone needs the light to turn on.
• 27:30
  So let's not argue about that as kind of, yeah, got you.
• 27:33
  Yeah, totally.
• 27:34
  Much like I would say healthcare should be as well.
• 27:36
  Healthcare should be.
• 27:37
  Well, it is recognises human rights under the UN.
• 27:40
  But it's not necessarily represented that way in many so-called developed countries.
• 27:44
  But where we kind of come back to is that when you introduce the profit motive
• 27:48
  into these things that all of us need as basic rights,
• 27:51
  then you kind of introduce the idea that some people are not going to be able
• 27:57
  to get access to those things.
• 28:00
  And when we're talking about the electricity sector in particular,
• 28:03
  there is actually, when you're really thinking about the profit motive
• 28:06
  that exists within the private sector owning things,
• 28:09
  there's not a substantial incentive to invest in renewable energy
• 28:13
  because renewable energy is cheap to produce,
• 28:16
  whereas keeping fossil fuels there to be able to switch on at those times
• 28:20
  when the load is really high means that you can increase the price.
• 28:24
  So we therefore continue to be in this feedback loop of increase in cost of living
• 28:28
  and increase in climate changing emissions as a result of that being outside
• 28:32
  of full-state ownership and therefore democratic control.
• 28:35
  So electricity companies, essentially, they want profits
• 28:40
  and because profits mean higher share prices, higher value for their companies,
• 28:44
  the way that you can get profits is by charging higher prices.
• 28:47
  But electricity is a basic need for individuals.
• 28:50
  So if it was owned by the government and it was owned and not by the private sector,
• 28:54
  then you'd have more control over that, essentially,
• 28:57
  because you're not profit driven.
• 28:59
  Yes, and there is one caveat to this in the electricity
• 29:02
  where a proportion of the companies are owned still by the government,
• 29:06
  but because of the state-owned enterprises act,
• 29:08
  it is required to be run effectively as a profit-earing company.
• 29:12
  So again, is that notion of profit that drives the increase in cost
• 29:17
  for these things, especially when they are effectively monopoly goods and services?
• 29:22
  Hi, and welcome to the inside of my Lexus.
• 29:26
  And when I say my Lexus, I can't lie, this isn't actually mine,
• 29:30
  but I've been driving it for the last five weeks.
• 29:33
  And I can tell you that it has been the most magical time.
• 29:37
  Now, look, for anyone who has listened to this podcast or followed the curve for a while,
• 29:42
  you will know, my history with cars has been checkered, let's just say.
• 29:47
  I am not the most amazing driver.
• 29:50
  I'm not normally someone that really values cars,
• 29:54
  but it is just so beautiful.
• 29:57
  It's a really interesting thing to think about when it comes like investing in a car, right?
• 30:02
  Like, you don't want to buy something that's going to break down tomorrow.
• 30:05
  But you also, I guess it's just you want to buy a car that is a long term
• 30:09
  investment. And what I've realised is Lexus is a long term investment.
• 30:14
  Just like you think about your stocks and wanting to pick something that's going to last
• 30:19
  the test of time that's going to stay with you for your life, really,
• 30:24
  you don't want to be buying and selling and buying and selling.
• 30:27
  And it's just the same when it comes to cars, you want to buy quality.
• 30:30
  And for me, now I've been in the Lexus, I want to buy luxury.
• 30:34
  So we have partnered with Lexus to come up with a,
• 30:39
  it's a how-to guide.
• 30:41
  How to get yourself in a position where you are actually working towards buying a big
• 30:46
  ticket item like a Lexus because it's not the kind of thing you can just wake up and buy.
• 30:50
  It's not exactly an impulse purchase, like an online shopping situation.
• 30:53
  So we would like to say thank you so much to Lexus for empowering this podcast.
• 30:58
  We would like to say, well, we, I would like to say thank you for letting me drive around
• 31:03
  New Zealand and this beautiful car and just feel confident and chic and sleek.
• 31:08
  And I'm going to miss it a lot.
• 31:10
  So for anyone that would like to save towards a big ticket item,
• 31:14
  you can find the link in the podcast show notes.
• 31:19
  In terms of this conversation, how does that feed into like what we're seeing
• 31:25
  in the US right now, all these billionaires who have incredible incentives
• 31:31
  for their technology companies specifically to do well and profit
• 31:36
  are in-beared with the president.
