The Chaser Report - Slum-Dom Millionaire

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Labor's new "Help To Own" policy has been slammed as inflationary by the Greens, who want to abolish negative gearing and become a socialist state. Dom and Charles have a solution that everyone can get behind, even Max "Mao" Chandler-Mather. (Hi Max, come on the show anytime.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hello, Charles. Today, it's all about housing. Now, you won't believe, you won't believe what the Greens have done today. Oh, no. Labor's come out. Labor wants to help a massive 10,000 people a year by a house.

I think it's called the Help to Own scheme or something, or where the government takes 30 or 40% of the property, and basically profiteers off property prices in return for helping people out who can't do anything else. And pushes up presumably the price of property. Oh, do not you too. That's what the Greens said. The Greens said it would be inflationary. Well, the idea that you pump more money into that market, that is the definition of inflation.

Shut up with your economics, Charles. I don't want to hear about it. The point is they're blocking it and they're demanding instead changes to negative gearing and changes to capital gains tax. In other words, the very things that lost Bill Shorten the 2016 and 2019 elections. And lost Paul Keating, the prime ministership back in 1996. The Greens want Labor to lose.

They want everything to be destroyed. And worst of all, it's war on rich people, Charles. War on the rich, more after this. So here's Greens housing spokesperson, Max Chandler, who's been on the podcast before. To whom you were very friendly, by the way, Charles, I wasn't here for that one from memory. Well, I didn't know he was a communist. Yeah, that's right. Here's what he said on IAM a short while ago.

If the government can shift on stage three, then they sure as hell can shift on capital gains, tax, concessions and negative gearing. We're always open to negotiations, but we certainly aren't just going to roll over and support a scheme that on its own is actually just going to make the housing crisis worse. So as you can see, he's not willing to negotiate unless Labor fries itself. They've just dumped the stage three tax cuts, which the Greens were banging on about. How much do they want?

Do they want some sort of equitable framework or something? going on? Is this illegal? Like, it feels to me like you're holding somebody hostage and forcing them to kill themselves. It's a hostage. They want the government to self-harm at this point. Can you imagine? And look, the opposition came straight out and said, well, we can't trust. Angus Taylor said, you can't trust the government on tax. Look what they did with stage three. They swap their policy with something much more popular. You can't trust them not to swap their policy with something much more popular. That's used to be Angus Taylor's objection. Well, that is the huge risk here, isn't it? Is that Actually, the number of people who benefit from negative gearing is vanishingly small compared to the rest of the population.

But Charles, the amount of money that they make out of it is not vanishingly small. No, it's unvanishingly large. And some cheek, I think it was Fairfax, nine newspapers, went through all, everyone's disclosure registries and saw how many federal MPs have, like, more than two houses. It's quite a lot. Yes. Yes. So it's actually mainly going to affect MPs.

The federal MPs, yes. Yes, although I think there's only one politician federally that doesn't own any houses at all. Max Chandler-Mather doesn't have any. Max Chandler-Mather is renting. He's the only renter. He keeps talking about being a renter. Max, Max, you're on a sweet wicket, mate. You've got, you're a senator. You've got a six-year term.

If you can't afford a deposit, I think there's probably something wrong with your budgeting. The bank's going to say yes. Particularly because they know that you're talking about canceling negative gearing. Just tell them that and the bank manager will wave you straight through by a house. And then maybe you'll stop winching about all the problems with rentings. Is he even in the chairman's lounge? Let's have a quick look. He's not doing it right.

He's probably refused that as well. What's wrong with the guy? There's this virtue signaling, oh, I don't earn a house. I feel like Australia's reaching a point where we've got to, I don't know, do a bit of a Martin Luther King Jr. on the guy. You know what I mean? Seriously? You're going to go that far?

Okay, that was Charles. That was Charles Firth there. If the AFP wants his address, I'm very happy to get. give it up. I know it well. No, I'm just saying. You mean praise him as a, as an amazing political leader and have a public holiday in his honour. Is that all you're referring to? I hope it is.

