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Democratizing VC Investment Opportunities w/ James Kwan, VentureCrowd – EP197

Show host Gene Tunny chats with James Kwan, in-house counsel at VentureCrowd, about venture capital. VentureCrowd describes itself as “Australia’s leading equity crowdfunding investment platform, leveraging the power of crowdfunding for investments that back a better future.”  Gene and James discuss how VentureCrowd is bringing venture capital investment opportunities to a wider audience through equity crowdfunding. Tune in to learn about the significance of venture capital in financing and supporting innovative ideas and businesses, particularly in the early stages when traditional sources of capital may be less accessible. Of course, listeners are reminded to do their own research and seek professional advice before making any investment decisions. 
Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. 

You can listen to the episode via the embedded player below or via podcasting apps including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

What’s covered in EP197

  • James’ thoughts on venture capital and what he does at VentureCrowd. (1:31)
  • Initial thoughts on government policy towards VC (6:26)
  • The valley of death for startups (12:05)
  • What’s the range of funding for startups? (13:07)
  • Challenges in accessing the private capital markets. (17:29)
  • Crowdsourcing VC investment  – example of success: Be Fit Food (19:50)
  • What is VentureCrowd’s pitch to investors? (21:41)
  • ESG investments and societal values. (24:13)
  • What are the different ways people can invest through VentureCrowd? Is it based on specific startups? (25:54)
  • Tricky legal issues in VC. (27:01)
  • What’s the impact of blockchain on venture capital? (32:04)
  • Government assistance for entrepreneurs e.g. Breakthrough Victoria Fund (37:51)

Links relevant to the conversation

Venture Crowd website: https://www.venturecrowd.com.au/s/

Transcript:
Democratizing VC Investment Opportunities w/ James Kwan, VentureCrowd – EP197

N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. The transcript was then checked over by a human, Tim Hughes from Adept Economics, to pick out any clangers that otters may have missed. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.

Gene Tunny  00:07

Welcome to the Economics Explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host Gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist and former Australian Treasury official. The aim of this show is to help you better understand the big economic issues affecting all our lives. We do this by considering the theory, evidence and by hearing a wide range of views. I’m delighted that you can join me for this episode, please check out the show notes for relevant information. Now on to the show.

Hello, thanks for tuning in to the show. In this episode, I chat about venture capital with James Kwan. James is in-house counsel at VentureCrowd. VentureCrowd describes itself as Australia’s leading equity crowdfunding investment platform, leveraging the power of crowdfunding for investments that back a better future. In this episode, you’ll learn about venture capital and how VentureCrowd is trying to bring venture capital investment opportunities to as many people as possible. Nothing in this episode should be construed as financial or investment advice. Wherever you’re choosing to invest, do your own research and seek advice from a professional financial advisor if required. Okay, let’s get into the episode. I hope you enjoy my conversation with James Kwan from VentureCrowd.

James Kwan, welcome to the programme.


James Kwan  01:31

Great to be here Gene, longtime listener, first time guess, so


Gene Tunny  01:35

yeah, very good. Well, it’s I should have had you on earlier. I’ve recently discovered you, you’re the in house counsel at VentureCrowd, and you’re involved in venture capital and venture capitals has been an interest of mine for a while or as a as an observer of it, and is keen to get your thoughts on venture capital and what you’re doing at VentureCrowd. So if you’re happy to chat about that, that’d be great.


James Kwan  02:05

I’d love the opportunity. Look, can I just give a disclaimer, Gene? So yes, and I’ve loved you know, I’ve wanted to do this for a while so pilfered this from an American lawyer I listened to. Now what he says is, I’m VentureCrowd’s lawyer, obviously, I’m kind of swapping in a couple of different words, but I’m VentureCrowds’ lawyer, I’m not your lawyer. So anything I do say here, please don’t take it as legal advice. If you do need such advice, please solicit your own lawyer. So with that out of the way, I’d love to actually talk about venture capital.


Gene Tunny  02:34

That’s very good. Is that Jordan Harbinger? He says that on some of his podcast episodes, you know, the did you hear from Jordan Harbinger or from


James Kwan  02:43

He’s a bit of a new name. I think I’ve heard it from a couple of American lawyers speaking in the blockchain space. And we can talk about that as well, because that kind of feeds into the VentureCrowd vision, but it might just be an Americanism right?


Gene Tunny  02:57

No, it’s good advice, though. I mean, yep. I’m not your lawyer. So yeah, exactly. Get your own independent advice, professional advice. So and this is all for general information only. There’s no investment or financial advice in or legal advice in this episode.


James Kwan  03:12

Not even life advice, I think.


Gene Tunny  03:14

Okay. So James, to kick off with, could I just make sure I understand what we’re talking about with venture capital, we’re talking about financing for early stage businesses, typically startups they’re not they’ve got an idea. They might have a few employees, they’re looking to get some funding so they can can grow. What’s, how do you think about venture capital?


James Kwan  03:37

Yeah, look, the best way to probably explain it is that crazy uncle you’ve got in the garage, right? Who’s forever tinkering away on and, you know, a harebrained idea, they’re the people which you attract into the venture capital space, it is the idea, are the ideas which are crazy slash revolutionary, but really stand a chance at completely reforming, you know, how we think about doing life, because of the speculative nature of the ideas and the relative lack of business history behind a lot of, you know, these ventures, it’s very difficult for them to get funding from your traditional sources of capital, right? AKA, the bank. So what that leaves, for VC entrepreneurs really is four different options. You can go to your family and friends for a handout. Secondly, you could go to a benefactor with deep pockets, so high net wealth individual or their associated family office and the family office is just their army advisors to, you know, facilitate investments into the venture capital space. And lastly, I would historically have stopped at venture capital funds, so professional funds, who are looking to make an investment in a early stage venture on the prospect of a, you know, just hitting it out of the park in terms of you know, its financial performance five years down the track. VC funds do that on the understanding that, let’s say, the VC fund makes 10 investments, five of them go under, three of them break even and two of them really hit it out of the park. And I said, there are actually four options for VC entrepreneurs to go to for capital. And the fourth entrant into that are the government backed funds right? Now, the one people think about, I think, mostly in this space, just because it’s been so successful, is probably Temasek. Over in Singapore. So Temasek is Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and they also have a ventures arm. But a little closer to home, there is an organisation a small organisation called Breakthrough Victoria with, I think, circa 2 billion funds under management. And they’re also looking to attract entrepreneurs in the VC space to the great state of Victoria. This probably because I know this is an economics podcast on that fourth source of venture capital, capital, probably a discussion to be had around whether or not that’s crowding out private investment, right. And to what extent you want the government maybe picking winners, but I leave it over to you as the host.


Gene Tunny  06:26

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. I mean, I mean, I’m not a great fan of government picking winners. And we might have to chat a bit later about how you think it’s crowding out. I mean, yeah, to the extent that the government gets involved in the deals, or does the financing rather than the private sector, then yeah, sure. I mean, that’s crowding out, I guess they would argue that they’re meeting, there’s a market failure, there’s not enough venture capital funding in Australia. And yeah, there wouldn’t be anyone else who would, who would fund it. Because I know, years ago, it was very difficult for startups in Australia, or people doing something innovative. So someone that Nick Gruen, and I both know, and I know you had a chat with Nick, recently, Anthony Goldbloom, who founded Kaggle years ago, he was at Treasury when I was there. And then he went to the Reserve Bank and he developed this Kaggle, the data science competition website, but he had to go over to the States to get the necessary financing. And you know, he ended up doing really well and selling to Google. So I think there’s been that view, historically, that we just haven’t had the the venture capital here in Australia. And if you want to get venture capital you for something that really innovative, really breakthrough, you need to go to the States to San Francisco to Silicon Valley to get it. What’s your take on that? James, do you think we’ve actually got an emerging private VC sector here?


