Freelancer CEO, Matt Barrie, was interviewed by the Equity Mates podcast, where he once again demolished Australia’s “ponzi scheme” economy and housing market:
The interview covers a wide range of topics, including:
- The challenges facing first home buyers
- The economic impact of mass immigration
- Why Australia’s housing prices are out of control
- What politicians are getting wrong about housing solutions
Below is a short extract of the discussion on immigration.
Edited Transcript:
We’ve been building a lot for a while, and yet the political debate at all levels of government is we’re going to build our way out of this.
They’re [politicians] operating something I’ll describe in a very nice way as a Ponzi scheme. But it is actually worse than a Ponzi scheme. It’s a Ponzi scheme because there’s no economic utility in residential houses at this point in time because the yield generated from rent is way below anything to be able to generate a return.
We, for years, have run a Ponzi scheme in this country because the politicians don’t really know how to grow the economy and really grow industry or do anything other than dig up raw materials out of the ground to ship overseas.
Both the Liberal and Labor party have been running a program that has been focused on easy, relentless growth.
So, as long as house prices gently drift up and as long as wages are gently suppressed, businesses are happy and the citizens are happy.
That’s been running for some time but that’s only facilitated by running a very large immigration program.
So, we are bringing people into the country, which suppresses wages, and then those people need housing.
And so you just gently drift houses up while you gently suppress wages.
When Albanese came in, he put it into full burko mode, where they ramped immigration up to bringing in a Canberra and Darwin per year.
How could we possibly build a Canberra and a Darwin per year? It’s not just housing you have to build. You have to build the infrastructure; you have to build hospitals and schools, roads and transport.
It’s the state governments who pick up the bill for that, and they’ve been on a massive building spree. It is basically driving the states to the point of bankruptcy.
This is only a tiny extract of Matt’s interview. I recommend watching the hole thing. It is brilliant.
