Jim Penman: Why Zoning Laws Are Destroying Australia’s Future

Thank you, David. I do a lot of speaking, but I must say I've never addressed a political meeting before. The first thing I wanted to ask is, can everybody at the back hear me? Can you all hear me? It's one of the first lessons I learned in public speaking is that you've got to ask that at the beginning of the talk. Because in one of my first talks I only asked it halfway through and somebody at the back stood up and said, look, I can't hear you. And a guy at the middle of the front row said, good, I'll swap. I want to talk to you particularly about housing. That's my especial passion. Look, I was a lawn mowing contractor, part time lawn mowing contractor, mowing lawns to support my studies in the 1970s when I bought my first house. My first house cost me $30,000. And I paid for that a little bit of a from my grandparents, but mainly through my lawnmowing business.

Okay?

Can you imagine the possibility of that? The price of housing has gone absolutely through the roof. It used to be you could buy a house with three or maybe even four times median income. Nowadays it takes about eight. And some people say this is about immigration. And I have to say I'm a little bit biased about immigration because I have so many fantastic franchisees. So in that sense I've got a bit of a bias. But let me tell you, it's not about immigration at all. It's about government. And there's a very simple way, there's a very simple way of looking at this. The Tale of Two Cities. You heard the book by Charles Dickens. Let me tell you a tale of two cities in America. One of them is San Francisco, one which we sometimes refer to as San Francisco, and the other is Houston in Texas. Okay? Now if you're talking about immigration, there's a lot more immigration going into Houston because it's near the border with Mexico and people are flying from California and they're going to Texas. So immigration wise, you'd expect half prices to be higher in Houston. Well, they are not. The median house price in Houston is in Australian terms, about a half a million dollars. Okay? In San Francisco it's well over $2 million. In Australian terms, same country, same immigration policy, different housing policies, different zoning policies, okay? There's no reason why houses in Australia shouldn't be at that level, at the level of a half million dollars for a median house, which means people can buy houses like I did for say $300,000 or $250 or $350, that kind of price, anybody could find a house. Now what's the problem with expensive housing? There's a lot of issues with it. One of the things that concerns me, I don't know if it concerns you. I hope it does. We are a society becoming increasingly unequal. There's more and more money going to the people in the top income. And I have to put myself into that area, obviously. But it's harder and harder for average people for the battlers to get by. That is extremely unhealthy at every level. People who are worse off really suffer from this problem. First of all, rental. Rentals are ridiculously expensive. My daughter and her partner wanted to rent an apartment in Ringwood. Now they turned up to an apartment. There was 40 people going for this fairly ordinary 4, 40 people. I contacted the agent and said, listen, I want my daughter to have a place to live. I will pay the entire first year's rent in advance cash. And he still couldn't get it. That is so crazy. You see people sitting in the streets, living in the streets. Okay, that's a dangerous place to be. People in the streets have a higher death rate because they're exposed the element to disease, to all kinds of problems. Now some people are just unable to survive. But a lot of people living in the streets do it because they cannot afford rent. And there's a very strong correlation between the degree of homelessness and the level of renting. So it's very hard on renters. If you are a young person who wants to purchase a house. It is so difficult these days. You have a policies where they can actually put 5% down and borrow the rest. Well, that's okay. You get a house, but then you're stuck with this massive mortgage for years, even decades. Now I'm helping my children to get houses and they can buy houses. You shouldn't have to have a father who's a multimillionaire to afford to buy a house. And even if you, even if you just for having a house to live in for yourself. The point I'd like to make is what is the value of it going up in price all the time? Now I bought a property, the house I live in 22 odd years ago, it cost me $700,000. It's now worth over $2 million. What did I do? I didn't create that value. I just sat there. Not even part of it's inflation. Most of it is just a ridiculous increase in the price of housing. And I don't care I live in the house. What does it matter for the value? And in fact, if you're talking about that, even people who own properties that are more valuable can actually get more out of them. If they could become lower in cost, you could subdivide them, you could put extra rooms on, you could put extra stories, do whatever you like. I believe what this country needs, and particularly Victoria, is a policy which ideally would strip away virtually all countries controls on housing whatsoever. What you're not going to find is a whole lot of cloacre lots and monstrous apartment towers. What you'll get is a lot more condensed buildings, buildings that go to two and three stories terrace houses like you find places like New York and London, very livable places. Why is that so good? Denser cities are better. They're better for the point of view of being able to be affordable. They're better from the point of view about commuting so that you can live near where you work. Now if you look at. I'm very interested in the science of happiness. You know one of the biggest things that determines happiness, unhappiness level of commuting. If you commute to work an hour, that's equivalent to an extra $75,000 worth of less income. It's such a big thing. Debt is a huge negative. We impose death on people by making houses ridiculously, fantastically expensive. Denser cities are better for the environment. I cannot comprehend why greenies, people who are supposed to be in favour of the environment, want to have spread out cities where you have to have cars, where you have to drive livable, walkable cities. Better for people, better for the environment. So what we need to do is to get rid of zoning as much as we possibly can. Now it's a negotiation policy, but in a sense zoning is pretty much superfluous. If you wanted to build a shopping centre, for example, you're not going to build it in a backwater, you're going to build it on the main highway. People can make the best use of their own decisions about their own property. Government shouldn't be telling us what to do. It's not good for us, not good for anybody else. What other issues have we got? I'm very concerned about government