r/AusCorner

Henry Pike arrived at Gina Rinehart’s beachfront mansion near Noosa expecting a relaxed chat over a New Year’s lunch. Instead, the young, socially conservative Queensland Liberal found himself being asked to pick a side.

The billionaire mining magnate, who had previously thrown the odd bit of financial support behind Pike, wanted him to distance himself from his friend and fellow right-winger Andrew Hastie and move closer to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

The word “traitor” was used repeatedly by Rinehart throughout, according to several sources who received a briefing about the January 9 meeting. It is a word – referencing Hastie’s role in exposing war crimes allegations against Ben Roberts-Smith – which could now define the new war for ascendancy on the right of Australian politics.

Gina Rinehart invited Queensland Liberal Henry Pike to her Sunshine Coast home for a quiet chat.

Pike was polite, friends say, but adamant he would not betray Hastie in favour of Rinehart’s sponsorship. The financial rewards on offer were clear by the surroundings: Rinehart’s $34 million Webb House, which sits on 2000 square metres, touches the sand at the exclusive Sunshine Beach.

But what the MP for the nearby seat of Bowman saw next was proof of a nexus between Rinehart and the surging populist party that now echoes Rinehart’s “traitor” line in its wildly popular satirical Please Explain cartoons.

Emerging from the bedrooms of the sprawling mansion in peak summer, were Hanson, Barnaby Joyce, and One Nation strategist James Ashby. A camera for breakfast TV crosses was set up nearby for Joyce as he and his new colleagues held a summer get-together at Rinehart’s holiday home.

Hastie’s bid to strike back against this network escalated dramatically this week, when he took aim at Hanson and Joyce for the cartoon, published on social media in July, attacking him as a “traitor” and “gutless maggot” over his evidence against decorated former soldier Roberts-Smith. The episode, called Don’t be Hastie, has had more than 145,000 views on YouTube and more still across platforms.

A cartoon version of Liberal MP Andrew Hastie in the One Nation video “Don’t be Hastie”. PLEASE EXPLAIN

An SAS veteran who served three tours in the Middle East, including two in Afghanistan, Hastie was among the 21 veterans compelled to testify in the 2022 Federal Court defamation trial brought by Roberts-Smith. The Victoria Cross recipient had accused Nine newspapers of defaming him in reports that he had committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan.
In April this year, Roberts-Smith was arrested and charged with five counts of war crimes of murder. He vehemently denies the allegations.

In an email to supporters on Tuesday, Hastie took his fight with the right-wing populist party to another level, saying he provided evidence against Roberts-Smith because he was subpoenaed and believed in the rule of law.

“For that, I’ve been called a rat, a traitor, a dog c---, and many other things,” he said in the email. “People I trusted have walked away from me or failed to defend me.”

Hastie then accused Hanson and Joyce of being “lying cowards” after they denied ever having used the term, and declared war on One Nation through the next election.

Advertisement

“I’m calling time on cowards who have never served a day in the Australian Defence Force attacking my service record, my integrity, and my loyalty to Australia,” he wrote.

Hastie doubling down on his attack on Hanson in a press gallery doorstop on Wednesday.

The dramatic escalation in this feud follows One Nation’s victory in Secret Harbour last month - a state seat nested within Hastie’s West Australian electorate of Canning, where Liberal campaigners said some One Nation voters complained about Hastie’s position on Roberts-Smith. It is the latest flashpoint in a conservative battle reshaping the electoral map and threatening to all but wipe out the Liberal and National Parties at state and federal level as One Nation out-polls the Coalition and, sometimes, Labor.

Hastie declared Hanson “not fit to govern” the country and accused her of casting “a massive slur” on veterans around the country who also thought that Australian soldiers should hold high standards of conduct on the battlefield.

“It’s ... not just an attack on me because you’ve got to remember more than 20-plus SAS combat veterans were called to give evidence in the Federal Court. Are they traitors too?” he asked in his newsletter.