I'm just saying when rebel rouses, you know, get a little bit too lippy, you know, the system has to self-adjust. Now, Charles, there is a problem. I'm looking at Max Chandler-Mather's statement here of registered. Oh, dear. The guy's a loser. Name of company, nothing. No shareholding. What?

No family and business trusts. No trusts. No property at all. Does that mean he's paying the full rate of tax? Yeah. No real estate. No directorships of companies, no partnerships, no liabilities. No bonds to benches like investment.

Savings. He's got a savings account and so does his partner. And that seems to be it. So I think he's also a political strategic disaster. Like a dead weight. How can he relate to ordinary Australians if he doesn't own any property? Well, I think, but also more crucially, he's launched his fancy ideas for solving housing,

which presumably will actually end up being quite popular, much like the changes that he wanted to the State Tree tax cuts, which he got, right? And what I'm saying is, I think, you know, he had this great policy that he presumably wants people to pay attention to. He launches it the day after Barnaby Joyce gets stuck in a gutter. He's not going to get any attention for it. I mean, you told me, Dom, that we were going to talk about housing.

And you were already in the gutter. Well, yourself, weren't you? You were asleep. No, and I looked up no news website, except for The Guardian, has any reports on that because it's Barnaby, Barnaby, Barnaby this week. The Guardian's not a news website. It's a leftist group think blog. Well, it's probably, I don't know, Max Chandler, Maita probably.

He probably writes it. Yes, he would. He would. Well, you know, Catherine Murphy's just going to join Albo's office. Maybe she'll be able to put him back in his box. Anyway, the point is the Greens want more. The greedy Greens want more tax reform. They reckon negative gearing is choking.

supply, just because it means property investors buy houses and rent them to poor people instead of poor people getting to own them. Well, this is the thing, though, because last time we abolished negative gearing was back in about 95. I don't know whether you remember, Dom. No, I don't. But, yeah, Keating did it. Did he?

Yeah, he did it. Why? Because it's a stupid, stupid tax concession that only allows the rich to benefit. Like, it's literally, it's a, it's a, it, yeah, it, and it chokes the housing, like, it, means that it's easier to buy an investment property than it is to buy a first home. Like, literally, that's the problem with the whole system, right? Charles. And, no, and so he changed it.

Guess what happened? Everything was a paradise. Rent prices soared. Rent prices soared. You know why? Why? Because people started selling their houses because there was no point in investment properties anymore.

Oh, so there's nothing to rent. Yes. Because that are all in the market for sale. Yes. Max Chandler made this going to kick an own goal because his own rents. going to go up as a result of his policies. Wow. Somebody's got to own these properties, Tom.

They don't just own themselves. So when they say the Greens have no financial literacy, you've maybe just proven it. All right, I'm just letting that sink in. No, no, look, let's take a break. And then we can, we can just ponder exactly what that means. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Wow, Charles.

That's a lot. So the thing is, like, don't get me wrong. I actually, like, just getting real for a second here, Dom, I completely support the abolition of negative gearing. But you've got to actually do a few things as well if you're not going to fuck everything up, right? Give us your actual policy analysis then. Let's get it over with it, because I don't talk about jokes.

But I'll tell you, I'll tell you the problem, right? Which is that 30 years ago, the number, the amount of housing that was built by the government each year was about 25%, like 23 to 25% of housing was built not in any market system, but by government. Charles, that's socialism. No, that's socialism. What, you mean like the socialist republic of Malcolm Fraser and Billy McMahon and Singapore? And Singapore's builds all that public housing. That's socialist too, isn't it?

You've been to Singapore. The market's tightly controlled. No one's rich there. So the point is, for a very long time, for most of us, Like, it all started under fucking Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party. Yeah. The whole idea was that there was certain types of people who were entitled to government housing that kept a lid on private rental money.

Hang on, I understand. I know, Charles, you're talking about war heroes. Of course war heroes should get free houses. War heroes. So, yeah, veterans, but also teachers and nurses and doctors who went to regional areas. They all got their houses built by government. But Charles, that would make those. those professions that we so badly need, we have shortages in at the moment, they'll make them

attractive. Yes. Because right now there's a huge shortage of teachers and nurses. Yes. So if you go to them free housing in regional areas, the people would train up for those jobs and move to regional areas and there'd be teachers and nurses in regional areas. I know. What are you trying to do to this country?