regulation now. Being in business, we know how it burdens on us all the time. The franchising code is an unbelievable mishmash. We have like a huge massive document which is supposed to protect people from franchisors. Let me tell you, I have never met a franchisee ever who ever read that document. But there's more and more legalism and problems like that. Now a very similar simple system which I've suggested again and again is you simply get the government to organize polling of franchisees every year. Publicly relate that if you could do that one simple thing of information that would do more than masses and masses of bureaucrats. Government is incredibly inefficient. Back in 1970 I worked briefly for the Commonwealth government and not a good experience. I had a job which took half my time, literally. I used to go up to the power of the and say give me something to do, I'm so bored. Nothing to do. Then I had one job which took me one day a week and they said to me listen, you're helping the guy with the publications, why don't you? We're going to make this guy, give him a promotion and he's going to get a full time assistant and that's you. And I said to him this is ridiculous. I only work half time. Now you want to take away all of my job except this one day a week and I'll have nothing to do at all for the rest of the time. That is typical. In my impression government is probably at least double. Sorry, at least 50, at least double the people that we need. If government was run efficiency with bureaucrats who were accountable, who could be let go just like we do in business, we would have efficient government. Then you take away the fact that they do so many things they don't need to do, like housing regulations, we could probably, in my estimation, back of the envelope we would have that would be able to give each Australian household at least $400 per week. That's an extra $20,000 a year. That's the cost of bureaucracy doing things inefficiently that are unnecessary. Net zero. Now this is an area where I've come to change my views a bit. But it's very interesting that the latest reports from Bill Gates from the Gates foundation, he's actually turned his back on net zero, which is pretty jolly sensible, isn't it? People have no idea what they're voting for when they vote for net zero. Basically we used to have the cheapest housing in the oec, cheapest power in the oecd. Now, now we've got among the most expensive. It's double in real terms what it was 10 years ago. It's double what it is in the US and Canada and if you actually add the on cost it probably costs us an extra two to $3,000 a year per family to pay for this the effect on actual global emissions is trivial because our entire emission 100 emission is less than than the increase in what the Chinese are doing every year. It is trivial. And the fact of the matter is there's a wonderful group called the Copenhagen Consensus that's looked at this and said if you wanted to help public welfare, what would you do? What would you spend money on? Now we're spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to try and reduce CO2. Actually they made a list of all the different things that you could do. And do you know where that comes getting better? Global warming, 20th, 20th. In no sense does it ever come. Even in the top 10 things like bed nets and health issues, all kinds of things. It's so much more powerful, so much more effective. We have a government we pay overly high taxes to and what they are doing is going out there trying to reduce our standard of living. Particular particularly on battling ordinary Australians. Now it may in some ways help the well off to become more rich. That's a possibility. But for the broad majority of Australians it's simply a cost, an ever rising cost. We pay taxes so that you can impoverish us. What a ridiculous thing to do. So I haven't been involved actively in politics in the past, I must say. In the past I have supported the Liberal Party. I've done fundraisers. I've met people like Tony Peter Costello and Tony Abbott and stuff. And I think in some ways we're on side with them because obviously they are a lot more pro deregulation than the other side. But in terms of housing and those kind of things, they are just nowhere good. There's too much money in that area and they will not change. I've been looking around for someone to support for some time. I've checked out every party there could be. I've even considered people talking about starting my own party. And I came across the libertarians. Now I am not a libertarian. Small l Libertarian. I believe government does fantastic things. I really do. Clean air, clean water, pure food. Police force. We have a fantastic police force in Victoria. We have great hospital systems. I think the government does really useful things, but they could do it a lot better and an awful lot cheaper than with the right kind of policies. This current labor government is dreadful, dreadful beyond belief. We had the worst lockdown of any city in the world for Covid apart from in China and Shanghai and so forth. We had the highest death rate per capita from COVID in the world. We have the worst ease of doing business in the state. We have the Highest death debt per capita in the state. This is a really, really terrible government in every possible way. And people know it stinks. Yet somehow the Liberal opposition, which is supposed to be standing up to them, doing something about it, is doing nothing. Who are they? Where are they? What do they stand for? You know, when the Balliol government came in, they wanted me to support them. I said, what do you stand for? What are you after? What are you. What are you going to offer us that's different? I don't want Labour. Light labor is terrible. I want a different. Something different. And I believe this party here, Libertarian, has real potential to be that difference. There is a trend all over the world against the two major parties. You can see it. Look what's happening in the UK with Farage. I'm not saying I agree with that guy. He's got a lot of very different ideas. But it's upset. There isn't real potential for third parties to come in and make a difference. This is the party of principle. I believe in what the Libertarians are doing. I love what they're doing. I think it's a fantastic party. I thank you all for coming here. It's something that I'm going to put my effort into. I have been asked if I consider standing. I probably won't because it'd be very hard to be an active member of Parliament like David, at the same time to do run my business. And I have responsibilities to my franchisees, to my people. So I wouldn't do that. But I do intend to support the party. Is there any questions you'd like to ask me? Signal loss is not something we want to see. You ask a question. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. As long as it. Yeah. During the government response to Covid, you seem to maybe support vaccine mandates.