James Kwan  07:51

I mean, it’s difficult to tell over the last decade, right, just because, I mean, on one interpretation over the last decade, there’s just been so much easy money, which is poured into, you know, people’s pockets, and it’s needed a home investment wise, right. So whether or not we have a working innovation framework in this country is probably something the jury’s still out. Right? There is, I think, good criticism, I think, and it’s, you know, was articulated by Kim Carr, who was the ex Minister for Innovation. And now, the, I think, believe the Chancellor of Victoria University, who says, in a nutshell, the innovation framework within Australia is just fragmented, right? It’s not that it’s nonexistent. But when you, you know, have to go to one arm of government to talk r&d tax incentive than another one to get something known as the early stage venture capital Limited Partnership, the tax incentives associated with that, that’s a particular structure, you can make VC investments through in order to obtain some sort of, you know, tax incentive. And then also litany of incentives. Like I said, you know, at the state level, think, Breakthrough Victoria, it’s very, very difficult for an entrepreneur who simply wants to build a business to tap into the government assistance in an aggregate way, right. So there is, you know, putting to one side, whether or not the existing architecture for innovation in this country is working, I think you could probably say, with a fair degree of certainty that it would substantially benefit from a degree of consolidation.


Gene Tunny  09:38

Right. Okay. Okay. So back to the, the startup. So you’re talking about what your uncle in the backyard garage or in the backyard shed, you know, as an example, I mean, are there any data or do you have a sense of who’s founding these startups? I know that, like the image of startup founders is that they’re all sort of just out Uni, they’re all sort of in their 20s, and if you don’t make it by 30, you’re a failure. But the reality is different. Is it? I mean, what what are you seeing in the startup space? Do you do have any observations on that, James?


James Kwan  10:13

Yeah. And look, I posed that early illustration of, you know, crazy uncle in the garage merely as an illustration. But really what I wanted to capture, and that was, the ideas which live and inhabit the VC space are just far fetched, right? They, you know, stand a minute chance to completely change the world and along the way to make an outsized financial return. But it is interesting that you touched on this. And I suppose to answer your question directly, I don’t actually have any data. But there is very much this dynamic, arguably perpetuated by Silicon Valley, which worships at the fountain of youth, right. So in order to be a entrepreneur in the VC space, you need to be somewhere between the ages of 18 to 35, you need to wear a black turtleneck. And I think, certainly from the VentureCrowd, side, we really want to expand people’s conception as to where great ideas can come from, because as we see it, VentureCrowd’s mission is simply to fund great ideas, and great ideas can come from anywhere.


Gene Tunny  11:23

Okay. So there are angel investors which are wealthy individuals who might give small amounts, I don’t know, whatever they give nowadays, bu you need a few angel investors, typically, to be able to get the funds, you need to scale up. And so they’re there. And then there are also the venture capital firms, so established ones, they might give you a bit more a larger amounts of funding. What are the different series of funding? Are you across that James, what they talk about?


James Kwan  11:55

Yeah, taking a step back from that, okay, I think some of the policy work, which has been done in this space to inform our innovation framework has identified something called the Valley of Death. And that’s simply a poetic expression policymakers have attached to that very early or infant stage in a company’s life, businesses life, which are very, very difficult to attract capital for the reasons we’ve just gone over, right? They don’t have a track record. And the idea is just far-fetched, it hasn’t been proven. So going to your question about you know, what do Series A, B, C, what does precede mean? These are essentially an effort by the venture capital industry to categorise that very infant stage in a company’s life. And they do that in order to introduce or inject funding in at defined milestones. So company would start a precede, there may be a couple of different stages before that before advancing to Series A, then to B, then to C. And then each stage at each progression, that the checks get bigger. And the prospect of a return gets hopefully more certain.


Gene Tunny  13:07

Right, gotcha. Okay. So so A is the first is that right?


James Kwan  13:12

Yes. So I think they call it following the alphabet in some circles. You would start off at A, well you would start off at precede nowadays and then you would go to A then to B, and then to C,


Gene Tunny  13:24

and is there any accepted understanding of what scale of funding is involved? I mean, so for precede, are we talking in the order of 100k? Or a couple 100k? Or under a million? Or what’s, is there an accepted range of funding term?
James Kwan  13:38

Yeah, look, that’s actually a really good question. It’s one I usually one I kind of leave up to our capital managers who might actually kind of slice that up. But really, they are kind of stages to know, you know, at what level or stage an early stage startup is at. And you know, that’s a way to, again, to kind of size the amount of funding investors would like to put into that company.


Gene Tunny  14:02

Yeah, I might look it up and see if there are any, any guides to that. Just interested. But I mean, one thing I’ve noticed is that, like, it’s so risky, isn’t it? Because one of the reasons banks don’t want to invest is because there’s, there’s not a lot of collateral there. I mean, banks want to lend against, you know, they want to lend you money to buy assets. So they’ve got something they can actually repossess, or foreclose on if, if you can’t meet the repayments. So yeah, startups are a really risky proposition, because you might end up with with hardly anything at the end if if everything goes wrong, if it …


James Kwan  14:39

absolutely. And yet we have this problem with lagging productivity, right. So you kind of you know, take that as a, you know, necessary ingredient to nurturing and expanding Australia’s economy into the future. These are the ideas which need to be funded in order to give that objective a real shot.


Gene Tunny  14:59

Right, Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So it’s across, you know, it’s IT. It’s technology. There’s biotech. There’s I know that there’s a lot of discussion about medtech, biotech, particularly up here in Brisbane where I am medtech is quite popular, we’ve got the Olympics coming up. So everyone’s, sportstech too, I mean, there’s fintech, all sorts of things.

Okay, we’ll take a short break here for a word from our sponsor.


Female speaker  15:31

If you need to crunch the numbers, then get in touch with Adept Economics. We offer you frank and fearless economic analysis and advice. We can help you with funding submissions, cost benefit analysis studies and economic modelling of all sorts. Our head office is in Brisbane, Australia, but we work all over the world. You can get in touch via our website, http://www.adepteconomics.com.au. We’d love to hear from you.


Gene Tunny  16:00

Now back to the show.

Could I ask you about Venture Crowd? Where do you fit in this constellation of venture capital, financiers or funders or however you describe it?