Well, and the worst thing is, then the market wouldn't decide. Yeah. I mean, imagine that. Imagine the market. Well, you know, I think the market's given its view on regional areas. just quietly. Right. Of you, which I very much share. I'm not rushing to move myself.

But I know we've got a listener. And one listener in Emily, is she in Bathurst or Orange? I can never remember somewhere there. She's in the worst one. I think it's Orange. Kaurah? I don't know.

Anyway, hello, Emily. That's our one regional listener. The rest of us are all in the cities. But okay. No, no, we're good. We're good. Dave from Nelson Bay. I love that we individually know the only listeners we have been in original areas.

Okay, so the point, if you are in original area, you can email a podcast at chase.com. that are you. Introduce yourself and we'll give you a shout out in future because you'll be just on number three. But so the point is if you're going to abolish negative gearing, you also at the same time have to come up with a scheme to get the government. I suppose the government would suddenly have a whole lot of extra money, wouldn't they? They'd be saving like billions of dollars a year. Yes, they would. They'd be getting a lot more tax money that they could put into building houses. And they could put in, they could help more than 10,000

people a year. So it would actually solve the problem almost over not. Like if you did the whole reform. I think the problem with Max Chandler, is he hasn't gone far enough. Well, he's only renting. He doesn't have time. Yeah, he doesn't have time to... But also, Charles, you're saying this the wrong way. This is all fine. This is all fine in theory. The problem with you, you know what the problem with you is?

Oh, no. You don't own an investment property. Yes. What are you doing? I know. Why haven't you leveraged all your equity and gone on... Let's just find some sort of slum that a student might rent. Yes. Out of desperation. Yes. They've got a pay top of all. There's no student housing in this city.

Yes. Just buy some slum. Leverage your equity or whatever that you've got and just start earning a money. Can I honestly tell you why I've never invested in property beyond like a general distaste for owning... For exploitation. Yeah, exploiting, you know, a basic human need. He's also, I'm just terrified. Like, in all the ventures that I do, I tend to stuff them up, right?

And even idiots make money out of property. Oh, really? Idiots. It's idiot proof. It is. You shouldn't have started all these small businesses. You're clearly not good at them. Yeah.

You should have brought a property. I should have brought a border property. I'd be a fucking millionaire. You would be. You would be. You've screwed it up. Wait, hang on. I should get in before they abolish negative gear.

Oh, no, no, no, I'll tell you what we'll happen. I'll get in and then they'll abolish negative gear. But Charles, the thing that gets to me is that we're not looking, we're not dreaming big enough here, okay? There's a housing shortage, right? Young people have no hope of owning houses. We need some solutions. There's a lot of things we could do.

We should think outside the box. We should think in boxes. Very small boxes. Cardboard boxes. Cardboard boxes. I don't, I mean, that doesn't have to be cardboard boxes. No. There is a lot of, there are a lot of empty parks and fields and so on. What we need to do is have tents, tent cities.

Tent cities. At one point, the city of Sydney in Belmore Park, near where I lived, there were hundreds of tents there. Yes. And instead of kicking everybody out, the city of sitting just provided security guards to reduce the incidents of stabbing late at night. I mean, what a great system. It was a bit of an eyesore. But people could live there if they wanted. It is true that Australia was built off the back of slums.

Well, that's the other option is slums. I mean, the thing, I don't know if you spent much time near slums. Isn't a tent city a slump? What's the difference? No, slums can be more permanent. The thing is, this is why the vision I wanted to get to. We start with the tents. You start with the tents and then turn them into slums.

If there's one thing that Australians love, Charles, it's DIY. And that's what a slum is. DIY, a slum is basically getting some particle board or just some share, whatever you can possibly find. You could do reality TV shows. That's what I'm thinking of the block, the very small. So instead of renovating one block of apartments, what you're doing is you're getting one city block and you're putting several hundred houses on it.

