Senator Rennick: Australians Are "Enslaved to Debt"

Senator Gerard Rennick of the People First Party has said that the biggest issue facing Australians is that they’re enslaved to debt, warning that financial pressures are suppressing citizens and stifling resistance to government control.

“[I’ll] tell you what the biggest issue is. The biggest issue is debt,” Rennick stated. He pointed to a stark shift in financial stability over the past 50 years, noting that in the past, most Australians had paid off their homes by the age of 40. “By the time they were forty-five, fifty, they had a bit of money in the bank,” he said. However, by today’s standards, “forty percent of people retire with a mortgage. That’s up from ten percent in 1992.”

Rennick argued that this growing financial strain had made Australians more vulnerable to government control. “Nothing controls people more than debt,” he said. “Because even though a lot of people can see through all the government lies and spin, can they do anything about it? No. Because they’ve got a job. They’ve got bills to pay.” He further emphasized that “not only does one person now have to do it, two people have to do it.”

He traced the roots of this crisis back to economic policies from the 1980s, particularly when then-Treasurer Paul Keating lifted capital controls. “In 1985, the former major banks had $8 billion in foreign debt. By 02/2008, they had $800 billion in foreign debt,” Rennick explained. This massive influx of foreign capital had driven house prices from “four times average earnings to 12 to 14 times average earnings,” forcing more parents into the workforce. “That then invented the childcare industry, right, which means we’re losing control of our kids.”

Rennick also criticized policies that had led to the decline of Australian manufacturing. “After that, we then had the Button Plan… we let our manufacturing go offshore.” He recalled that in his school years, many students had left school early to take up trades. “In 1985, I was in grade 10. Half of the people that I started grade eight with left by grade 10 because they went and got trades.” Today, he argued, “we don’t have enough skills in this country.”

He linked the 2008 Global Financial Crisis to rising immigration and the expansion of the university sector. “By 02/2008, when there was that $800 billion, there was the GFC. So in order to stop people from losing their houses, they had to let more immigrants in.” He explained that “the way they did that was allow students, foreign students, to buy houses when they were studying here. So that meant the parents of foreign students would buy the house, and then that’s how the university sector has taken off.”

The senator also pointed to the privatization of infrastructure as another major economic burden. “The government was struggling to make ends meet. Individuals were struggling to make ends meet,” he said. He argued that this financial dependence had kept people from standing up to those in power: “Because we’ve now got, you know, people enslaved to debt throughout their working career, they can’t just give the middle finger to the boss.”

Rennick further raised concerns about whistleblower protections, citing the case of Richard Boyle, who had exposed alleged misconduct within the Australian Taxation Office. “There’s a bloke in South Australia, Richard Boyle, who tried to blow the whistle on what the tax office was doing with small business. He could end up in jail, for Pete’s sake.”

Ultimately, Rennick warned that financial control had been the underlying issue affecting Australians’ freedoms. “The biggest issue is control, but it’s actually not the government. It’s the financial control that we all need to be able to, you know, put that roof over our heads. We all have to earn a living.”

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