James Kwan  16:15

Good question. So go back to what I was saying, what I said a little bit earlier about VentureCrowd’s mission, because it has been around since I think 2013, has always consistently been to fund great ideas. And sorry, we’ll take the detour path to you know, the response to your question about where VentureCrowd kind of sits in the space. What we have seen as the two main hurdles to fund great ideas would be a lack of diversity of thought and imagination from the traditional sources of capital entrepreneurs would normally go to right. So if you can’t persuade a family office or a VC fund to fund you, I mean, you’re pretty much out of pocket in terms of, you know, getting someone to, you know, to back you. My boss loves giving the example of Airbnb, right, who faced rejection letter after rejection letter after rejection letter in Silicon Valley. One of those rejection letters, I think said, and I’m paraphrasing here, we just don’t think travel is a sexy idea. And yet, and yet, we know Airbnb is an eminently profitable commercial idea, because you see it everywhere, right? So entrepreneurs have had to contend with, you know, the biases in the people who they would traditionally go to for funding. On the investor side, investors have had to contend with challenges in accessing private capital markets. That’s happening in a context of companies, good companies staying private for longer, are not even contemplating listing at all. So what VentureCrowd want to do in this space is to really democratise access to founders, access to early stage startups for normal investors. And on the founder side, expand the investor base. So they actually have people with the right alignment of values, to really buy into the founders vision and to make it a reality. So where VentureCrowd sits, you know, in the constellation of VC funds, as you’ve put it is really, that idea of democratising access to private capital markets, both for founders and investors. It doesn’t have a particular mandate, although we have a number of products which align along those segments, which you just mentioned. So there’s a VentureCrowd Health Tech fund. But what we’ve seen is that investors, particularly in an area as speculative as venture capital, want to be able to invest not just in something which will make an outsize financial return, but also align with their values. And we’re actually seeing this in the suppose more conservative end of investments, right with the rise of ESG ETFs. We think the way to do this is by giving communities out there the tools to invest in a broader range of investment opportunities, which hopefully, engages that flywheel dynamic of more investment opportunities available for investors incentivizes more investors to come into this space, which incentivizes more entrepreneurs to come to VentureCrowd to seek capital raising activities through us. So that’s basically it in a nutshell. There’s a couple of nuts and bolts kind of sitting under that. I might just leave it at that.


Gene Tunny  19:43

Yeah, we’ll certainly delve into that. What are some of the successes so far James? Are you able to take us through any of those. I saw that you’ve got a there’s a meal prep business is there health.


James Kwan  19:54

Yeah Be Fit Foods is our one which we’re currently conducting a crowd source funding campaign for. So crowd source funding if you think Kickstarter, but for shares and equities, you’re basically right on the mark. So they’re doing really, really well over an established, you know, relatively new space for an established business. And the great thing about them seeking funding through the CSF, a crowdsource funding regime, is that really opens up the doors again to you know, the Mum and Dad investors I alluded to earlier.


Gene Tunny  20:27

So, yes, yeah, sorry, James, I’m just interested in that, because you’re talking about Mum and Dad investors. So normally, these type of opportunities would be for the wealthier individuals who could be angels or sophisticated investors, where you have to meet certain income or net wealth requirements. With Mum and Dad, are you talking about just ordinary people or people with which don’t, who don’t meet the normal, those requirements for sophisticated being a sophisticated investor or an accredited investor? Yeah,


James Kwan  20:58

Absolutely, I mean, there’s probably a kind of parallel conversation to this, right. But when you look at financial services regulation, you have that split between wholesale investors, and that includes sophisticated investors, investors with experience, investors with a certain amount of annual income, on the one hand, and everyone else who gets put in the retail basket. Now that’s fine from a regulatory perspective, if the objective is to have additional protections, which retail investors may avail themselves of, but increasingly what we’ve seen is the categorization of a wholesale investor actually allows you to access a broader range of investments. So go back to what I was saying about companies staying private for longer, and you know what that means in terms of, again, normal people being able to build wealth into the future. That’s really a big part of what’s motivating VentureCrowd to democratise access to these markets. Right. Because why should they be the purview of the already rich?


Gene Tunny  22:05

Yeah, look, I think I generally agree with that, that viewpoint and that philosophy, I mean, the the issue is, of course, that it is it is a risky, sector isn’t it and and I mean, potentially, there are much higher returns, but you don’t get that without taking on a lot of risk. So how do you explain it to investors? What’s your, what’s your promise? Or what’s your, yeah what’s your pitch to investors?


James Kwan  22:31

So the first thing probably to say is, and again, you know, not legal advice, not financial advice. But venture capital, probably, you know, again, because of its, you know, speculative nature, will probably only ever occupy a very, very small part of, you know, someone’s portfolio. But it’s interesting, you mentioned the riskiness of, you know, this area, and, you know, that is a deserved reputation. But when we look at, you know, the volatility in asset classes, which we’ve traditionally treated as less risky, and I’m thinking US Treasuries, right. I mean, as an economist, you’d probably be aware about the volatility that asset class has gone through over the last 24 months. So it’s interesting when we talk about, you know, these asset classes as having a permanent risk profile, and maybe that needs to be revisited. But parking that venture capital investments will, you know, tend to occupy a fairly small portion of an investor’s portfolio. It probably also engages that part of the investor, which, again, what I said earlier, wants to invest not just because of the financial value inherent within that company, but also the values which that company represents.


Gene Tunny  23:47

Yeah, do you find that, that is a, you know, people are really looking for that, that is something that, you know, that will affect materially affect people’s investment decisions.


James Kwan  23:58

I don’t think people can deny the fact that people bring their personal values to investments. I don’t think there’s any other way to describe the, you know, explosive growth in ESG funds over the last 12 to 24 months. I think as a society, we’ve just been, we’re getting less prepared to accept the cost to society, which traditionally had been externalised and separated out from the company’s financial performance.

Gene Tunny 24:25

Yeah, fair enough.

James Kwan 24:28

Yeah. I wouldn’t read into that, though. So the qualification there, Gene would be that I am not an absolute supporter of ESG. I think there are a number of important questions which need to be asked in terms of how you reconcile the values which ESG is intended to stand for on an internal basis. So how do you reconcile the E standing for environment with the S which is for social with the G right when those things come into conflict? And I certainly do think those values aren’t always in alignment. Certainly that broader proposition of people investing, because they see something which, you know, they see a value as in a social or an ethical value they want to advance, in addition to the financial value they hope to realise in the future, I don’t think anyone can really deny that.


Gene Tunny  25:18

Right. So how does this work at VentureCrowd? Do you have a specific investment vehicle or a specific fund that is making ESG investments? Is that what your, is that the case?


James Kwan  25:30

We don’t, and you’d have to ask the people developing products as to why we don’t. But what we do have, and again, getting going back to what I was saying about ESG, having a couple of internal inconsistencies, it’s perfectly fine to invest on the basis of your values, but it probably needs to be a little more specific than something as amorphous as ESG.


Gene Tunny  25:54

Yeah, good point. Yeah. Well, what are the different ways people can invest through VentureCrowd James, just interested in that you have specific funds? Or is it based on specific startups? There’d be a startup, and you, you were mentioning before you went and crowdsourced for Be Fit, was it? Is that right?


James Kwan  26:12

Yeah Be Fit Foods, so probably the best way to think about and I think this kind of applies broadly, is you can either invest into a single asset, or you can invest into a portfolio, right? A number of our investments right now would fall into the former basket. So investments directed into single company. But we do have and the example which I gave earlier being the VentureCrowd Health Tech fund, that would be one which grants people exposure to you know, a number of companies playing in a particular sub sector of the economy, namely Health Tech.


Gene Tunny  26:44

Yeah. Yeah, gotcha. Okay. Okay. Very good. And James, you’re a lawyer, aren’t you? You’re the in-house counsel.


James Kwan  26:53

For my sins, they never take me out of the dungeon.


Gene Tunny  26:55

Right. Yeah. So, I mean, what sort of, are there tricky legal issues involved in VC? I mean, what what are the, can you give a flavour of the types of issues that people in your sector or, you know, in venture capital have to think about please?