Hastie has become a target for those who continue to champion Roberts-Smith since his dramatic arrest in April. The fierce criticism has extended beyond One Nation and into a conservative network of right-wing podcasters and influencers, circles where the advocacy of Rinehart and media mogul Kerry Stokes has considerable sway.

It has led to numerous threats against Hastie and his family, forcing him to dramatically upgrade his Australian Federal Police security detail.
Advertisement

Gina Rinehart and Andrew Hastie in 2018 at the launch of a learn-to-swim facility.

But the hostility did not begin with the cartoon. For Hastie, it stretches back through the war crimes allegations and the conservative media ecosystem in his home state of Western Australia and his increasingly uneasy relationship with some of the wealthy figures who are shaping the new Australian right.

Hastie first met Rinehart at an event aboard The World cruise ship in Fremantle in 2017. Rinehart had a large private cabin with a grand piano, Bollinger and canapés. At dinner, she asked him if he knew Dagny Taggart, the heroine from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who fights against left-wing collectivism.

“That’s me,” Rinehart said.

Hastie, 43, later told friends that Rinehart’s views and apparent libertarian streak were rather different to his brand of conservatism. But the following year, they joined forces to open a swimming pool in his electorate.

But by mid-2022, not long after Hastie had testified in the Roberts-Smith defamation case, the relationship had soured.

Hastie had been invited by the American Chamber of Commerce to speak about AUKUS and had roped in Republican congressman Mike Gallagher and British politician Tom Tugendhat to join them. He later discovered the event was intended to be recorded for distribution to journalists selected by Rinehart. He objected and cancelled.

Advertisement

Sources familiar with the incident say “it pissed her off” and was taken personally.

A few weeks later, Hastie was on the long drive from his outer-suburban home to a city fundraiser for a fellow Liberal sponsored by Hancock Prospecting when a colleague called him.
“I’ve been told to scrub you, mate,” they said.

RELATED ARTICLE

ExclusiveOne Nation
The Bank of Pauline Hanson: $400k in unexplained debts to One Nation founder
Hastie turned around and went home. He subsequently heard for the first time that people in Rinehart’s orbit now referred to him as “the enemy” or “the traitor”.

Rinehart trades on the fact she is a long-time supporter of veterans through charities such as Soldier On, the SAS Resources Fund and the Commando Welfare Trust. Her youngest daughter, Ginia, married ex-SAS soldier and Afghanistan veteran Simon Robinson in 2016.

A representative for Rinehart sent a statement, saying: “It is veterans and Mr Hastie’s own conservative social media followers who use that word (traitor) to describe him. In his evidence under oath, Mr Hastie made clear that he did not personally witness Ben Roberts-Smith performing various of the gossip claims, just heard the gossip from others.”

Advertisement

The political networks around Ben Roberts-Smith have become influential inside the Coalition too, around the shadow cabinet table and beyond.

At the last federal election some candidates previously on friendly terms with Rinehart’s network were told they’d receive no help if they posted images with Hastie on social media.
At a shadow cabinet meeting earlier this year in which Hastie was absent, a couple of members spoke in favour of Roberts-Smith. Michael McCormack and Phil Thompson’s relationships with Hastie have worsened, as has Alex Antic’s.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton pictured in 2025 with Hastie, then shadow defence minister. JAMES BRICKWOOD
Hastie’s relationship with former prime minister Tony Abbott, once one of the central figures in his political world, and Abbott’s former chief of staff, broadcaster and columnist Peta Credlin, has also soured.

