Well, good news everybody. Fresh off delivering on his promise to reduce our power bills by $275.

You all, you’ve all gotten that discount, right? I mean, I haven’t yet, but I’m sure you have. Everybody else has gotten it, right? Anthony Albanese, our prime minister, is promising to look at productivity and he’s bringing together a group of the best and brightest apparently to talk about productivity. And he’s sure that it’s about productivity and not about taxation. But in fact, someone who’s been talking about productivity for a very long time and someone whose voice should be at a table like that one is John Humphrey. He’s an economist. He’s from the Australian Taxpayers Alliance and he joins me now on the Topher project. John, thank you so much for joining me.

[From video]

Good day Topher, good to be here. [End video]

Look, I’m getting shades of so many of the talk fests that we’ve seen before happening in CRA where various prime ministers have brought together people and essentially curated them to achieve the outcome that they ideologically would like to achieve. I frankly don’t trust Anthony Albanese to even understand what productivity is, let alone deliver on it. Have you been invited to this summit?

[From video]

I have not. No, I’ve taken to every week saying on our own podcast, “Look, I think my invitation’s lost in the mail. It must be coming soon.” But no, I suspect it isn’t in the mail and it’s coming never. So, I don’t think that’s coming. I look and I agree with you that I come into this with a high amount of skepticism about Albanese’s willingness to actually pursue a productivity agenda. [End video]

Well, I’m sorry to interrupt this interview with John Humphrey. We’ll get back to that in just a second, but first, my name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project and I am 100% viewers supported. So, if you enjoy this sort of content and you’d like me to keep the stories coming, then please support the Topher project by buying me a coffee via the button that you’ll find at topherfield.net. I do my best work when I am caffeinated and angry. If you bring the caffeine, I’ll bring the anger, and you’ll keep seeing videos like this one. Also, if you like my videos and my interviews, then you will love my books. You can find them at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. There’s my first book on civil disobedience and its role in the modern age, even in a democratic society like ours. There is also Good Christians Break Bad Laws. That’s the theology of civil disobedience. There is my DVD documentary, Battleground Melbourne. You can watch it for free online at battlegroundmelbourne.com. But if you’d like a copy for yourself, then go to goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com and get it there. Plus, you’ll find all of my merch in a range of different designs in t-shirts, long sleeve tees, hoodies, and all the rest of it. So, please support the Topher project. Buy me a coffee at topherfield.net or check out my merch at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. That would be much appreciated. Now, let’s get back to my interview with John Humphrey.

[From video]

I’m very thankful that he said the word productivity. I mean, a lot of politicians do. They’ve worked out it’s a very important buzzword. If that I can only now discover its meaning and what drives productivity, that would be a great second step. But I, as I said when this started, I said, look, I’m skeptical, but I’ll withhold judgment in the desperate 1% hope that something happens. And it hasn’t happened yet. So, it’s good to live in hope. It’s better than to live constantly depressed. [End video]

Well, John, you mustn’t have got the memo that actually requiring words to have specific definitions is actually colonial oppression these days. You’re not allowed to say that productivity has a specific meaning. Some of the ideas that we know are being brought into this table are some pretty significant tax increases. One of the suggestions that’s going to be put forward is increasing the GST to 15%, removing exemptions for fresh fruit and vegetables and other things that are currently exempt from the GST. But with the promise that they’re going to make that back to us by giving us a tax-free threshold with the GST, it sounds like an unnecessary complication for starters, but also just yet another example of a money go around where they’re taking with one hand and promising to give it back to us with the other.

[From video]

Yeah. The reason I’m skeptical of these proposals for a higher GST, which nearly always come with a promise of a slightly lower income tax. The problem with that is, as you well know, we have bracket creep in our income tax system. So the GST increase that’s permanent. We’re stuck with that for good. We get a cut in income tax. I assume that then fades over time unless we index tax brackets. We’ve talked about all that before. But the point is the tax cut goes away. The tax hike stays. And that’s why I don’t trust it. The other thing to note on that, by the way, economically speaking, there is a decent argument for switching to a GST, but the exact same benefit can be achieved by keeping the current system and letting people have tax-free savings accounts. So if the exact same benefit can be achieved that way, let’s just do it that way. And if they don’t want to do it that way, then we need to ask why. So why do they want to do it the way that increases tax instead of the way that decreases tax? And I think that answer question answers itself. [End video]

Well, the why is an important question here? Because trust is at an all-time low in our institutions and in our government. And I’ll put my hand up and say I don’t trust them either. And I’m probably contributing to some of the mistrust and I’m quite proud that I am. But the mistrust is real because things like the GST being introduced was supposed to result in the doing away with a lot of state level taxes that we still live with to this day. What are some of the things that you would act if you had a seat at that table? What are some of the reforms that you would actually be recommending and saying, “Hey, this would actually be good for Australia.”