And the good thing is what you do is you do that and then you'd convince David Hughes to come and have a look at it and buy it way over market price. Dave Hughes would absolutely do that. Yeah, but this is the thing. Imagine how good it would be for Bunnings. Everyone would be going and getting the shit off cuts of wood and making their slums. And they'd be eating the sausage. is the sizzle because that's all they could afford?

Any policy that advantaged as Bunnings is a policy that I support. That's right. It's pro-Bunnings. Yes. It's pro-trade. I mean, make it upskills Australians. We all learn basic trade skills. Yep.

Like trying to put up a tarp so that your children don't get soaked in a storm. Do you reckon you could actually make, because there's lots of subsidies in the television and film industry, right? Oh, yes. Could you actually make a house based on the subsidies? The producer office. It's from producer offsets. You could do a docker.

You could actually pretend that what you're doing is making content. That's a very good. See, I don't know how. You're actually making a house. This is what I could do to get into the housing industry. I should get a producer off set. And the house is the set. It's a set for my future reality television of me living in a slum.

Yes. I could be slum dog nowhere near milliner. Slum dom. Slum dom. Slum dom millionaire. I like it. Yeah, look, it's a good idea. And this is the thing is, imagine the hope on the eyes of 20 year olds when they,

thought they too could own a slum like mine. I could pioneer how it worked. I could learn how to do all the dangerous electrical wiring and all that. It would be fantastic. Well, I have been to a few slums in my time. The one thing that I've always thought was slightly inadequate was the lack of sanitation. Sanitation.

Yeah, because the way the slum I went to, I went just outside Durban. They've got millions of people live in slums. And we went on a bit of a sort of... Oh, you were doing poverty porn. poverty porn. You're exploiting them for you. Okay, right. And, uh, met up with this guy who just took me, like, to his family home, basically. And, um, my God, like, the way they deal with it is they, they, they, they dig channels, like in front of their home. And it just sort of goes into the river. Yeah. So what you want is you want one further up the hill,

them further down the hill. Yes, that's the whole idea. But Charles, look, I mean, I've been to slums in, you know, the Philippines, near slums. I've been in them because I don't want to be exploit them. But I've got a good. look at slums in Philippines and India and so on. Here's the thing. There's an Australian slum. Got portaloos. The one thing, you'd get a portalo.

The government, that's all they'd give you is a porto. Yeah, okay, that's the... The one thing. Yeah, that's the concession to the Greens. And they wouldn't, they wouldn't empty it very often. It'd be like a music festival. I'm talking about the standard of living with Australians voluntarily consent to at music festivals.

I see. It's splendor. Yes. You don't wash for days. Do you get lots of drugs? That does happen in slums I've heard. Some slums. Yeah, there's two drug dealing going on.

Okay. And there's a port-leau that's occasionally emptied. I mean, this is... And the young people love it. They love it. They love it. It's basically the same. It's like a permanent music festival.

That's how you sell it. Splendor in the slum. That's what it could be. Have we just solved Australia's housing crisis? I think we've solved it. I wasn't, you know, like, I didn't start this episode thinking we're definitely going to solve us. We need slums, yeah.

Yeah. But now, the thing is, there is no other way. Like, at least this is some solution. It's a roof over your head until it falls in. in. And it's sort of one of those, and I think it sort of wedges young people, doesn't it? It does. What, do you want a house or don't you? Yeah, exactly.

You're ungrateful 20-something. Yeah, now you can just go, well, either you inherit a proper house or here's another alternative. There's one thing I have to make very clear, though, okay, just because you're in a slum, right? You don't own the slum, you're still renting it from a boomer. Oh, no, yeah, definitely. It's a rent to own, what is it, what is it, help to rent? Yeah, the government will pay 30. 30% of the boomers.

Of the boomers' mortgage. To rent you this one. Yes. I love it. This is Australia. We're not some sort of socialist joke of a country. You've got to have the market in there. We've got to have the market in there.

Yeah. Our gears from road, we're part of the iconoclast network. For more tips and hints and policy solutions, June in tomorrow.