Can I get a comment on that? Do you support vaccine mandates? Thanks, Jim.

Thank you very much. Okay. I thought I might get that one. That's probably the one area I'm a little bit on the outs. I regard. Look, okay, this is not Libertarian Party policy and I'm not a member. I'm not actually standing for Parliament. So I can say this one thing. I have 10 children. Okay. Age between 16 and 14, 40. 10 children, all alive. A few generations back, most of them would have died. Okay, what's the two things that have made the difference? One, sanitation. Two, vaccines. So I actually do. I wouldn't necessarily make it compulsory, but I don't mind putting a bit of pressure on people to be vaccinated because at the moment you've Got children who are dying of measles, which isn't necessary. And I have a problem with that because I tell you what, the idea of having any of my kids die is the most horrifying thing I could possibly imagine. So, yes, in that particular sense, I'm not especially hardline libertarian.

From the Internet, so I'm going to read my anthric. Jim, someone posted what policies would your 30 second elevator pitch to a Gen Z voter? Emphasise.

Well, housing. What better offer? I find it incredible that the young don't realise how they're being shafted more than anybody. Let's face it, most of us here have got our own houses. Is that right? We own our houses. All right, who's suffering from this problem? It's the young. The young who can't afford to buy a house. Or if they can't afford to, they're stuck with this massive mortgage, like a million dollar mortgage, for decades to come, which is cramping their lifestyle, cramping their ability to have children. I think it's shocking. And not only that, but as was being said before, you've got this issue that we're piling up this debt. There is something absolutely obscene about a wealthy, prosperous society going deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. And who's going to pay it back? Well, it's not going to be me because I'll be dead in 20 years, all right? It's my kids and my grandchildren. It's absolutely appalling that we borrow at a time of prosperity.