• 31:40
  And we're in condoms.
• 31:43
  It's very unsafe situation.
• 31:46
  And I can see like obviously they want to be on Trump's side because
• 31:51
  whatever policy is introduced is going to impact their businesses.
• 31:54
  Trump wants to be on side with them because they can effectively fund his campaigns
• 31:59
  and there's money, there's money going both ways.
• 32:02
  And like that scares the BG's out of me.
• 32:04
  Like I'm just in my opinion that looks very much like a dictatorship
• 32:08
  or kind of like an oligarch structure, which we know does not work.
• 32:12
  And I would love to know your thoughts on kind of what's happening there
• 32:16
  and how you unwind that or make that a bit more fair and not so individually incentivized.
• 32:24
  So not so far into politics in a country that I'm not in trouble.
• 32:28
  I'm not elected to represent.
• 32:31
  I do think, you know, this is actually a trend in trajectory that we've seen again
• 32:35
  in many similar jurisdictions.
• 32:36
  And I would argue also here in Altera, New Zealand, the fact that we don't tend to think
• 32:42
  about how that economic transformation that encouraged all of us to see ourselves
• 32:46
  as individuals competing against each other and therefore to not really trust each other
• 32:50
  to think that if someone else is getting something, it comes up the expense of us or whatever else.
• 32:54
  That has had radical cultural implications.
• 32:58
  And if you look at the way that law and the states has progressed around the ability
• 33:04
  for superpecks to be formed and the influence of money on politics in particular,
• 33:09
  that's where we've started to see that, you know, multi, multi, multi, multi, multi,
• 33:14
  millionaires and billionaires are able not just to buy the media landscape
• 33:19
  and obviously already on the social media landscape, which is geared to generate outrage and alienation
• 33:26
  and polarization, all of which creates confusion.
• 33:29
  And when you have a very confused society, a very confused populace, it's easy for a strongman
• 33:34
  politician to come in and basically point at somebody who they say is the bad guy and, you know,
• 33:39
  make people angry in that certain direction.
• 33:42
  The billionaires obviously getting in bed with Trump and they're kind of oligarchy,
• 33:47
  which obviously some DNC candidates are now starting to have huge rallies kind of calling out.
• 33:54
  The only way to really unwind that is to start putting place meaningful regulation
• 33:59
  around the ability for money to influence politics.
• 34:02
  But in doing so, we finally start to put some parameters around capitalism and its ability
• 34:08
  to buy up everything, to buy up the media landscape, to buy politicians,
• 34:12
  and so therefore potentially lock in some, what I would consider to be kind of ill-gosh and games.
• 34:18
  Can we talk about capitalism?
• 34:20
  Because that mention of it is something I really want to talk about.
• 34:23
  Because am I right in thinking that the fucked upness of the world kind of comes down to that right now,
• 34:29
  like capitalism, okay, I've got to be very honest with you.
• 34:32
  Last night I was at a work drinks and I was talking to this person who does lectures on this kind of thing,
• 34:37
  and I was like, help me sound educated in this interview.
• 34:41
  What do I need to, and anyway, he wrote down all these things about it.
• 34:44
  And I actually want to read the question, because I like where he was going with it,
• 34:47
  and I don't totally understand it.
• 34:49
  He was saying 20th century capitalism has successfully got people out of poverty.
• 34:53
  It gave people that wouldn't have otherwise had a chance the opportunity to become, you know,
• 34:58
  like maybe not just rich, but middle class, and it's given toilets, clean water,
• 35:03
  like this standard of Western civilization.
• 35:06
  And now we're sort of seeing that play out in China and India,
• 35:09
  but now it's kind of got to a point of it not being productive anymore.
• 35:13
  And capitalism is like, it may have had its point in time that it was really helping society
• 35:18
  and moving everyone forward, but now that's not really the case.
• 35:22
  Now it's created a lot of inequality.
• 35:24
  Yes, yes.
• 35:25
  Can we just speak about that as an idea, because I think that transcends all countries,
• 35:30
  all politics, is the idea, yeah.
• 35:33
  Capitalism at its core is basically an ideology or an organizing mechanism
• 35:39
  for society and for the economy, where the priority or the key organizing principle
• 35:45
  is private ownership of things.