James Kwan  27:11

On any given day, you will have, I think this is the way I would describe it, you would have work which is driven by the broader economic climate. So when, yeah, when times are good, no one ever looks at the contract, but when interest rates are rising, and people are finding it difficult to put food on the table, you know, that’s when people actually, you know, start taking, you know, a magnifying glass to the investment contracts and seeing whether or not they can withdraw their money at a particular time noting that venture capitals, you know, tends to be a mid to long term investment. You have companies who you may have, you know, I’m not singling anyone out, in particular, I’m just kind of painting this sector in a broad brush. But you may have companies who, who you got along famously when you’re raising capital for them, but as soon as that capital is raised and transferred into their account, you no longer hear from them. So you having to chase them up. So there’s a lot of things of a transactional nature, which are driven by again, the broader economic climate. The other parts of my job, what really the other half of my job really would be dedicated to standing up the technology platform, which VentureCrowd wishes to move its financial services and financial products onto and that’s a way of engaging online communities to make investments. We think, within that the, so I again alluded to blockchain has been a bit of a part of the VentureCrowd strategy. And we think, so putting aside cryptocurrency, which is a particular, you know, use case of blockchain, we think that there is something within that technology, which neatly aligns with this idea of democratising investment, because what blockchain allows you to do is to represent ownership in a virtual context. And it allows you to do that as potentially as seamlessly as sending an email, you know, between you and I. So, we have, you know in the works, a development of a blockchain platform, which we hope to leverage to facilitate investments in a virtual slash digital context. And there’s a long list of items of a regulatory nature which we’ll need to tick off before we can do that in a compliant and safe way. So that’s probably the other part of my job, which is probably a little less applicable to other VC funds and more specific to the job I currently occupy right now at VentureCrowd.


Gene Tunny  29:54

Right, and so is this why you’re in, you’re based in Canberra aren’t you James and is this why because you have to talk to Treasury I guess and maybe APRA, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.


James Kwan  30:04

So APRA does actually have I think it’s a little known secret. But APRA does actually have a Canberra office. But you know, the headquarters are still very much ensconced in Sydney CBD.


Gene Tunny  30:15

Right, gotcha yeah,


James Kwan  30:16

I’m actually in Canberra, because I’m a born and bred local, so this is kind of in the personals. And, you know, it’s probably safe to say that, but for, you know, the broad based acceptance for remote work, which has happened over the last 12 to 24 months, because of COVID, I probably wouldn’t be where I am right now that, you know, we now live in a world where you can work in a, you know, industry where, you know, you are very much separate, except for a virtual connection with your employer, and pros and cons, but it’s working out pretty well, for me.


Gene Tunny  30:48

Ah very good. This blockchain platform sounds terrific. Would this be a first to the world? Do you know if anyone else is looking at this worldwide? Are there any examples of this sort of thing?


James Kwan  30:58

Yeah. So there’s a couple of people who, you know, have also twigged to the idea of blockchain being, you know, a potential, you know, next generational platform to make investments. So, you know, the effort to tokenize, they call it, you know, real world assets. But, you know, you could also include shares traditional financial instruments into that definition, definition of real world assets. And there’s definitely a couple of people doing that, again, over in Singapore, which, by the way, I should probably mention VentureCrowd’s also recently announced that it’s established a branch office over in Singapore, which is why I know about this. There’s a couple of companies, the one which comes to mind is ADDX, which is an exchange, which is hoping to tokenize a bunch of financial instruments and put them onto the blockchain. And it’s just, you know, again, there are certain efficiencies which you know, businesses see, which make developing, you know, a market exchange on that technology on the blockchain and attract a prospect.


Gene Tunny  32:04

Yeah, I’ll have to look more into that. I know, that wasn’t ASX looking at this. And then they had an issue that just didn’t work out for them. They blew a lot of, 200 million or something on investigating a blockchain exchange for the Australian share market. But you know, they had a go at it. I mean, you know, you may you’ve got your own tech guys and your own ideas. So yeah, I think it’s worthwhile looking at for sure.


James Kwan  32:28

The ASX post-mortem Gene is actually really interesting to read because blockchain at its heart is the idea that you can scale up peer to peer transactions, right, whereas the current model of financial services and financial transactions very much and the realm with which ASX sits in is very much based on intermediaries. So you know, how you reconcile a technology which promises peer to peer transactions with also the presence of intermediaries is somewhat difficult to reconcile. And I think that’s, you know, something which comes out in the post-mortem on a ASX chess replacement project,


Gene Tunny  33:09

I’ll have to have a look. So you were saying what they were trying to do if they, the way they were coming at it was never going to work? Is that what you’re suggesting? Because it was incompatible. There’s this incompatibility with their model and why would you use blockchain for that? Because they just, they didn’t want to surrender their role as the as the intermediary? Is that what you’re arguing?


James Kwan  33:31

I think that’s something which definitely kind of comes through quite clearly in the report, or at least if not quite clearly, and then reading between the lines, right, because ASX is, you know, an existing financial service has a number of stakeholders, which, you know, it needs to accommodate. And those, you know, stakeholders make money. You know, they have business in the existing financial system, which is predicated on money passing through different entities before it hits, you know, kind of, you know, the end investor.


Gene Tunny  34:03

Yeah you’re talking about the brokers as their stakeholders and the banks. Okay, gotcha. That makes sense. I’ll have a close look at that. I just thought of that then when you mentioned this, and just remembered ASX blew a, a whole bunch of bunch of money on that. But look, you know, there are going to be failures, in any when we’re innovating and before you get to the successes. I want to ask you about one thing you said before where there are concerns, sometimes the founders, they’ll get the money deposited, and then you don’t hear from them. But one of the things with venture capital, I mean, the way I understood it is that, I mean one of the benefits of this approach is that the the founders can get the benefit of these people who’ve been in venture capital like the or the angel investors have been successful business people, and they’ve got a lot of experience and the, and the venture capitalists have seen it before. And so they can provide them with the founders with the benefit of that experience. So will they sit on a board, they could be advisors, I mean, I know that someone like Tim Ferriss, you know, he would be an advisor to Uber or Shopify, and then they’d have an IPO and then, you know, make ridiculous amounts of money. Like, how does it work with VentureCrowd? Do you have a role in how the company runs day to day or the strategic direction?


James Kwan  35:19

Again, good question Gene. So, ideally, the investment is tied also to some sort of ongoing engagement with the company. Right. And while that is the perhaps the ideal let’s say, it doesn’t always happen. And it really is kind of horses for courses right. Some founders, you know, may be reluctant to relinquish the control, which is represented by having, you know, an external person sit on their board. And it really is, I suppose, on investors VC funds, the onus is on them to actually persuade founders of the value of having a fresh set of eyes, an experienced set of eyes stewarding the company as it kind of goes through, you know, its various stages of maturity. And I suppose, where that doesn’t happen, right, where the company just, you know, takes the money and run that is, you know, a risk, which, you know, needs to be considered.


Gene Tunny  36:15

Yeah, I mean, just thinking about it, what I’ve seen with these, a lot of these startups is that it’s so long until they’ve actually got any significant amount of revenue, right. So for their first few years, they’re just burning cash. And they have a burn rate, don’t they? So they figure out oh, this is how much money we’re burning every month. And this means we can, you know, we’ve got to basically have the product up and running, earning revenue by this date. And, yeah, it’s, it can be tough that that sort of business. And if you’re investing in it, yeah, you’d have to, you really have to have nerves of steel, I suppose. Because a lot of it…

James Kwan 36:45

It’s not for the faint-hearted Gene

Gene Tunny 36:48

Yeah, that’s, that’s a good way to put it. Okay. Right. James, I should ask you about policy, you, you were talking about policy before. And Kim Carr, he was Industry Minister when I was in Treasury I remember. And he had an innovation review. And I think his idea was to try and connect everything up and have a more integrated system. And so he was Minister for Industry and Innovation for a while. So I guess he was probably trying to make, to improve the interconnectedness or whatever you want to call it when he was there, but you’re saying that there’s fragmentation? Is that, is that the case? You think that there are, that we could have better policy settings for venture capital here in Australia? Is that your view?