Someone posted. You may have addressed this a moment ago. What was it about the Libertarian Party in particular, that was your main attraction to Joyner?

I couldn't find any other party that really hits the targets. Housing, government, deregulation. And it's not consistent. See, if you want deregulation in the business, you probably think more liberal, but if you want housing, the last thing you go to is the Liberals. They're worse than Labour. So what's a party that believes in liberty, in not doing unnecessary things? They just don't exist. And I think libertarians is a great option. I do feel very optimistic after having speak. I'm very impressed with the party. I think we've got a real opportunity to speak out and have a voice. One of the things I believe in very strongly is that the role of political leaders is not to run opinion polls and say, okay, what's popular? I'll do that. It's to actually say, this is what I believe in. And you get a leader, someone like Margaret Thatcher too, who I greatly admire. And there's a wonderful pitch from a speech he did at one of the conferences and she said now we come to the U turn speech. She said U turn if you want to. This lady is not for turning. And everybody knew what she believed in and she changed the country and she led and we've had great leaders in the past. I admire leaders like Bob Hawke, Paul Keating. Sorry, I know you don't. But they did some good things, they did some deregulation. They did have a go. Better than certainly Whitlam and Fraser and then Howard and Costello. I admire very much admire the way they paid off the national debt. I thought that was fantastic. All right, I'm not particularly right in terms of politics. I have a very different view. I do think we have an obligation to help our less fortunate citizens. I do believe in that. As a Christian I just think it's important. I don't think a society that's so wealthy let people starve or go needy unnecessarily. We're wealthy enough to support them but we need leaders who are prepared to lead, to make a statement, to stand for something, for people to know what they stand for. You take someone like Trump. Now I don't like Trump in many ways but the thing about Trump is this, that he, people know what he stands for. He gets up there and he speaks, he speaks in a simple language. Now he's corrupt and he's crooked and he's, he's got a lot of problems with Trump but at least you know who he is and what he stands for. And you see mealy mouthed politicians who shift with the wind. What are you voting for when you vote for someone like that and I see too much of that in politics.

What will it take Jim, to topple the Allan government considering Victoria is left leaning?

