A successful businessman on my Facebook feed smiles and extends a finger to the camera.
He’s sitting in a first-class seat, outbound on an international flight, a supplier of critical motorsport components to winning teams around the world.
“F*** you Albo – you rotten little lying commie p*^+k”.
The adulation and group pile-on in the comments were at fever pitch.
48 hours earlier, the for-sale listing he posted for a 5-bedroom home walking distance from the beach in Merewether closed at $4,000,250.
$950,750 more than it was bought for in 2025.
Apparently, he has been deeply wronged, feels cheated and that communism abounds, from his first class seat after making nearly a million on a house in 11 months.
Australia doesn’t have a policy problem. It has a participation problem.
As I’m looking at my feed, a new message arrives in my inbox about a fundraiser video I did yesterday about pushups for suicide and mental health awareness.
“It’s great that you’re doing this. I did want to let you know the term committed suicide isn’t considered very compassionate. It carries a level of blame/shame.”
Okay.. thanks.. noted.. do you want to donate? Crickets.
Australians love low-cost moral correction more than contribution.
Australia recently changed from 105th to 75th on the Economic Complexity Index, which measures how sophisticated we are.
Unfortunately, the significant jump was due to a methodology change, we didn’t get better.
So why is it in “the lucky country” or even for me, who lives within spitting distance of “the most liveable city in the world” and “the coolest street in the world”, these can all be true at the same time?
A few things;
- Combine an endless sell-off and privatisation of our critical infrastructure with an ever-expanding city dedicated to public service.
- Add in the perfect storm of tax breaks, a stable society and a high quality of life on all measurable standards.
- Sprinkle with a national confusion where we failed to understand Monopoly was originally intended as a warning mechanism that unfettered property speculation will crash society (seriously, it was originally called ‘The Landlord’s Game’).
- Lastly, get egg’d on for decades by every accountant and banker you can find that’s about to retire.
Australians made collecting houses a national sport.
And boy, do we love to win.
Sitting on the couch on the weekend next to a retired truck driver who’d sold his fleet to recently migrated Indians, with several beautiful young horses in his stables out the back that he is breaking in, he’s muttering and cursing Anthony Albanese, infuriated by Sky News on the big screen tv.
“I’m voting One Nation. Between Liberal and Labor they had five decades to fix things and they’ve f***ed it. Time for change!”
I couldn’t fault the claim, I too want change.
Speaking of brown people and migration.
The next time you walk into a GP or a critical health care appointment, I’ll bet you a CGT discount it isn’t to meet with a ‘Dylan’, ‘Sandra’ or ‘Bradley’.
These aren’t the names filling our growing critical staff shortages of Doctors and Nurses.
They probably aren’t delivering your groceries, fixing your car, cleaning your house or working behind the scenes in our abattoirs either.
I mention this because outsourcing to another protest vote won’t rebuild a country that’s forgotten how to back its builders.
New York, New York
I was on Zoom at 8 am speaking with an American co-founder of a company that has trained over 80% of the world’s leading AI models. Their next bet is that AI is coming for every incumbent service business, and they’ve built the platform to do it.
It’s cool. I agree. I’m looking forward to introducing them to my wholesale clients.
The remarkable bit is that without previously knowing each other, we’d already swapped several useful links and resources via email, and within 5 minutes of the Zoom call, I was being introduced to education platforms for my best friend’s neuro-spicy 12-year-old who’s struggling with the traditional system.
That’s how Americans roll.
Enthusiasm. Encouragement. Opening doors.
Similarly with my European colleagues; let’s understand, let’s genuinely collaborate.
A pivotal moment
In my 25 years of professional experience with Australians, when they say “yeah mate, keen to see how you go” what they really mean is “I’ll watch from the fence and judge.”
Yesterday, BYD docked one of their eight cargo ships to deliver a cargo hold full of 5,000 pre-sold EVs in Melbourne.
At the same time, weakening iron ore and coal prices, combined with rising fuel prices, and booming imports of AI and Cloud infrastructure, ended an 8-year run of trade surplus, meaning we bought more from the world than we sold.
Yet we keep outsourcing the country’s responsibility to politicians while individually refusing to support the people actually trying to build something.
Blaming Anthony Albanese and praying Pauline Hanson will get us back up the economic complexity index is not an answer.
Nor is the mandate of one massive family office I know that tells their kids “You can invest in property, gold or listed equities”.
If you want Australia to become more sophisticated, more productive, more resilient, and less dependent on property speculation, stop watching builders like they’re contestants on a reality show.
I’m not arguing tax settings don’t matter – they do.
Though builders need your encouragement, purchase, introductions and actual support, long before they’re lucky enough to have a taxable gain.
Open your contacts.
Make the intro.
Buy the thing.
Donate the money.
Back the risk.
Show up before it’s fashionable.
And if you won’t do any of that, at least have the decency to stop standing on the sideline heckling the people who are.