James Kwan  37:37

Yeah I don’t think I really have too much more to say, apart from you know, what I said earlier about fragmentation. But again, as I put it before, as an entrepreneur, right, your focus, the reason why you get up every day is to build a business. It’s not there to fill in a form. And so it is a little puzzling, that in order for people to access government assistance in this space, but it’s not just one form, it’s multiple forms. And those forms are Byzantine in nature. And you’ve got to deal with a host of government bureaucrats in order to access those those incentives, you know, those assistance packages, it may simply be, you know, a symptom of government being a complex creature, right. I mean, you would know that perhaps better than most people right Gene, but if that is the case, that the assistance is out there, it’s just not readily accessible. It’s not easily accessible, then perhaps one way of nurturing, you know, the venture capital industry in Australia, is to simply make it easier for entrepreneurs to do that on a personal basis with, you know, the least amount of friction possible in the least amount of time and attention taken away from building their own business.


Gene Tunny  38:55

Yeah, it sounds like what, is it about information, getting the information out there? Just trying to think how they can do that. Improve that accessibility? Maybe I’ll look into it and just see what the, yeah, I mean, I might have to try and connect with some founders and see what issues they’re, they’re facing moving. It’s, it’s a good point to, to make. I’ll also have to look at the break through fund and break through funding through Victoria, right BreakThrough Victoria. I’ll have to see how it’s gone. It’s, Ill have a look at its financial disclosures, and, gee, it’s risky for governments to do that sort of thing. And one thing that, it’s interesting it’s being done in Victoria, because Victoria, historically, I guess everyone’s forgotten it now but back in the late 80s and early 90s, there was the Tricontinental which was the merchant banking arm of the State Bank of Victoria. And it lost a lot of money on commercial real estate, if I remember correctly, and that basically led to the downfall of the State Bank of Victoria. And you know, huge issue at the time. So in, you know, venture capital’s arguably more risky than commercial property. So it’s it’s interesting that they’re doing that I guess they, if you’re upfront if you’re clear that you could lose money and it’s highly risky then, and they’ll argue that there’s a public benefit to it. Maybe you can, maybe you can get away with it if you limit your losses I suppose, limit yeah…


James Kwan  40:23

Yeah, what is it people say, Gene, don’t put money in to an investment which, you know, you’re not happy losing right, and I think that applies on the individual level. It probably also applies at the level of state governments.


Gene Tunny  40:34

Yeah, I think that’s a very good point James. Absolutely. Okay, James, anything. Any final points before we wrap up? This has been great. I’ve learned a lot about your business. And yeah, really appreciate your perspective, is there anything more you’d like to add before we wrap up?


James Kwan  40:48

No, I think you’ve done a pretty good job of covering everything. I’ve really appreciated the opportunity just to come here and have a bit of a chinwag. And you know, if there’s an opportunity to do it in the future. You know, who knows?


Gene Tunny  40:58

Absolutely. Okay, well, next time I’m in, in Canberra, and yeah, not during the winter, though. And it’s winter there at the moment. And I remember those Canberra winters, so stay strong, stay warm. Very good.

James Kwan 41:12

Thanks again for that Gene.

Gene Tunny 41:16

Pleasure. Thanks, James.

Righto thanks for listening to this episode of Economics Explored. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can send me an email via contact@economicsexplored.com Or a voicemail via SpeakPipe. You can find the link in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d be grateful if you could tell anyone you think would be interested about it. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learn about the show. Finally, if your podcasting app lets you then please write a review and leave a rating. Thanks for listening. I hope you can join me again next week.


42:04

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Credits

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Categories
Podcast episode

Odd way to fix housing crisis proposed by Aus. Gov’t: invest in stocks first w/ Dr Cameron Murray, Sydney Uni.

The Australian Government has been having trouble getting its proposed Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) passed by the Senate. The policy looks odd. With some justification, the Australian Greens have commented: “In its current form the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) legislation will see the housing crisis get worse. We can’t fix the housing crisis by gambling money on the stock market and not guaranteeing a single cent will be spent on housing.” In their dissenting report on the bill, the Greens’ cited the views of this episode’s guest, Dr Cameron Murray. Cameron is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Henry Halloran Trust at the University of Sydney. 

Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. 

You can listen to the episode via the embedded player below or via podcasting apps including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

About Dr Cameron Murray

Dr Cameron Murray is Post-Doctoral Researcher at Henry Halloran Trust, The University of Sydney. He is an economist specialising in property and urban development, environmental economics, rent-seeking and corruption.

Book: Rigged: How networks of powerful mates rip off everyday Australians

Website: https://fresheconomicthinking.substack.com/  

Twitter: @drcameronmurray 

What’s covered in this bonus episode

  • Cameron’s submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill [2:39]
  • What’s going on with the Housing Australia Future Fund [5:02]
  • The only reason you can make a premium is if you take risk [8:57]
  • Why you need to separate the funding and the spending [10:36]
  • Why doesn’t the Future Fund just directly invest in new houses? [14:21]
  • How governments are increasingly doing financially tricky things that don’t make sense [19:23]
  • Cameron’s thoughts on the impact of the bill on the level of investment in housing [23:14]
  • What’s going on behind the scenes at Parliament House [26:18]

Links relevant to the conversation

Cameron’s submission to the inquiry into the Housing Australia Future Fund:

https://fresheconomicthinking.substack.com/p/australias-housing-future-fund-my

Direct link to Senate Committee inquiry report:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/HousingPackageofBills/Report

HAFF inquiry home page:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/HousingPackageofBills

Transcript: Odd way to fix housing crisis proposed by Aus. Gov’t: invest in stocks first w/ Dr Cameron Murray, Sydney Uni.

N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.

Gene Tunny  00:06

Welcome to the Economics Explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host Gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist and former Australian Treasury official. The aim of this show is to help you better understand the big economic issues affecting all our lives. We do this by considering the theory evidence and by hearing a wide range of views. I’m delighted that you can join me for this episode, please check out the show notes for relevant information. Now on to the show. Hello, welcome to this bonus episode on the housing Australia Future Fund. The H A double f or half. It’s Saturday the 25th of March here in Australia and throughout the week, the Australian government has been having trouble getting the half passed by the Senate. That’s probably unsurprising because the policy looks like a bad one. With some justification the Australian Greens have commented in its current form the housing Australia Future Fund legislation will see the housing prices get worse. We can’t fix the housing crisis by gambling money on the stock market and not guaranteed a single cent will be spent on housing. That paragraphs from the Greens dissenting report on the housing Australia Future Fund bill. In that dissenting report, the greens relied significantly on testimony to the inquiry from my guest this episode, my fellow Brisbane based economist Dr. Cameron Mary Cameron is a postdoctoral researcher at the Henry Halloran trust at the University of Sydney. I recorded this conversation with Ken Friday last week on the 17th of March 2023. I’ll link in the show notes to Cameron’s submission to the inquiry into the half cam submission as a great example of the application of economic logic to an important economic policy issue. Cam sees through the accounting trickery and the financial engineer at behind the fund. He shows how the Australian government has been too clever by half. It’s trying to get credit for doing something about the country’s housing crisis. But what it’s proposing could be next to useless. Right. Let’s get into the episode. Please let me know what you think about what either camera I have to say by emailing me at contact at economics explored.com. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Cam Dr. Cameron Murray, welcome back to the show.