I don't know how left leaning people are. Look, the Allan government is really on the nose. People know how rank it is. People, people have got some sense. We are in. Look, I was in business looking to locate to a state. I wouldn't locate in Victoria, would you? I'm here because my family is here, because my business is here, my employees are here. I'm stuck. All right, so you're not going to kick me out. But the fact of the matter, it's an appalling government. It's one of the worst governments you could possibly imagine in the history of federation but there's no real opposition. I don't understand why liberals are so weak these days. They have had great leaders in the Past look at someone like Jeff Kennett, personally a great admirer, great fan of Jeff Kennett when he came in, who really wanted to shake up the state. We don't have anybody like that. We don't have anybody with a vision for Victoria. I do think people like David have a vision and I wish and I'd love to see more and I think we could make a difference. And even if we stand somebody for parliament and who doesn't get in, it still matters. Because what these majors are going to do is to look at it and say, okay, there is demand for these kinds of policies. In a sense, you can vote twice. You vote one libertarian and vote whoever you like. You might like Labour, you might like Liberty, you might like Green, but put one libertarian and that gets the message across. I do believe I'm actually having talked to people in the party, I think that there's a real potential, the two party system is breaking down, that a third party like the Libertarians could actually make an impact. Maybe even get into coalition with something like the Nationals, maybe even create some real change in this state. It's not impossible. Yes, you mentioned a lot of things about cost of living, cost of government. Society is essentially dividing more than ever. What do you think is the root cause of all that and how can we actually get out of it, get to a place of more connection and prosperity? Okay, that's a very different topic and that's to do with the research project I'm running. I think there's a change in character in the Australian population which is a result of prosperity, which is changing the way that our dopamine reaction systems work. Which is not what you want to hear, is it? It's not something that can be solved politically. We're actually working on treatments that can actually look at the epidemic of loneliness and loss of community and misery and death of despair that's going on. There's some really bad things going on in society. And I do think the growing gap between rich and poor is part of that whole thing. We were a lot more equal society a few decades back. When I was young, I've done a lot of scrutineering for parties. This preference thing is the major contributing factor to a lot of misconception because people put number two in whether they think they like the photograph or something. And I've watched the piles change with the scrutineering from a little low. All of a sudden this number two. So I changed the whole concept. That's got a goal, we've got to have one Vote one man. I actually, I actually like preferential voting. I think it's good. It gives you. It means that you get the person, not the person that you really want, but at least you get someone you don't mind like what they have first past the post. In places like the UK it's a very bad system. You can get wild like the way the labor government won in the UK and there wasn't that much difference. But in terms of seats, it's dramatic. So I think actually the system we have, I'm all in. Wilder, you made a really good point and perhaps there's people in the room that disagree with you about this. On one point about immigration and supervising those questions a bit than that. What do you make of parties like this seeking to align with anti immigration parties? Are libertarians against immigration. Look, can I tell you about immigration? I'm biased. I'm severely biased, okay. My wife is the person I adore most in the whole world, okay. She's absolutely an amazing, beautiful woman. The best person I've ever met. Okay. She's an immigrant. All right? Be quite clear. She also employs about 30 Australians. So she's a real asset. The amount of tax that she and her employees pay is massive. She's a builder, she runs conference center, does all kinds of things. Okay. A lot of my franchisees, magnificent men and women, I know them very well. That's my life more than anything. My franchisees, I talk to them every day. So I love them. I do think where we have a problem is, is taking people who are illiterate and poor and ignorant from war torn societies where they cannot adjust to Australia. And they are actually unhappy. They're bitter. We say we're so open hearted. It is not a help when you have people committing machete murders in the streets of Melbourne because we are so warm hearted. It's like the way that the suite opens, them open the floodgates. The people from the Middle east, now they've got gangs running through the streets of Stockholm. We need educated, enterprising people. They are great immigrants. My lawyer is a child of immigrants. My dentist is an immigrant. They're great people. We have so many wonderful Australians. We just have to be a bit careful who we choose. My question is a bit different though. It is. What do you think about if the party makes more alliances with parties such as One Nation? I just don't agree with that, that's all. I think it's wrong. I think, look, we need skilled people in this country. Immigrants are a tremendous source of vitality I think this is a party of principle more than anything. I don't always disagree with everything too. I'm not really on there with vaccine mandates and stuff. It's quite clear. I am actually a fond fan of Bottle Corp, which most of you probably aren't. But the fact of the matter is this is a party that stands for something and it's as close as anything I've ever seen to what I think should be done to make this a great country and a great state. Besides payroll tax, Jim, if there was one policy or one regulation you could rip open and throw out the window, what would that be? Well, zoning. Zoning. Get rid of zoning. It's such a simple thing. You know, we pay billions of dollars to bureaucrats to stop us building. We have a policy that says we're going to bring a half million new people into the country every year and we're going to use the iron hand of government to forbid anybody to build enough houses to put them in. What could possibly go wrong? We have to get rid of zoning. It is noxious, it is poor, poisonous. And look, I do not like the Covenant labor government in this state. But I tell you what they've done. Yes, I'll cheer you on. Just because you're on the other side in most things if you start making some sensible decisions, that's good. You know, they did it in Auckland starting 2017, eight years ago they actually started to do some deregulation which spread to the rest of New Zealand. They reckoned that the actual housing prices and rents are about 40% below what they should have been. It's possible that some states are doing Minneapolis in the US has done this kind of stuff too. And the interesting thing about this is that it's not necessarily a left versus right issue. My children reckon I'm pretty woke in some ways because I'm very much in favor of the underdog. I'm just like that. But at the same time, this is not an issue that's left versus right, is it? If you are in favor of freedom and free enterprise in business, you don't want zoning. But if you're in favor of getting people to have a affordable housing and getting homeless off the street, you should be in favor of getting rid of zoning. It's not a left versus right issue. And that's the interesting thing. And you know why I think it's such a great issue too for this party? It's because there is a widespread feeling in the community that this is not a good thing to have ever rising Houses and rent. We. I am pretty controversial. You've probably seen enough of me tonight to actually understand that I'll say what I think regardless of what anybody else does. I say a lot of things which are very controversial. When I spoke out during COVID two of my daughters wouldn't speak to me for months. Okay. Because I was getting. Holy Saint Dan. I was going against him. All right. They sort of afterwards came to think maybe you weren't quite so wrong, Dan. The point of that is, though we put out stuff on this housing issue. We have never had such a strong response. 96% in favour. That is the most positive response we've ever had to any issue at all. Other things much more controversial. I think there's a real mood in this society for change. And the trouble is you've got powerful, established elite forces who don't want to change, like the Liberal Party. Why is the Liberal Party so stuck on this? They should be the party of freedom. Why not? Because so many of their contributors. It's a money thing. Are people with a lot of money who've made a fortune out of. Out of real estate. And to be honest, we've done that too. My wife's been a property developer. We've risen the road. We've made a lot of money out of it. I just think it's wrong. I just think it's wrong. It's not a left versus right issue. It's a freedom issue and it's a fairness issue and it's a social justice issue. And it's the right thing to do to get rid of zoning.