• 35:48
  Now one thing that I find really interesting about how a lot of people,
• 35:54
  the likes of your friend who you're reading that quite from,
• 35:58
  I will talk about capitalism as being the thing that is responsible for raising living standards.
• 36:05
  I think that there is truth to raising living standards being correlators
• 36:10
  to the fact that capitalism was the organizing kind of principle of societies at that point in time.
• 36:16
  But I think that if we had a kind of lift available, lift the hood on that,
• 36:21
  what you'll actually see is that it was a result of kind of global coordination
• 36:27
  and globalism effectively that resulted in those things.
• 36:31
  And human ingenuity and labour and hard work and people working together
• 36:37
  to produce these kinds of outputs and outcomes.
• 36:40
  I don't think that it makes sense to argue that the pursuit of private profit
• 36:46
  is the thing which is resulting in these kind of rising levels of living
• 36:51
  for everybody all around the world.
• 36:53
  When in fact we can look back at many, many, many instances of society
• 36:58
  where human beings organizing to pursue their common good
• 37:04
  have resulted in similar kinds of things.
• 37:06
  So basically I'm just disentangling the notion of capitalism
• 37:09
  from the notion of globalization.
• 37:11
  So the kind of point that we're at at the moment is what some call hyper capitalism.
• 37:16
  We're starting to see that pursuit of private profit as the organizing principle
• 37:22
  results in fewer and fewer people holding more and more resources.
• 37:27
  And that is directly connected to the masses of people holding fewer and fewer resources.
• 37:34
  So inequality is inherently a problem because poverty doesn't come from nowhere.
• 37:39
  It comes from that inequality.
• 37:41
  Some would argue and I think that if that were in a state of hyper capitalism at the moment
• 37:46
  with that deep yawning inequality that the likes of these billionaires
• 37:50
  and their influence on the Trump campaign are trying to make all the more permanent.
• 37:55
  Others would argue that potentially we are in an era of techno-futalism.
• 38:01
  So feudalism is different from capitalism and so far as it's about the pursuit of rent
• 38:07
  as opposed to the pursuit of profits.
• 38:10
  And the notion of techno-futalism is that we are in a brave new world
• 38:16
  where all of us rely on this technological infrastructure to engage with each other.
• 38:20
  All of our data is owned by these multi billionaires and basically they have control of everything.
• 38:26
  You know, we are increasingly seeing that many goods and services require subscriptions
• 38:31
  and order to engage with and basically that we're in this new world.
• 38:36
  We were transitioning potentially from capitalism and hyper capitalism into feudalism.
• 38:42
  We're very few people are in control of everything and able to charge the rest of us
• 38:47
  exorbitant rents i.e. whatever they want for us to access that.
• 38:51
  And that is a reflection of power.
• 38:54
  Is that dictatorship essentially?
• 38:56
  But in a technological sense, you know, like controlling technology and what we see and what we consume and what we, yeah.
• 39:04
  It is definitely very controlled.
• 39:07
  And dictatorship would be where they're effectively controlled with the political system.
• 39:12
  And obviously, as you guys have totally just articulated, we are seeing that those boundaries are being really blurred at the moment
• 39:19
  because those who are exerting huge amounts of economic power are also exerting huge amounts of political power.
• 39:25
  And this is where we kind of come back to the idea of can we truly have democracy
• 39:31
  when not everybody can afford to put food on the table to think about the next day,
• 39:36
  let alone the next year, let alone 10 years down the track, let alone the idea of the existential threat of climate change.
• 39:43
  If we're not all actually able to have those basic needs met at the basis of those hierarchy of needs,
• 39:49
  how we're supposed to be able to function and engage with politics and democracy.
• 39:53
  That's such a good point because I think that the idea of like even just this is such a weird example.
• 39:59
  But there's been times in my life where I have an abundance of time and I can afford to go and organize an event for Plastic Free July.
• 40:09
  And then there's times in my life where I haven't been able to even get myself to a supermarket.
• 40:13
  And I actually have to do an online order and get seven plastic bags come to my house.
• 40:18
  There's been times, if I was at the time where I organized that event looking at myself now, I would be disgusted by that.
• 40:26
  But like the privilege of time, the privilege of money, the privilege of being able to have the space to care about those things.
• 40:35
  If you can't even afford food, how are you meant to care about using plastic or having your cucumber that's wrapped it like as if you care, you know, like it's not important.