Cameron Murray  02:39

Thanks for having me again, Gene.

Gene Tunny  02:40

Oh, it’s a pleasure, Cameron, I read with much interest your latest post on fresh economic thinking. And it’s about your submission to the Senate inquiry into the housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and other bills. Could you tell us a bit about what that involves? So you’ve written a submission to this inquiry? And you’ve also presented to the inquiry you gave testimony? Did you?

Cameron Murray  03:07

Yeah, that’s right. So this bill was passed their house, the lower house, and now the Senate is reviewing it. And what they’ve done is held this inquiry asked for public submissions, and had people who made submissions come in for a day of expert testimony so that their senators can ask specific people, you know, technical questions, what do you think about this? What about this design element? And so I was part of that on on Wednesday, this week. And yeah, so the bill itself is called the housing Australia future funding bill. And the basic idea is the government has decided to address Australia’s current housing problems. We’ve seen rents rise, we’ve seen rising homelessness, we’ve seen longer queues in public housing waiting lists, they’ve decided the best thing for them to do is take $10 billion from the Treasury and give it to the Future Fund, which is a sort of publicly managed investment fund, and cross their fingers and hope that that fund makes a return that’s higher than their opportunity cost, you know, the cost of the government’s dead and use that margin on the risk to fund something in the future, some unspecified, granting in relation to what in the text of the bill is called supporting housing need. So that’s what it was all about. And, and yeah, I gave some testimony on Wednesday.

Gene Tunny  04:35

So the federal government’s claiming that this is going to help them build I think 30,000 social housing dwellings over the next five years or so. So that’s their that’s the plan. But I think what I like about your submission is it essentially talks about how this is a rather roundabout way of going about it, which doesn’t actually guarantee you’re going to deliver it to you As in,

Cameron Murray  05:00

this is the mad thing. And this is. So let me start by saying, to be clear what they’re doing to build houses is taking $10 billion and buying all sorts of assets in the future funds that are not houses. Right? So that’s what they’re trying to do. And it’s really funny because there’s an actually an episode of Utopia, you know, the comedy show about the bureaucracy in Australia, where Rob switches character, who’s the sane one, amongst the insanity is explaining to a political staffer who says to him, What about an infrastructure? Future Fund? Yeah, don’t you get it, it’s about the future, he says. But spending the money on infrastructure today solves the future, we don’t need a fund. We don’t need a new office, we don’t need these fund managers. And you know, when we watch utopia, we all laugh and think we’re the same guy in the room. But what happened at the Senate inquiry is that I was the only guy and everybody else who laughed at Utopia when they watched it was the crazy guy who thinks that spending money on not houses is the best way to spend money on houses. And so there was this really perverse political slogan that kept creeping in, which was, this is going to secure funding for the future and insulated from future political decisions. And I just sat there going, I don’t, I’ve read this bill, because this funding is riskier, because you’re investing in a risky asset and the current Future Fund loss $2.4 billion last year, and spent half a billion dollars on fund managers to achieve that outcome. So we almost lost $3 billion last year. So it’s possible that we put 10 billion in this fund and have 9 billion next year. And then that’s the way we’re securing the future funding. The legislation is also written such that the future Minister has the discretion of how much from the fund to spend, and on what projects. And it also introduces a cap of 500 million per year that a future minister can withdraw from the fund. So what you’re actually doing is providing a great excuse for a future minister to spend less than 500 million. And in fact, zero if the fund is losing money. So there’s this weird disconnect between the political slogan of securing long term funding insulating it from politics and the reality, which is adding risk to a fund compared to just having 10 billion in the bank or at the Treasury where it is, and not insulating at all, and just still relying on future ministers discretion with no commitments. So that 30,000 dwellings you said, is not enough. There’s no, it’s not written in their rules. It’s written in the guideline as a hypothetical of how much, you know, if all went according to plan, and we would expect this, and I’m like, but there’s like, like many housing strategies and plans that the federal government and state governments have had in the past, there is nothing holding them to account on those promises. So yeah, it’s, it’s a really, really strange one. And I felt like there are about 20 or 30 witnesses or experts at the hearing. Now, only two or three of us actually calling this out the majority of the industry. And the researchers had really, I don’t know, bought the line that this is something that it’s not.

Gene Tunny  08:16

Yeah. So what’s going on, it appears to me is they’re essentially that borrowing, they’re going to be borrowing this money, or it’s going to increase the borrowing requirement by $10 billion, because we’re currently we have been running budget deficits. So it’s going to increase that, that borrowing requirement, we’re going to put that into this the future funds, so we’re essentially borrowing money to then invest in the share market or Enron’s Yeah, well,

Cameron Murray  08:45

if we’ve invested in bonds, we’re borrowing money to buy the bond back off ourselves. If this fund, if this fund is like eight or seven or 8%, government, Australian government treasury, that’s just pure accounting. Yeah, you know, trickery, you know, and that shows it but the whole thing is accounting trickery, right? Because, you know, you’re just recycling the money via the current shareholders of BHP into Telstra and Commonwealth Bank, right, by buying the shares off them and then later selling it back to them. And the only reason you can make a premium with this fund over the over not borrowing it, right, because you still gotta pay interest on the Treasury borrowing. The only reason you can make a premium is if you take risk. Yeah, if you’re taking risk, then it’s not a secure, long term funding thing. You’re just adding risk unnecessarily, and delaying spending money on building houses. And, you know, it took a little bit of explaining to get that through at the hearing. But ultimately, I had, for example, John Corrigan, you know, back me up on that argument, and I think Brendan Coates from the Grattan Institute who is a big supporter, the policy sort of had to concede that Yeah, at the end of the day, you’re adding risk in the hope of increasing the funding. But risk is real, right? We just can’t count on winning In the next few years,

Gene Tunny  10:02

right, so Brennan was buying the government’s line that this is about getting a secure funding source. He, I mean, I know you can’t speak for Brendan, I’m just wondering where he was coming from?

Cameron Murray  10:13

Well, actually, the idea is actually from one of our Grattan Institute report, and they proposed a $20 billion social housing fund. And, and, and, you know, I’m not averse to the government sort of diversifying the capital side, right on its balance sheet. Yeah. And and owning some high risk assets? I don’t, I’m not averse to that, in principle, right. But you’ve got to separate the funding and the spending idea. So the way I try to tell people, if the government’s saying we don’t have the money for it, it means we don’t want to do it. Because look at the submarines look at every other big look at the Olympics, right, no one’s has gotten the Olympic Future Fund, no one’s got a submarine future fun. We spend on what we want. And if someone’s saying where’s the budget, or where’s the funding, you sort of missing the idea, but but even more fundamentally, you know, if you go and raise money in the share market, from new investors for your business, each investor doesn’t say, I’ll give you this money, but you can only spend this money on, you know, cleaning your office and and the other shareholder says, no, no, but I only want you to earmark my money for doing this, right. What we do is we pool that money together and spend it the best way we can on the operations we need to do and it’s the same for the government, you need to separate Well, we’re gonna raise money, the best way we know how, whether that’s different types of taxes or borrowing, and we’re going to spend money the best way we know how and tying two things together is bad. Operationally, it’s just like, it’s bad for my business to promise one shareholder that their money goes to one type of spending, and another shareholder that I’ll only spend yours on new trucks. You know, it doesn’t really make sense it and it’s very hard to break through this kind of weird, I don’t know, budget illusion that we’ve all got that, you know, we must do this. For this, we must raise money in this way for this spending.