Here. Peter Allen asks Jim, how would it be best to up Design Melbourne and how do you see that process occurring?

I just basically get rid of everything if I could. Okay. You probably have to compromise to get it through. But listen, if you want to build a factory, you're not going to go into the middle of the CBD and put it. Why would you want to? It doesn't belong there. It belongs with other factories. It belongs by the docks. If you're going to build a. If you're going to build a shopping centre, you don't want to build it in a quiet back street. You want to build it with people that are traveling. Basically, something looks after itself. People are sensible. People make very good decisions on their own back. It's the Adam Smith idea, the invisible hand. The market actually works quite well in a lot of different areas as soon as you get government clogging things up. Another thing I didn't talk about before was Occupational licensing, that sort of problem too. Now the government goes through an enormous amount of effort to stop people going into professions when they're not properly qualified. They've done some interesting studies in the States because there's different states in America which have different zoning, different occupational licensing, even things like cosmetologists and so forth. And they found when you have stricter licensing, two things happen. First of all, you, you get higher prices. Secondly, you get poorer quality. So the government, we spend money to the taxpayer as taxpayers to pay the government so that we can have less competition, higher prices, worse quality. And a good example is the taxi industry. All right? Now it took multibillion dollar American companies to break it down. But when Uber and Lyft and stuff come in, what do you get? You get better service, lower prices. We use it more or less. All you have to do is to get the government off our back. What I said to the government, get out of our way. We can run the country much better without you interfering with so much. We don't need you. We need you to do the essential things. We need you for the police, we need you for defence, we need you for saf, water purity and so forth. We don't need you to muck up the economy because you're making a mess of it. We can do better without. You.

Implied that you've somewhat changed your position in relation to net zero over time. And obviously you're a great example of the average Australian. Do you believe that if one of the parties was to actually take a proper view in relation to net zero over the next 12 months, you could in fact have quite a significant swing and there's already a trend worldwide. Yes, so that our government will look totally out of touch and in fact will be a pariah in relation to energy.

