The Chaser Report - Free Sample: We Solved The Housing Crisis | Weekend Edition

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

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The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Now, it turns out that there is actually no news. There's nothing new in the world today at all, nothing to talk about whatsoever. So instead of putting out a fresh topical episode, we've instead decided to upgrade you to a premium plus episode of. the Chaser Report. And what we're going to do is we're going to just play a little highlight from the Chaser Report weekend edition, which is usually only available to paying

subscribers. But today only, you're going to get some of it on the main feet. So, you know, this isn't us being lazy. This is us giving you something very special. So here it is. This is a bonus weekend episode. We're finally delivering on our commitment to actually give people who pay us money more, actually, to give some sort of value. And Charles, I've got to say, if we're delivering extra value, I wasn't expecting the first one out of the blocks to solve, I'm told, you've promised, to solve the biggest issue of our society in these troubled times. That is, that is value.

It's almost like all the hundreds of dollars they've paid with no bonus episodes are all coming good here. Well, this is the thing, Dom, which is, I think you'll admit that until now we have offered extremely bad value for our service. I mean, to the people who are still paying subscribers... Good on you. Thank you. You clearly are like me in the way that you neglect subscriptions.

You really should cancel. Poor life of me. Let this be an end of financial year reminded to you to just cancel a lot of subscriptions, but not this one because, hey, it now offers value. This demographic is uniquely suited to not being able to solve problems. Yes. That's right. Which makes it ironic that the theme of this episode is,

to solve problems. And my thinking here is actually quite clever, Dom, which is... Says Charles. You know how during the week we talk about all the problems in the world? Yes, we do. It's actually quite a depressing podcast. It is often. Especially, like, Friday's it.

It was just horrendous. I listened back to it. And I was just going... Why did you do that? It's really sad. I can't even remember what it was about. What was it about? Oh, it's about Trump being daddy and the NATO stuff.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And the monopold complex. Yeah. That was actually quite, that was not as, as, as. It reminded me of one of the better eps of the rest is politics. Sure, sure, yeah. Anyway, the point is that we talk about the problems during the week, and my thing is, why don't we, on the weekend,

have a bit of a, you know, optimistic thing and solve all the problems. You've got to pay money for optimism. We set up all the problems, and we solve them, but you've got to pay us for the solutions. And so that will do nothing for the cost of living crisis, Charles. But it's marketing 101. You sort of make everyone feel bad and then they've got to buy your product. That's fantastic.

You feel good. Create a scarcity that they didn't know that they had of solutions. So look, Lachlan, can we just get a drum roll in here? Because today, Charles is purporting, and I have no reason not to believe him except for 1,100 episodes. Don, get behind. Sorry, today, dear subscribers, we are very excitingly taken away, Lockland, on the fake drums.

Charles? We're going to solve the housing crisis. And there aren't even ads because you've paid not to have them. So let's crack straight into it. Okay. So the point is that... This is one of those ones where Charles says, I've got a plan, just to come along.

So we're in his hands. So the thing is, and this is very, very clever, right? Because it also... Wow. It solves a problem that the government has at the moment as well, which is what the fuck do we do about taxation and productivity in Australia? Yeah, those are genuinely. I mean, Jim Chalmers is his number one challenge for this.

this term is productivity. His thing during the week was, if you've got ideas, bring them to me, right? Jim Chalmers. So I think we should send Jim a link to this podcast episode. But not only that. And then he'll have to subscribe and pay. But not only that, Charles, but it also, it also solves our problem of having a subscription product that's shit.

That's right. Exactly. So my basic idea is that the whole problem with the Australian economy boils down to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions on property, right? Got it. And it's not that those particular tax concessions completely obliterate the government's finances or something like that. They're actually in the grand scheme of things, not the world's most costly subsidies.

Oh, really? But what they do is they put the thumb on investment decisions, especially for sort of mums and dads, right? So whereas in other countries, like in America, it is quite common if you've got to spare, you know, 50 grand or 100 grand because your house has gone up in value over the last 10 years. Yeah. You'll invest it in the stock market or even in companies that aren't listed on the stock market but, you know, are a good thing around your town or whatever.

Because there's no, like that's actually just as sort of tax effective and there's a whole lot of, you know, gearing towards sort of the benefits of that then flowing through in the tax system as investing in property. Like actually, so the sort of capital that's available that's just sloshing around through the general sort of increase in wealth in society doesn't all directly immediately go into buying a second and third and fourth house, right? Whereas in Australia, if you've got to spare 100 grand or 200 grand sloshing around, the only correct investment decision is to put it into property because you've got this capital gains tax discount, which basically, means you're paying half the tax that you should be, plus you get your interest bill on that investment off your personal tax. Yeah, and that's the beauty of it.

So when you're saying putting a thumb on the scale, it's really the incentives are very clear and we're just discovering which of the members of the Chaser report has the economics degree and it's not me. So yes, so this is true. So in other places, property investment is not this amazing honeypot. We should also note there's a cultural element to this too. It's just saying it's the done thing. Yes.