Gene Tunny  12:06

Okay, we’ll take a short break here for a word from our sponsor.

Female speaker  12:12

If you need to crunch the numbers, then get in touch with Adept Economics. We offer you Frank and fearless economic analysis and advice, we can help you with funding submissions, cost benefit analysis, studies, and economic modelling of all sorts. Our head office is in Brisbane, Australia, but we work all over the world, you can get in touch via our website, http://www.adepteconomics.com.au. We’d love to hear from you.

Gene Tunny  12:41

Now back to the show. I liked how you wrote about this off balance sheet trick or the off balance sheet tricks, the basic idea of the half. So that’s the housing Australia Future Fund is to create an off balance sheet accounting trick whereby the debt associated with the fund and the assets in the fund are considered as a bundle and hence not counted in measures of public debt. So I mean, I haven’t seen exactly how they’ll what the accounting treatment of this will be in the budget, it seems to me what they’re doing is they’re setting this up as a, it’s an SPV, or some sort of public Financial Corporation so they can get it outside of the traditional balance sheet measures. They put in the budget, which is for they have it for general government, but then they also have public non financial corporations, but they don’t have public Financial Corporation. So I’m wondering if that’s what they’re going to categorise it as

Cameron Murray  13:34

I think, yeah, that’s part of the intention. And we actually see those types of budget tricks a lot, I think, New South Wales rail, you know, they tried to shift things off balance sheet, but at the end of the day, you know, we as economists should be looking through that, right. Oh, yeah. And saying, Look, you know, debts debt, but, you know, these are all assets, we can bundle them all together, you know, doesn’t matter where you’ve accounted for them. And the way we’re going to assess whether that debt was, you know, justified or efficient or productive is what, you know, what the investments made in general are, so whether it was on budget or off, you know, it should be the same, right, and you’re borrowing money to buy these assets. Doesn’t matter how you account for it. And that’s the that’s what sort of leads me to my other point is that houses are assets. Yeah. Australia’s property market is the hottest market every property every investor wants to own some. Yeah. So why doesn’t the Future Fund build new houses to expand this pool of property assets in the process, that equity can be on its balance sheet, but instead of, you know, bumping up the prices of BHP shares that you’re going to buy, you actually expand the housing stock in the process, and you can still have your off balance sheet tricks. I actually looked historically and since the Future Fund started in 2006, that’s the current investment fund Australia hands. They’ve made 7.8% average return annually, the average Australian dwelling increased in value by 7.7% per year since 2006. So just the capital value increase of owning a representative sample of Australian property would have got you the same returns as the Future Fund. So it’s not clear to me why we’re recycling this money via other assets, before we build housing assets, we can look at the balance sheets of state, public housing managers. Yeah. And when they value their land and their property portfolios every year, they got to bump it up, you know, 5 million billion. So here 10 billion here, because all this portfolio of properties they own, you know, it’s a valuable asset that rises in value. So So I’ve proposed quietly to a lot of people involved that if you want to have your financial trick and your Future Fund, get the border of the future find to only spend the money, building new dwellings, and then put the equity that you have, yeah, into the fund, you can keep your financial track, but at least you’re you know, keeping the housing construction going. And you’re immediately accumulating a pool of houses that you can allocate to the people who need it at a cheap price.

Gene Tunny  16:13

Yeah. And so is this been driven by the State of the Commonwealth budget, they, they want to make sure that they think they’re gonna get some earnings from this housing Australia Future Fund that can then offset the spending that they’ll have to make on public housing. So they want to get that they’re hoping they can get that. Because if they just go ahead and start building public housing, then they don’t have that revenue to offset that. Is that what they’re thinking?

Cameron Murray  16:39

I think you’re right, I think that’s what the thinking is. But at the end of the day, you know, having those houses supplied to people at a cheap price offsets are the spending on those people already. So the benefit is there, either in the form of the rental, or in the form of the income from the other assets. So, if I was to put on my cynical, political economist hat, I would say the reason this programme has gained so much traction and is probably going to be the law few months, is because it doesn’t change the housing market, it’s going to pass because it doesn’t achieve anything. And that’s what is truly desired. By, you know, the political parties involved is that they want to look like they’re doing something without actually doing it. I’ve had conversations with politicians who’ve told me what’s wrong with the housing market? You know, prices went up, because we dropped the interest rate, that’s good. And rents went up, because incomes went up. That’s good. There’s no market failure here. government shouldn’t do anything. So if that’s what they say to me, how is it then that they passed this bill that’s meant to do something, the only coherent story there is that this bill is to look like you’re doing something, but not doing something because you genuinely think the property market is doing what it’s doing? Well? Yeah, that’s my super cynical. Political Economy hat.

Gene Tunny  18:08

Yeah, you may well be right. I mean, it’s the Sir Humphrey Appleby type of approach where people actually don’t care about whether a problem solved, they just want it look as if something’s being done.

Cameron Murray  18:21

I’ve had a lot of people message me since my testimony to tell me their experiences of this. And I don’t know what I’m going to call this pattern, you know, does it have a name? I’ve tried to call it something like pre compromising. Where you take a good idea, you turn it into a bad idea, but it’s still got the same words in the bill. While so it looks like you’re still doing something. Yeah, you push that. And you’ve totally compromised the content, or the effectiveness, just so you can keep the name because the name is what people will talk about. And it looks like you’re doing something. It’s a what’s it called housing Australia Future Fund? Yeah. Sounds like something important is being done. Right. Yeah. And the more that gets in press headlines, the more we give credibility to the current government, who is trying to, of course tread this line of keeping prices up for people who own property, and pretending they want to keep prices down and rents down to people who don’t own property. And that’s a real interesting political tightrope. That happens a lot in this country.

Gene Tunny  19:23

Yeah, I really liked your submission, Cameron, because I thought it. I mean, it highlights our governments are increasingly doing these sorts of things. And they don’t really make a lot of sense when you think about it, because I remember when I was in Treasury, we had to set up these buildings Australia fund education investment fund, that’s I forget the name of the other one. And it didn’t really make a lot of sense because you’re just taking money and we ended up I think we ended up having to borrow money to put into them, because of the time you know, but the original idea was that there was Yeah, and they were gonna stick them in these funds, but then by the time On had to transfer the money, it was the financial crisis. So the timing wasn’t very good. And then they we see they constrain your ability to get cash. I mean, because you’re saying, Okay, we’re going to lock up all of this money in these funds, even though we don’t need it at the moment. So it can it can constrain your budget flexibility. So I don’t like them for that reason. And the other point that you’re making is your your, if you end up having to borrow to invest in it, well, you’re, you’re borrowing money just invested in the share market. And it’s not necessarily achieving the public policy objectives that you that you want to achieve. So yeah,

Cameron Murray  20:43

that’s exactly the way to put it, you’re gonna borrow 10 million to build houses for people and give it to them below market? Why do you need to recycle that money through the share market? Why don’t you put it through the pokies, there’s also a chance of making more money there, you know, it’s high risk. Why don’t you just take your half million, that half billion that you want to spend each year and spend it for the next 20 years, and just start a construction programme? Like, the really bizarre thing? To me, I read this bill. And in Part Seven H or whatever it is, it says, The Treasury will credit the housing Future Fund with $10 billion. It just doesn’t. And I just think to myself, How does where’s this 10 billion coming from? Aren’t we having this fund to get the money that we don’t have a now you’re saying we have 10 billion? If we have 10 billion? We don’t need the fund? Right? Yeah. And, you know, no one else seems to pick up on that, oh, we just credit with 10 billion. I’m like, why don’t you just build houses, credit them? Credit, the builders is 10 billion. Yeah.