I think that the Liberal Party should take the guts to take a proper principled decision and say we do not believe in this decision. Science is wrong. You're not going to destroy the planet. Look, this whole idea that they're going to become uninhabitable because the temperature goes up 3 degrees, it's ludicrous. It's so stupid anybody knows anything about paleontology. 100 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous maximum, we had dinosaurs roaming the forest at the South Pole. It was a fertile country, okay? Now there's certain problems to do with the changing. People have to move here and there and so forth, changing patterns, but doesn't make the whole planet worse. And you're much better off spending the money helping people to Adapt to that. The poorest people in the world have the most to suffer from lack of energy. Energy use, proper, cheap, available energy is the best way to pull people out of poverty. And one of the greatest things that's happened in the world in the past 30 years is that so many billions of people come out of poverty and energy is part of that. We should not deny them because the opportunity to live better lives, that's what's going to help them. Not some mythical search for net zero which may happen. I'm not against it. Look, for heaven's sake, I've got solar panels on everything. I've got solar panels on my office. I give my staff free charging during the day because we've got surplus power. It's on my house, it's on my farm. I'd put it on the family dog if I could, for heaven's sake. I mean, I mean, solar panels make sense and I'd like to have batteries and go off the grid because our power supply is erratic and stuff. But government doesn't have a role in that. I'll do it because it's right for me. And in the end we will get near zero when the technology is ready. And that's actually what Bill Gates says too. Yes, we'll get there and there's some great, exciting stuff happening. But don't impoverish the country, especially the battlers, by pushing on us too hard. The liberal government ought to change around. They ought to get themselves some cojones. Okay, all right. They really should. I think people got to stand for something. You know, somebody I admire is Jacinta Price. I'm not saying everybody else does, but I've heard what she said during the referendum. I thought she's great. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you had somebody with real principles run this country? And if you happen to be a woman in Aboriginal. I just finished reading her biography. She's a wonderful woman. I like to touch on small businesses solving problems that government created when we had to do GST or Bassett's every quarter. My life as a small local accountant came to 90 when a firm called Jim's Bookkeeping came along. Yes. So the government created the work and we now never deal with the small business unless they use it. Gym booking services or something similar to that. So a pure example of government creating heartache and small business solving. And now I enjoyed my old age giving advice on tax because of your business. Much as I love to get work for people, I gotta say the whole tax system is insanely complicated. It's just. It's just measure after measure after measurement. There are much simpler ways to do it. Now, again, I'm going to say something. I'm not standing as a Libertarian Party member, but I'm going to say something that many of you won't like. We need certain taxes to be higher. There's two taxes I'd like to see higher. One of them is congestion charges because it's insane to have too many people using their own job. And the other is land tax, unimproved land tax. When you put some more tax on those things we. Which tends to push property into the hands of those who need it, then you can take it off a lot of other things like stamp duty, which is a terrible tax. It's a tax that destroys social mobility because it doesn't make people move to where the jobs are. There's an estimation that if you got rid of zoning, the whole country. This is a US example. I was just reading something today. The whole country would be 11% richer by allowing people to move to where the jobs are. So we should have better, more efficient taxes and lower marginal tax rates and fewer deductions and fewer things. People can escape through loopholes. So I'm not being popular about that one because I know everybody here would say don't want any more taxes. But one of the problems is this. Look, we need to reduce spending and there's so many ways we could. Bureaucrats is one area. A lot of things we could reduce a lot of the stupid things, the spending. The state government's done all the. Oh, you know, doesn't infuriate you. You see these roadworks and you see people standing there, they're making the same money as high school principals. You don't even need to. You just have a light on both ends and somebody controls it. And it takes a year to get the most, least of things done. It's all run by unions and it's just absolutely shocking, the waste. So we can cut a lot. But I would love to see efficient taxes like land tax cut coming in and a whole lot of other taxes going away. Like what about a marginal tax rate of 15%? Say something like that.

Talking about charity, Christian charity you were talking about earlier. I managed to talk to the Selvos during the election campaign and they were telling me about how they have so much housing stock available and they want to be able to low cost housing. This is not housing that's designed to last 100 years. It's housing that's designed to last 20 years, because it's going to be hard used by people who invest within. My feeling is that you probably have some insight into how that can be fixed, how they might be able to build that sort of housing and what sort of restrictions the government currently has in place that's stopping that from happening.

Well, the government regulations are just designed to stop anything useful from happening. There's people in my church who, who are trying to produce homes for the homeless, get them off the street. Homelessness is a really nasty problem. It really is. It's a disgrace that people can't afford to live. Now I have some friends who are trying to do something about that, setting up a really nice facility to get homeless off the street. And the government said if you go take more than three days, you have to put them on leases, which is impossible because they can't afford to pay, shut it down. So here's the government stepping in and saying, no, we, we could take them off the street, we could give them a better life, but get it out there, throw them into the street, because we're the government and that's what we're paid taxes for, so that we can make people's lives more miserable, especially the lowest and the most unfortunate members of society. It makes me furious, the kind of things that they do, the pettifogging, stupid regulations, things like Australian standards, for example. You know, my wife, I could ramble on for hours about some of these things, but we are forbidden to use products and systems that. That are quite widespread in the eec, for example, which is not exactly Wild west of capitalism, so just simple basic technologies. It doesn't meet Australian standards, so you can't do it. The government contributes so much to inefficiency, to poverty in this country and we pay heavy taxes so they can do it to us. It's a shocker. All right, I think we've got time to.