That an investment property is a status symbol. Like if you're in certain circles from what I understand, you're always talking about, oh, we've just picked up a little one bedroom in Bondi or something. And it's a status symbol. Because you don't boast about your share portfolio, I presume. Although I think probably if you live in Bondi, you probably do, don't you? You boast about your drug portfolio. Yeah.

I think if you're in Bondi, you probably boast about your, yacht portfolio. Yeah, quite possibly. But yeah, no, it's true. Australians, more than anyone else, it's the mum and dad property investors. Almost all those mummonds are now grandparents, in fact. And the real problem, though, is the political one,

which is that neither side of politics will even touch negative gearing or the capital gains tax subsidies that essentially investors get because it's seen as just political suicide, right? Like every time, you know, like Bill Shorten proposed it, the Libs ran a very effective scare campaign. Paul Keating abolished negative gearing for about three seconds back in 1999 or 95 and got turfed out at the next election. It's just seen as kryptonite. Don't touch it, don't touch it. And it's not even metaphorically suicide.

It is basically no one wants to be Bill Shorten for so many reasons. This is but one of them. And then also there's the added thing, which is the entire political class, except for me, Max Chandleramather, who, I might add, is no longer part of the political class, own properties, right? So they have no interest in touching the honeypot that they're taking advantage of. I wonder how many property investors there are in his seat, his former seat of Griffith. So that's the problem, right.

So what my solution has been, and I raved about this, you know, maybe a couple of years ago when I first came up with the idea, was you just go around the problem of the profit motive that's in the housing system, right? So my idea at the time was what you do is you can still have freehold property, right? Which is what, you know, people can invest in and they can make their millions and they can have all their negative year income,

you can have all their negative year income, cap of change tax. But you create another title called owner-occupied title, right? And the idea there was that you have to live in a house that is owner-occupied title. And from that comes, like, a whole lot of... Essentially, that takes the profit motive out of that style of house. So there's no incentive to increase the house price on that year after year after year because you've got to live in it.

It doesn't have this inflationary effect of investors outbidding people who want to actually live in these houses, right? So that's a nice idea, probably a bit pie in the sky, but who knows, maybe one day they'll do it. But this idea is that you can actually use the tax system to get around the problem as well. And the idea is you don't abolish negative gearing and capital gains tax, but you tie it to the quality of the rental conditions, right?

So you have a rental star rating. And you know how all buildings now have energy ratings. All the dryers and stuff, so something like that. Yeah, you've got five star ratings if it's really good or one star if it's really crap, right? You do the same thing for rental properties. If you sign up and you as a landlord are offering a five-star property, then you can get 100% of the tax subsidies that you're getting.

You can have 100% of it off your negative gearing and capital gains tax subsidies, right? And, you know, that might be, the five-star ratings might be things like eternal leases, right? So in most countries around the world, once you lease a house to rent, you can actually just live there for the rest of your life, and the landlord has no right to turf you out.

In fact, I was reading about how German leases work, right, and this German came to Australia and was absolutely shocked at the idea that the landlord or the real estate agent would be allowed to own a key to that house while it's leased out, right? That is not allowed. It's a really good thing to note is that the way that rent works in Australia is very unusual. Normally tenants have far more rights than in Australia. Can I just, I've just done a little bit of digging while you looked at that. And this is, there's the 2018 figures, by the way.

But Max Chandler-Mathathis said at Griffith has one of the highest proportions of negative gearers in Queensland. So it's above 10% of the individuals in that electorate in 2018 claimed a tax loss due to rent. And these are figures from the Parliamentary Library and they're really instructive. There aren't that many electorates around the country where it's above 10%. Well, why the fuck did he go rail against it? He should have said, let's increase negative gearing. Well, he's an idiot because he didn't.

He didn't own any properties. He should have done what I'm doing, which is reading the room. Who wants, who wants an MP who doesn't even understand? Property investment. He didn't even own the property. He lived in, let alone the property, an investment property. Duh, mate, you're down in Canberra. It's an absolute recipe for renting out your house you live in.

No MP lives in the house they own, do they? They're all rented out as tax deductions and whatever. All their spouse owns. Yeah, no, exactly. Everyone. Yeah. Just stupid. If you're too stupid to fiddle.

the tax system to make money as an MP as a federal MP. Yes. Max, what are you doing? What is he doing now? Oh, he's probably, I don't know, some goody-to. Is he a staffer? It'd be a goody-to-shoe position, wouldn't it? It'd be increasing social good in the world.

Some bullshit like that. Anyway. Do you think he's gone to a hedge fund? Wouldn't it be funny if he was now, you know, the head investment officer at multiplex or something? If anyone knows what Max Chandler Mathis is doing, Just send us a text. Or Max, send us an email.

I'm sure Max subscribes to our... Podcast atchaser.com.com. What's Max doing? The Chaser Report. Less news. Less often.