• 40:45
  This is actually a classic attack that we in the green scare is that our name is green our color is green.
• 40:50
  So therefore we should only care about the environment.
• 40:52
  But this is the key thing for me.
• 40:55
  So I was sitting on the environment select committee when we were passing the zero carbon act, which is the kind of groundbreaking piece of legislation, which would have, which does require us to get carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
• 41:07
  And it was so fascinating to me that we had all of these New Zealanders from kind of rural and agricultural backgrounds come in front of the committee and submit to the committee that they did not want to see this legislation put in place because they were terrified about the potential of extra costs for them.
• 41:22
  And basically what I was hearing from them is that they didn't know how they were going to survive the next week, little on the next month, little on the next year.
• 41:30
  Meanwhile, we're here sitting in Parliament, thinking at a time scale of the next 40 years.
• 41:35
  And that kind of perfect, I will clash the perspectives from which both of us were looking at the problem, these guys going, hey, look, the current economic system is not working for me and I'm struggling to survive.
• 41:44
  I can't put myself in your shoes.
• 41:46
  Meanwhile, we're like, get out of your shoes and look at the bigger picture.
• 41:50
  That is where I think you get a lot of these kinds of clashes from.
• 41:54
  And I think that this is also why for me, it's really important for us to realize that a lot of the kind of defaults that are produced in capitalism, the likes of those plastic bags and fossil fuel dependency.
• 42:07
  So as those harmful defaults, as you say, take time and money and know how to be able to get around.
• 42:15
  So this is where I would say that that's why we need to change those defaults so that people aren't forced to be in those situations where they're feeling terrible because they can't afford to live and they're having to make what feels like the option to choose the option that's terrible for the planners that just shouldn't be an option.
• 42:33
  That's the idea that governments need to change things rather than putting it all on the consumer.
• 42:37
  Like it needs to be government and corporates rather than just being like, are you a horrible person who've gone to the supermarket and used seven plastic bags?
• 42:46
  It's just shifting the responsibility to not being so much on someone who clearly doesn't have capacity to be thinking beyond what is the easiest cheapest option for me.
• 42:56
  100% and also I think it's about realizing that like government and its tourist form and its best form is actually supposed to be just a manifestation of the people as well.
• 43:08
  So we only get as good as we give in politics.
• 43:12
  I think that we have this terrible feedback loop which compounds all of these problems where by people don't see the action that they want.
• 43:19
  So therefore they disengage from politics and when you disengage from politics you get less representation on the things that you care about and then guess what?
• 43:26
  Even less action on those things and then more people disengage and then there's less representation, less action and then less engagement, less representation and so on and so forth.
• 43:33
  So the question is like what's the few spaker for that?
• 43:36
  And this is where for me it comes back to we actually have to figure out how to have conversations about politics and have to understand that if you leave politics to the politicians it's going to be as bad as it's always been.
• 43:48
  Oh my god, Chloe, we need to start a new podcast. We need to start a new podcast that's like what is politics? Not seriously.
• 43:54
  Politics 101.
• 43:55
  No, I'm being serious because I think doing the curve and I think what we've the idea of being able to use someone that understands the economy and the stock market I evoke having an expert explain it to people that want to know but feel way too stupid to ask the questions.
• 44:12
  The same needs to be done for politics anyway we'll move on from that because I know you had something you wanted to I just when we're talking about inequality and you know the fact that we've gone to this kind of hyper capitalism.
• 44:24
  What is your opinion and view then on what is happening and I know you're not a US correspondent.
• 44:32
  But in terms of this whole shift away from globalization and at the core that's essentially what Donald Trump is trying to do is make America great again make America wealthy again close the gap I guess of that inequality in his country.
• 44:48
  And by bringing it all the manufacturing back into America and all of that what is your opinion on that because there's also been a lot of prospering globally for many countries with globalization so.
• 45:01
  Do you think it is a lost cause do you think it will work like what is your should we all be doing it like what is because there's impacts for New Zealand as well right like we can have impacts.
• 45:12
  If the whole global economy slows down and like yeah so I love to know your thoughts on that yeah so a few different thoughts one is that this is a perfect example of what we're talking about before in the gap between what politicians say and the reality of what they're doing so I think for all of the talk about make America great again and we're going to bring manufacturing back whatever and then basically the main lever that the states are trying to use being tariffs it's just kind of that that doesn't really compute.