Maybe a couple more from the.

For.

I've got a couple here to essentially.

Say, hi, Tim, I'm Stephen, still have a question for you. I know you talked about people, you know, shouldn't care about the value of their house and stuff, but for me, I've spoken to a lot of people when campaigning and a lot of people. The lamp I was going. When it comes to housing, which is also important issue to me, a lot of people say things like, oh, so I'm from the outer suburbs, there's a lot of bigger properties, a lot of green space and things like that. A lot of people say, oh, I want to take the green space I want to take the character. We don't want, you know, dense housing and things like that. There a lot of people just red flag me and just say that. A lot of surprised, a lot of people actually think that. So I guess the question is for you. Have you spoken to a lot of people with those sort of views? Have you been able to convince them? And how would you convince them?

I just don't think it's right, that's all. I think people who have large properties, you get wealthy suburbs like Kew for example, and stuff where you get, you get hugely expensive houses worth millions of dollars on these, on these blocks of land. I just don't think it's fair or it's right. Yes, there will be a situation if you get rid of zoning where some people won't be able to live in the same green environment. Look, I've got a house which is next door to the office which is five acres. And I have to admit I like that. I can see kangaroos in my garden. I mean, it's pretty nice. But the fact of the matter is I don't see why my desire to have a five acre backyard is more important than the right of 40 families to have affordable housing close to transport and shops. I just think you've got to make some value judgments about what is more important, the ease of the rich or the overwhelming benefit of the majority. And because I'm a father too, and I think about my kids like I've got 10 kids, okay? I know what they're going to. I know how hard it is for them or it would be if I wasn't there to help them. I just think we've got to make some judgments at times. Look, I do. I'm not a. My children say I'm pretty woke because I have a very strong social justice idea. I just don't think that government spending is the way to achieve it. But I do think getting rid of unnecessary government can really do so much for ordinary people who are struggling in their lives.

My name's Crystal, I'm a member of the party. I think what I really like about your position is what you're saying is that as a person who owns five acres worth of property, you don't want the government deciding that you can't offer that space to other people if you want to. And someone down the street that has five acres that enjoys those kangaroos is perfectly entitled to continue to enjoy that and not be forced to do anything with it. If we get the government out of the way, I Just, I like that that's the message that you're giving to people. So I just wanted to say thank you.

Yeah, alright. You're quite right.

What does supporting the Libertarian Party and going into 2026 state election look like to you?

I'll do what I can. I just think it's an important issue to me. Other issues, yes, but to me housing is a really strong moral issue. I have a concern for the less fortunate in our society. People who are the battlers, who are struggling to buy houses, the young people in particular. I think we've got an opportunity to make a difference and I do intend to be as active as I can in support. Of Franchise King. I'm surprised you haven't set a party up. You can sell areas of each electric. There's one thing I've learned about business. Because you're good at one thing kind of business doesn't mean to say you're good at other things. All right, I am pretty good at service franchising, but somebody here was with me in Bada Bank. Who was that? Yeah, somebody I was speaking to before I tried to set up a trade exchange. You were in part a bank? Yes. Now that really wasn't a very successful venture. It was brilliant. I'm glad you felt that way. But in the end I came to the conclusion that's not something I'm good at. So look, people were after me to start a new party. They said you wanted a Jim's Party or something. But I said really? This is a very special type of occupation, politics. I am very loud mouthed but I'm not really a politician. I would not make a good premier. Believe me, I would not. I am not political enough. But when I speak to people in the Libertarian Party I was very impressed. Had a long talk with David and with Greg and others and I just think they're a very professional bunch. I've seen the way they choose members and stuff, the organisation. I think they'll do a far better job than I ever could of running a party. So I want to join forces with them and give my support.