In this monologue, Jim Penman argues that Australian (particularly Victorian) government policies impose massive financial burdens on households, exceeding $30,000 per year. He breaks down the costs of several flagship initiatives: the net‑zero emissions plan ($5,000 per household annually over ten years), an oversized public service ($14,000 per household if cut by half), the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop ($8,000 per household per year), federal debt interest ($2,500 per household), Victorian state debt interest ($3,000 per household), and restrictive zoning that inflates rents ($6,000 per household) and property prices ($33,000 per household over 30 years). Penman cites the Copenhagen Consensus to rank net‑zero as a low‑priority spending target and compares Australian zoning to Houston’s lax approach to illustrate housing cost inflation. Throughout, he frames these expenditures as wasteful government red tape, urging viewers to consider how the money could be better spent on direct poverty‑relief measures such as bed nets and sanitation in developing nations.
Chapters
This is your money taken from you by a bloated, inefficient government. And this is what your government is doing with it. I want to talk to you about the way the government wastes your money. Let's start by talking about net zero, the idea that we're going to be able to reach zero carbon emissions. Now I think that'd be a good thing. I think it'd be a great thing if we could do that. If it didn't cost a ridiculous amount of money, the actual cost, estimated cost, we've got to spend $50 billion over the next 10 years. That is $5,000 per household per year over the next 10 years. Yes, we would like to reduce human suffering, which to a certain extent reaching net zero would, but there are a lot more cost effective ways of achieving that. According to the Copenhagen Consensus, reducing net zero would be about the 20th best way to spend the money. If we really want to reduce human suffering, let's take a little bit of this money that we're wasting now and put it into things like bed nets and anti worming and fixing up sewage in poor countries. That would achieve a great deal more than $5,000 per household going for net zero. Now let's talk about government red tape. Governments are incredibly inefficient in the way they spend money. I've worked in the public service, I know that. I know how slack it was, how little work there was to do. Even I was trying to work hard, I just couldn't and even tried to reduce the work that I had. Not only that, but so much of what governments do is completely destructive and negative. It destroys wealth, it burdens business with unnecessary regulations. Yes, we want clean air, clean water, we want the basic stuff don't done properly. So many of these minute regulations just cripple the economy, force up anybody's costs. We are spending something like $28,000 per year on civil servants. If we knock that back, if we cut that back by half, that is $14,000 per household per year. And that's a very conserved subject. If we had an efficient public service where people could be fired, where you had proper systems of business efficien and did the things we need to, we could probably reduce it by 2/3. But even on a heart, $14,000 per household per year. Now let's talk about the Melbourne suburban rail loop. This is a project that's going to cost something like 200 billion over the next 10 years. That's if you accept government forecasts. In fact, allowing for the Fact that these things always go over time over cost is probably going to be more like 400 billion. But even on 200 billion, we are talking about $8,000 per household per year for the next 10 years. Now, if we ask people, even those who use it, would you rather have the bell loop or would you rather have $8,000 per year extra cash money in your pocket? I am pretty confident what most would say. And bear in mind the vast majority of Victorians are going to be paying for this and paying the this and paying for it and getting no benefit at all. Now, let's talk about interest. Governments are borrowing massive amounts of money to pay for all these useless things. Federal debt currently costing us $2,500 per household per year. It's getting worse and worse and worse as the level of debt rises and as terms of interest change as we go from one form pointing to another. And it's going to be a lot, lot worse. Let's talk about Victorian public debt. Victorian government has been incredibly wasteful in the way they spent money. They have borrowed and borrowed. They put money into white elephants, massive bureaucracies, all the rest of it. Our Victorian public debt. Interest alone on this debt is costing us $3,000 per household per year. This is rising by the day and it will rise even further. Interest rate change, $3,000 per household per year rising. Let's get to the real stuff. Let's get to the really hard stuff. Zoning. Zoning, where it says, you can't build this here, you can't build that there. Spread out, put unnecessary car requirements, do everything else, force up the price of housing. We can make international comparisons. You go to a city like Houston in the US which has minimal zoning, you actually find that rents are substantially less. If we had zoning regulations similar to Houston, the cost of housing would come down. The average renter would save $6,000 per household per year. Now, the big one, zoning forces up property prices. A reasonable estimate is that zoning doubles the cost of housing. It adds an extra half million dollars a year to the average house price. For somebody who wants to buy a house, we're talking about an extra $33,000 a year over the next 30 years. $33,000 a year. Government is wasting your money. This is money taken from your pocket. What would you like to do with it? Do you want incredibly overpriced housing and, and rents? Did you want massive interest on debts? Do you want rail loops that hardly anybody will use? Is this what you want to have done with your money? This is your government and Your government is wasting money everywhere.