• 45:41
  So if I would say if that was the thing that you were trying to achieve then you should have meaningful and proper industrial strategy and in this the requisite resources to help support that manufacturing to get off the ground and this is historically where we have seen that manufacturing get off the ground and that's not even to take into account that some of the massive multi billion dollar companies and the states the likes of.
• 46:04
  Your Teslas and your Googles and your apples and otherwise have actually historically received quite substantial grants from the government and ordered to get off the ground because of the technology that they were producing so yeah I think that when we're talking about how to improve quality of living and make countries economies far more resilient it is a danger for us to look solely at the face of the rhetoric of what Trump is saying around.
• 46:33
  It's a return to localism which is not reflected properly in the in the policies that are rolling out so tariffs should go.
• 46:43
  I'm getting what you're putting down the tariffs and not achieving what they were supposed to achieve and they all economists said that they wouldn't yeah and obviously in terms of the financial stability and economic flows around the world is just a different stack up.
• 46:57
  We're getting women we're talking to women we are women like we all know that women are much more likely use these other minority groups but women are much more likely to end up in financial hardship at retirement.
• 47:11
  How hard is it to put in a law or put in political change that addresses that it's we are half the population we have females like yourself an incredible roles in government and I just do not understand we've had female prime ministers that haven't bought in.
• 47:32
  You know massive change in the space either like I honestly it.
• 47:36
  Ruffs me up so much that we can't address one half of the population that is is going to be seriously suffering at retirement in any meaningful way what would you like to say what like do you have an idea of what you what's what's what is your pitch.
• 47:52
  No no that's that's fair maybe I should get into politics I know it's going to take all of us know my there's a few that I have in mind first a salary transparency I think that would do wonders for the gender pay gap which would do wonders for us contributing more to our retirement funds etc.
• 48:09
  I think the other one would be policy around parental leave there's a number of countries around the world that do it incredibly well there's countries we can model and yeah I think those would those two in my opinion would go a long way as well as as well as increased funding to child care creating a workplace structure that is like what we're saying it's not woman fitting into into a space it's creating a space that is accommodating to woman is a few but yeah.
• 48:35
  That's great yeah I think so on pay transparency when it comes to free early childhood absolutely hundreds in agree when it comes to pretty much everything that you're talking about and so is it a case of getting more women or more representation in politics so that these kind of things do not get pushed through quickly because there is I guess groups that would be directly impacted that in those positions.
• 49:03
  You should know I think that it's about changing the system you can put women into these positions of power but if we're not changing the system the women are operating within the ends the incentive structure that they're operating within then it's really bloody hard to actually change the outcomes of that system because it's basically same computer same computer program different operator you know if there's still those limitations of the system programming so this is where I come back to the need to change the system because computer says no it's simply not going to work.
• 49:33
  If you had a blank piece of paper you moved to a brand new country and you could start from scratch what would you do baked into the Westminster parliamentary system you'll probably be familiar with the U shape that politicians sit in the chamber in so the minister and the leader of the office.
• 49:51
  Yeah, I've seen it.
• 49:53
  The Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition historically literally sit two swords length apart baked into the DNA and the way that the system works is antagonism the idea that we're somehow going to get the best possible conclusions if people are always yelling at each other and arguing with each other.
• 50:09
  So get rid of that that's junk as you say that's a very patriarchal very colonial very nonsense way to think about how we actually solve problems we need to change the way that we approach those problems.
• 50:21
  So for me, it would be something that is far more collaborative and very fortunate to live in Altera where we have some incredible kind of Tiarmari, Mataranga kind of knowledge to draw upon about what that could look like but it's basically more participatory more collaborative more reflective and those incentives are more long term.
• 50:42
  Then operating based on this kind of three year political cycle and whoever wins gets to do whatever the hell they want for three years and the opposition just gets to sit down and suck it.
• 50:53
  So I think the main thing for me is just we need to change the way that we make decisions which looks like constitutional transformation.
• 51:02
  I'm in you got my vote I want to move I reckon we build a new we just need to think about how would we build a new country we need to find more space which we're already lacking if you're advocating or trying to find a different way for society to be economically structured.
