A successful Australian businessman has revealed why the country should have one of the strongest economies in the world, with affordable housing for all its residents.
Matt Barrie, CEO of outsourcing marketplace Freelancer, said on the latest episode of the EquityMates podcast that: 'You would think that a country with 1,200 years of coal supply would be an energy superpower.
«We might think that a country with 28% of the world's uranium reserves would be an energy superpower. You would think that a country with 20 percent of the world's gas exports would be an energy superpower,” said the Stanford graduate.
Barrie said that with just 3.46 people per square kilometre, Australia should have cheap land and affordable housing for all its residents and yet it is in the middle of a housing crisis.
'We could think that a country with 47% of the world's lithium production, [that] it's sixth in the world for copper production, fifth in the world for nickel production – you'd think it would be an electronics and engineering superpower.'
He highlighted that with 56% of global iron ore exports, Australia should produce its own steel and export it around the world.
'We should be the richest country in the world, period.'
Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie said Australia “should be the richest country in the world” because of our vast mineral resources
But Barrie said Australia was experiencing exactly the opposite.
“Instead, we have the greatest erosion of wealth in the developed world, a cost of living crisis, we have housing prices that are astronomically expensive, it doesn't make any sense.
«The root cause of the cost of living crisis is the cost of land and the cause of this is immigration, we have the most expensive casual wages in the world, but, once again, it is not enough to live because people need a place to live.
“We also have an energy crisis. We're stupidly going down the path of 'well, what about the environment, we can't burn coal.'
'No, we're burning the coal, every single thing we're extracting from the ground is being burned, it's just being burned by China or Japan.
«The gas we send abroad is, in many cases, re-exported. We ship to Japan and they sell it.
Around 80 percent of the natural gas produced in Australia is liquefied for specialist purposes in Asian countries (pictured, Origin Energy's Australia-Pacific liquefied natural gas facility on Curtis Island in north Queensland)
Australians paid record prices for gas in 2022 despite having an abundant supply of the resource. Prices have fallen slightly over the previous two years (stock image)
He claimed that as a result of these issues – high housing costs, high wages and high energy prices – Australia cannot run a manufacturing industry.
«Our economy in terms of sophistication and complexity is at the same level as Equatorial Guinea. where there is no cinema in the whole country,' he said.
Barrie said the solution was simple.
«I believe that immigration needs to be reduced by 90 percent, the qualified migration program is not qualified.
'You need every person in this country to be able to buy a house to live in. Don't be a renter or get stuck with a mortgage on a treadmill.
'You need to restart the coal. There should be an infrastructure tax for people who come into the country and don't pay enough income taxes,
He also suggested that international students should pay an “infrastructure fee” of US$50,000 before being allowed into the country.
“We need to get production back up and running in this country. To do this, you need to solve the power problem. We need to make nuclear energy legal.
Coal-fired power stations in Australia are gradually being replaced by renewable energy
Demand for iron ore from China is expected to decline in the coming years, which will affect Australia's economy (the Mount Holland mine in Southern Cross, Western Australia)
Barrie said Australia was missing out because it didn't have a manufacturing industry.
“Politicians don’t really know how to grow the economy and really grow industry or do anything other than extract raw materials from the ground to ship overseas,” he said.
“Both the Liberal and Labor parties have run a program centered on easy and relentless growth.
“So as long as house prices rise smoothly and as long as wages are gently suppressed, businesses will be happy and citizens will be happy.
“This has been around for some time, but it is only facilitated by the administration of a very large immigration program.
'So we're bringing people into the country, which suppresses wages, and then these people need housing. And then you just gently increase houses while gently suppressing wages.
'When Albanese arrived, he put everything into full Burko mode, where they increased immigration to [bringing in the equivalent of] one Canberra and one Darwin per year.
'How could we build a Canberra and a Darwin a year? It's not just housing that you need to build. You have to build the infrastructure; you have to build hospitals and schools, roads and transport.
“It’s the state governments that are footing the bill for this, and they’re on a huge construction spree. Basically, it’s bankrupting states.”