Gene Tunny  21:45

So this is where they’re hoping that by doing it, you know, essentially gambling or well investing with borrowed money, they can get enough of a return on that, to then help fund this additional expenditure. And that’s going to lessen the budgetary impact. So that’s essentially what’s going on. And I just think it’s interesting, because it’s an interesting example of one of these. These things, these clever financial vehicles, the Polly’s and the advisors, I think, in particular, they love it, they think they’re geniuses, but it’s not really solving the problem.

Cameron Murray  22:20

Yeah. And let me just talk you through what I think is the best case scenario. They put money in this fund, sometime in the middle of this year, after we’ve had a big asset market correction, and they they’re near the bottom. In the next 12 months, there’s a real big boom. And in 12 months time, the ministers say, Oh, look, we’ve been making all this money. I’m gonna make this happen. Yeah, that’s the best case. The worst case is, you know, we’ve just seen a bank collapse in the United States, and you know, Swiss government bailout the Credit Suisse bank, the worst case scenario is they put $10 billion into the Future Fund, start accumulating assets in the next six months. And then come September, October, you know, popular time for financial market crashes, the fund loses 10% of its value. And next year, the minister says, oh, we can’t spend anything on public housing, because we just lost a billion dollars on the share market. Yeah, that’s, I don’t know which one’s more probable, but both are potential outcomes. And if the second one happens, you know, I hope the public and the press hold the government to account and say, Hey, this is what you wanted. You were told this is the risk you’re taking. And you still did it anyway. I really hope that opens people’s eyes. If that happens.

Gene Tunny  23:34

Yeah, that’s a good. That’s a good point. So you’re saying that the the level of investment in public housing could end up being dependent upon the returns on this fund

Cameron Murray  23:46

highly likely, implicitly, tells the minister only spend what you make, you know, for funds doing well spend money, if it’s not don’t spend money, the way it sort of described, and it’s got this cap in it as well. I would say there’s a sort of, you know, a built in excuse, yeah. Whereas you kind of want the opposite incentive. You want more public spending on housing during a downturn in the markets, right? You want to smooth out construction cycles. Yeah. Whereas I sort of feel this builds in the opposite political incentive. But the you know, the next 12 months are going to be very interesting if this bill is finally passed. And you know, the markets are very volatile at the moment. And the Future Fund, of course, lost a couple of percent last year, you went down the existing funds. So if that happens again, yeah. Who knows? Yeah.

Gene Tunny  24:40

Just before we wrap up, Cameron, can I ask you what was it like presenting to the committee? I mean, did anyone get it? Did any bells rang? Or what’s the expression? I mean, I imagined some of the Imagine that. There must have been, some of them must be sceptical, or I hope some of the people on this committee worse sceptical. But yeah. What was your impression?

Cameron Murray  25:05

My impression is that this process is a little bit of a charade. So that each political party in the crossbenches can get their sort of own experts on to provide excuses for the political bargain that they want out of this in the Senate. So I think most of the action is happening behind the scenes. And this is just each, each person in the Senate had a chance to call forth their own experts. And so that was done. My impression is that your committee is loaded based on the political party of the day, right. You know, I was cut off from my introduction, when I was saying, you get a few minutes to make introductory remarks. And I was explaining how I can’t believe you’re trying to describe this as a low risk secure, politically insulated funding stream when it seems the exact opposite. Yeah. And they’re like, oh, you know, we only allowed two minutes for these opening remarks get. And, of course, if you if you go and check the footage, everyone bloody rambled for five minutes. So you can sort of see that and, and, you know, I’ve spoken to a variety of Senators offices, as well. And they’ve obviously taken on board what I’ve said, but you don’t see minds being changed. Live during this process. That’s not where it happens. It’s all happening with phone calls and meetings and negotiations amongst each party and independents are

Gene Tunny  26:36

all behind the scenes. Okay. Because I was just wondering, I imagine that the, the greens would probably be pushing the for the government just to build public housing. Right. Yeah. Well, that must be in there. That’s right. So

Cameron Murray  26:50

I think it’s Nick McKim is the green senator from Tassie. And he was, you know, onboard when I started my opening remarks by saying, you realise there’s a scene in the comedy show utopia, right? We started today. That is exactly what you’re doing. But you all laughed with the other side of the joke. And now you’re you are the joke. And so he got a few chuckles But you know, the other the other people didn’t really like it. So yeah, the greens are definitely not keen on these off balance sheet financial tricks at all, which is really puzzling, right? It’s really puzzling to me. I don’t know what the Liberals should be sort of have a similar mind being a bit more honest financially and say, let’s focus on what’s a waste of money and what’s not. Let’s not focus on where you record it in the accounts. So I don’t I don’t know what their views are. But my impression is the Labour Party, you know, they’ve almost got this superannuation brain, or this Future Fund brain like this sort of, yeah, it’s inhibited their ability to go, you know, this is not magic. It’s not a Magic Pudding. It’s just buying different assets.

Gene Tunny  27:57

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I’ll put a link to your submission in the show notes. I think it’s really good. And you make a good point about how, yeah, I didn’t realise the fees paid by the Future Fund for funds management was so high, but I guess it makes sense, given the amount of funds under

Cameron Murray  28:13

point 2% of the funds under management. That is still half a billion dollars a year, which is of course, again, the maximum that this Future Fund for housing can actually spend on housing subsidies or housing construction. Yeah. So the maximum they can spend is roughly what the average management fee is for the existing Future Fund. Yeah, just to get your orders of magnitude straight of what’s involved.

Gene Tunny  28:40

Okay. And, yes, it has been passed by the lower house, it’s going to it’s being considered by the Senate at the moment, and it’ll probably be passed, I imagine, based on what you were saying,

Cameron Murray  28:51

my understanding is the cross bench has a lot of power in the Senate here to get things changed. My suspicion is that if there are key crossbenchers that take my argument seriously and a couple of other of the submitters as well, they may, for example, put in the legislation a minimum amount of spending out of the fund instead of a maximum to sort of guarantee it. And they may, you know, and that might just be a way of diverting instead of buying bhp shares and Commonwealth Bank, you know, build houses with it and own the equity of those houses with your public housing developer or however you account for that. So that that that may be a realistic change. I don’t think it’s gonna get thrown out or go back to the drawing board.

Gene Tunny  29:38

Right. Okay. Well, again, well done, Cameron. Yeah, excellent submission, lots of very sound, economics and public finance in there. Any final words before we wrap up?

Cameron Murray  29:49

No, I just want to, you know, cross my fingers that the best case scenario turns out if this fun gets passed.

Gene Tunny  29:55

Very good. Okay. Cameron Murray, thanks so much for appearing on the show.

Cameron Murray  29:59

Thanks for having me, Gene.

Gene Tunny  30:02

Righto, thanks for listening to this episode of Economics Explored. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can send me an email via contact@economicsexplored.com Or a voicemail via SpeakPipe. You can find the link in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d be grateful if you could tell anyone you think would be interested about it. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learn about the show. Finally, if your podcasting app lets you then please write a review and leave a rating. Thanks for listening. I hope you can join me again next week.

Cameron Murray 30:49

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Credits

Thanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show’s sponsor, Gene’s consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. 

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