• 51:19
  How do you as an individual and if you remove all of the political stuff which I know is hard but if while you're advocating for that type of change, how do you exist in present day capitalism, do you own property, do you believe in investing, do you like what framework do you use for yourself as an individual to think about that because I know that there's a huge amount of audience who have been here listening and learning about investing.
• 51:48
  And money and trying to actively take part in an economy that for a long time has seen not many women but then the counter side to that is the fact that we're buying into literally the system that we're also talking about needing to shake up and change so how do you approach that as an individual when it comes to your own wealth building or yeah I guess just being an active member of the world economically.
• 52:15
  It's a really good question and I start from the basic premise that in order to change the world you have to live in it so you know like I get it that the old notion that there's no such thing as ethical consumption of capitalism but we still do when we have the means and when we have the awareness and when we have the time and the space like we can try and make slightly different decisions so I try and do that when it comes to my own kind of means and resources.
• 52:44
  So yeah I mean it's all publicly available people will know on the public records that I have a mortgage and I have an apartment.
• 52:52
  Oh people say that's a weird.
• 52:54
  Yeah it's the opportunity or interest register.
• 52:56
  I just got to be smitten BP and Shell and I have quite I have an image of portfolio.
• 53:06
  So yeah for me you know trying to be as ethical as possible in that so we're lucky locally to have mindful money that does a lot of kind of lifting up the lid on where all these different funds are actually invested in.
• 53:20
  So yeah try and do things as ethically as possible there but then it is for me also a matter of being really explicit and clear that I also want to change the system and I work every day to try and do that as well.
• 53:32
  One final question for me and it's a it's a real game changer.
• 53:36
  Do you all hate each other?
• 53:38
  Do you leave Parliament and go if you if you or do you all go out hug it out and go for Friday night drinks and you're actually all mates.
• 53:46
  So I do think that it is important to be able to see people with human beings.
• 53:52
  So you know I've I've worked a lot across the aisle over the last few years to try and progress things because that's what I am put in that job to do like not for my own personal thinking that I'm call the whatever.
• 54:04
  So I think yeah this really boils down to how hard it is at times to be chummy with people who are not upholding the human rights of others and that's where it gets difficult.
• 54:18
  But yeah I typically am able to dependent on how far people push it and how nasty they can get because sometimes if it's just too nasty I'm just like like that's kind of cross the line and I'm not interested there but outside of that I'll have to work with anyone.
• 54:33
  I have to work with anyone to try and get things across the line and Parliament that's what I was put there for very political answer nice.
• 54:41
  Diplomatic if you want.
• 54:43
  In Parliament particularly right now it is it is really challenging and because of how the same people who are saying really personal attacks on you.
• 54:55
  Every then expecting you to be really chummy with them outside of that space I just that for me is really difficult to compute because I'm pretty much the same person in that sphere as I am in my regular life whereas I know for a lot of my colleagues in Parliament that there is far more of a kind of performative element to it and that they see that as the game whereas I'm like this game literally cost people's lives so not particularly came to play it in that point scoring way.
• 55:19
  To round it off do you have any inspiring words of words to know pressure but like in terms of just thinking about the people who are listening to this who are maybe feeling a little bit disheartened and scared with what's happening in the world right now because they know for me like when it kind of comes to our curve weekly podcast and it's like so.
• 55:37
  Harvard's lost all of this money because Trump's decided that he doesn't want anyone outside of a mere like it's really terrifying and I think when you don't understand politics to a really deep level I know I go to like existential dread and I'm just like I can't I it scares me to think about what the future of the world is going to look like.
• 55:55
  I don't know whether it's things that we can do in our personal lives with our wallets with like I don't know creating connection with people do you just have any like thing to say to the general state of the world to yeah like what do we do I do yeah um so I find it really buzzer when people say to me you know something about that that I am apparently inspiring whatever and I just think it's really useful for us to take a sec and to answer.
• 56:25
  I think what I'm going to impact what inspiring is and what it means and what inspiration is if you find someone else inspiring I think that you need to understand that what you are seeing reflected back to you is actually something that you admire in yourself.
• 56:42
  There should be an invitation to participate and to cultivate that thing and to find the points of connection inspiration as a mirror it's not a reason to put somebody on a pedestal and go that person is going to solve all of the world's problems because in fact that's not how changed has to happen that requires a lot of people.