[From video]

Well, the single most important thing we could do is actually it is relating to tax. I think you’re right. By the way, this so-called productivity summit has turned into a tax hike summit. But tax is the right place to look. Just not for the reasons the government are. They’re looking at ways to raise more money, but tax is a major impediment to our productivity system. So tax is the right place to look, but tax cuts. And we just mentioned before the problem with bracket creep. The single best thing we could do would be to get rid of bracket creep. Yeah. Indexing the tax brackets, which is like a small automatic income tax cut each year to make up for the fact that bracket creep increases our income tax every year. So that would be the best thing they could do. That’s very unlikely with this government. I was aware of that. The Australia Taxpayers Alliance did put in a submission in which I briefly mentioned all of the stuff that they should do. But then I mostly spent time talking about one thing that they actually could do. We’ve talked about this before. They could get rid of that stupid 10% Medicare levy bracket, which would be a nice bite-sized achievable tax cut that would help the poor people. It would help productivity. It wouldn’t blow the budget. So, that’s a doable reform. And there’s a bunch of those little doable reforms that they could do and couch it all in sort of labor language. I live in hope. I am currently skeptical, but we’ll see what they do. [End video]

Well, let’s not forget that we have seen from time to time some good reforms coming out of Labour prime ministers. I’m mindful of Bob Hawk. We saw some reforms under him. Of course, a mixed bag. Every prime minister, including Liberal Prime Ministers, are a mixed bag. But the Labor Party, they do have a history that involves some decent reforms. And it’s not impossible that we could see some out of Labor government’s present and future, but not the way they’re talking at the moment. I’ve actually, well, we actually did a dedicated interview on that 10% Medicare levy that you just mentioned. I’ll put the link to that particular interview into the description of this one for anyone that wants to go down that rabbit hole a little bit further. What has to change in Australia for us to actually begin to make some genuine productivity improvements? You understand the importance of productivity. So do I. Like you say, politicians have discovered the word, although arguably not necessarily the meaning. What would we need to do in this country to really get ourselves being more productive again?

[From video]

Well, there’s the approximate answer which is basically it’s a very simple trifecta of things you need to do. We need to cut tax on people who are producing things. We need to deregulate people who are producing things and we need cheaper energy. So that trifecta that’s the proximate cause. I suspect you know that answer. I’ve been repeating that answer until I’m people are bored of me saying it. So there is a question underneath that which is how do you get there which is a question of how do we fix our broken political system, which we probably can’t cover off in this short interview, but just the one thing to note there is the thing we desperately lack, that we have a real recession in Australia, is political courage. Right the willingness of political leaders to say something that’s currently unpopular and try to make it popular, as opposed to go and get their pollsters to tell them what currently has 50% plus one support. That does, I believe, in that today, which is the easy way of doing things. I understand why they do it, but we desperately need some more political courage and politicians who are willing to risk losing their job to try and do the right thing by the country. We haven’t got many of them. And if we want to see productivity reform, we’re eventually going to need to find some politicians like that. [End video]

Well, John, I live in hope as do you and I’ll keep doing the best that I can and I know that you’ll keep doing the best that you can. How can people find out more about the Australian Taxpayers Alliance and perhaps get involved?

[From video]

Yeah, thanks. taxpayers.org.au is the website. We’ve got a bunch of campaigns up there. You can join if you like. You can find us on X and Facebook and now on Substack as well, where we’ll be putting out semi-regular articles. So, find us there, get in touch, start a discussion, and I will endeavor to answer you if you get reach out. [End video]

Well, John, I live in hope that that invitation is just being caught up in Australia Post and it will arrive in your inbox or in your mailbox very very soon imminently and that of course Anthony Albanese will give you a good hearing and be looking forward to implementing some real productivity gaining reforms. Oh, and by the way, I’ve started taking mushrooms recently, so I might be high. That might not have been a reflection of reality there. John, it’s always a pleasure to have you on the Topher project. Thank you so much for making time for us today.

[From video] Thank you. [End video]

Thank you for watching my interview with Dr. John Humphrey and I hope you learned something about that. John’s always fascinating to talk to, at least for someone like me, but maybe I’m a little bit too in the weeds and maybe I’m not quite normal in that regard, but I always enjoy our chats. My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project. I really appreciate your support and watching through to the end. Please buy me a coffee at topherfield.net to help me keep this sort of content coming. And also, if you’re interested in my books, my DVDs, or any of my merch, you’ll find that at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

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