• 57:00
  And if you think of the social movements throughout history that have resulted in women getting the vote or civil rights or whatever the cases that has been the mobilization of hundreds of thousands if not millions of regular people all finding that point of connection caring about stuff is scary because it requires you to do something about it and trying to do something about it comes with risk risk of being embarrassed or doing it wrong or whatever.
• 57:27
  But nothing changes if nothing changes and I think if you start really locally and you understand that you know it's not just like planting trees and doing the recycling programs and rubbish pickups and all of those other things.
• 57:41
  But even just having conversations with people about politics and discuss what it is that you want to see in your community or in your neighborhood all the way up to the things that you want to see at a national level to foreign affairs or whatever the hell else and becoming more comfortable with talking about those things is almost inherently radical because it starts to break down the gatekeeping that only serves those who are currently making a ton of money and building a ton of power from the status quo.
• 58:11
  So long story short the most powerful thing I think that anybody can do is just start to learn about the world around them by talking to other people about it and what we expect finds your common ground.
• 58:22
  What I'm hearing is the politics podcast might be coming into place sooner than we think because actually we don't have a lot of work to do right now do we.
• 58:32
  No, we've got so much happening at the curve it's very boring twiddly on thumbs over here no idea what to do but it's the same with that's exactly what we're trying to preach as well right is like money is like can be so overwhelming and scary and to move for some of people like the best thing you can do is just talk to people about it and like right down that barrier of of that yeah just break down the barrier and isolation and then and then you'll realize that you know the people that you thought have it all sorted out.
• 59:01
  Actually don't all the person that is you know driving that really flash car or wearing those really nice clothes is actually in debt to the eyeballs and so it's like it's just removes that that that smoke in mirrors and you actually learn together rather than an isolation yeah.
• 59:21
  Yeah it's a state not being afraid to ask questions and something like I always think about the fact that when I was a kid I would look at grown ups and be like cool they have a clue they know the many of life when I grew up it's going to be sorted and then you grow up and you realize and I mean no shade by this but like our parents did not know what they were doing when they raised us.
• 59:38
  When you realize that you realize that so much of this is all made up like there are of course there are real world economic things like the health of our rivers and the health of our children and all of those kinds of things but the made up stuff the means the metrics the accounting mechanisms that we put in place to try and measure this stuff.
• 59:56
  We can get lost in the source of that we need to just kind of come that down to earth and yeah talk about the real stuff that really matters and realize that we can change the rules so that they're afflictive of the kind of world that we want.
• 1:00:08
  Oh God Chloe thank you so much and yeah such a privilege to speak to you and also just so nice to hear someone so smart who knows sorry I hope you I'm sure this is what like that she hates when people say shit like that but someone who's very clued up in the area of expertise but also just so real.
• 1:00:25
  So real and normal and cool like it's it makes it it's so nice to have a conversations with people and realize I don't know there's a lot of like media and like headlines and shit that goes on all the time and really just remembering we're all just humans and people who want the best for each other is just such a nice reminder because that's the connection piece right to bring everyone back together is like just like a normal person.
• 1:00:50
  We don't have to be like and welcome today we're going to be you know it's like no like can we all just come down okay great thank you so much.
• 1:01:03
  Thank you so much for listening to raising the curve these conversations are designed to teach you everything you need to know to be better with your money saving to investing to talking with your friends about your salaries for that.
• 1:01:13
  And if you like what you heard we would love if you could please hit subscribe wherever you're listening leave a comment let us know what you thought about the episode and it only takes one second and it would really make our week a month.
• 1:01:24
  They're yeah yeah so please do it okay bye.
• 1:01:28
  Okay quickly the curve was created to empower and educate you about investing but we are not financial advisors.
• 1:01:34
  Our platform exists for educational purposes only and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision and always remember to do your own research before making any investment or financial decision.
• 1:01:48
  We're here for any knowledge and support you need but the final call is always yours and thanks for being here you got this yeah we know you got this.
• 1:01:56
  You know the words that dominate our new cycle.
• 1:01:59
  Private equity keeps inventive our capital game.
• 1:02:01
  Have fun.
• 1:02:02
  I'm going to chip you by market volatility.
• 1:02:04
  That's not very good.
• 1:02:06
  But do you truly understand how they impact your world and your wallet?
• 1:02:10
  In a world that skims the what understand the why because context changes everything subscribe to learn more at bloomberg.com
• 1:02:19
  The global benchmark for business news.