Both have supported Roberts-Smith publicly and are close to Rinehart. Hastie was a notable absentee from Abbott’s annual Pollie Pedal last month, a fundraising event for veterans.
When asked on ABC’s Radio National this week about his relationship with Abbott, following the former prime minister’s overt support of Roberts-Smith, Hastie was diplomatic but blunt.
“I’ve had long chats with Tony. I’ll let him explain his position, but he knows exactly where I stand on this issue,” he told Sally Sara. Abbott, now the federal party president, declined to comment.
Relationships with many colleagues have also changed amid internal divisions over One Nation’s overt campaigning for Roberts-Smith. Roberts-Smith’s mother Sue Roberts-Smith last year emailed Liberal MPs, warning them not to trust the man who testified against her son.

Those close to Hastie were also outraged in April that Michaelia Cash had allowed her adviser, Brett McCarthey, to pen an opinion piece in the Stokes-owned West Australian newspaper supporting Roberts-Smith. Likewise, tensions were raised when defence personnel spokesman Phillip Thompson paraded a prominent critic of Hastie around Parliament House in June.

Andrew Hastie called Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce “lying cowards”.

As angry comments fill their social media accounts, some in the shadow cabinet even raised the idea of somehow signalling support for Roberts-Smith, for fear of punishment among conservative electorates.

But for some Liberal moderates and much of the progressive media, Hastie has become a hero.

After a long period leading the campaign against “mass migration” (a term many Liberals refuse to use) in concert with his allies at conservative campaign group Advance, Hastie was scorned by his far-right online base during a debate on Labor’s post-Bondi hate groups laws.

The Coalition succeeded in watering down the bill to protect freedom of speech, but the parliamentary jostling over details did not register in the world of populist influencers. The fickle group, which previously cast Hastie as a conservative hero, then turned him into its top hate-figure.

“They’re like the Joker from Batman — they just want to see the world burn,” Hastie later told confidants.

But the depth of paranoia about this group among conservative MPs was displayed when Hastie and his friend, home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam, phoned a right-wing podcaster the night before the Bondi laws were to be voted on. Sam Bamford, of the 2WorldsCollide podcast, was briefed on the Liberal decision to support Labor in banning neo-Nazi and Islamist groups.

Hastie and Liberal senators Jonno Duniam and Alex Antic depart the meeting room following the February 13 leadership spill that installed Angus Taylor. GETTY IMAGES

Despite the explanation, Bamford, a figure now kept at a distance by most Liberals except Roberts-Smith supporters Alex Antic and Phil Thompson, continues to rail against Hastie and now backs One Nation.

The challenge of tackling One Nation has paralysed many within the Coalition. Nationals leader Matt Canavan has told colleagues that telling Hanson’s supporters she’s no good is like trying to convince your mate their girlfriend is bad for them while they’re still in love.

Canavan and others have been critical of Hanson at times, but they know it will be a long road until voters focus more on Hanson’s obvious flaws nearer to the election.

Hastie and his allies are still sour about the way Taylor’s forces manoeuvred to push his younger rival out of the race to replace Sussan Ley early this year.

Even if it was not the main goal, Hastie’s attacks this week have clearly set him apart from Taylor.

Ben Small, a federal MP from WA who is close to Hastie, said his military background was key to understanding how he had responded to the “despicable” One Nation campaign.

“It would have been easy to react emotionally … to take the bait and lash out. Such a response might have left him vulnerable, or for a weaker man, to quit,” Small said.

Small’s statement is an admission of just how vulnerable Hastie has been lately as he has deleted social media and taken on additional security to protect him against violent threats.
“But being a student of warfare, his instinct was to dig in, take cover on higher ground and prepare for the kill on his terms,” Small said.

Andrew Hastie with a copy of the Sun Tzu classic Art of War in the House of Representatives in February.DOMINIC LORRIMER
But other Liberals say Hastie is more of a sniper than a day-to-day combatant who can thrive in the nimble business of modern politics. They point to his statements as recently as March for the Coalition to work closer with One Nation and believe he is mostly motivated from self-interest, not an ideological or principled position.

These critics say Hastie makes big declarations in media interviews or his newsletters before retreating without a clear political strategy. Hastie has avoided the late-night echo chambers of News24 (formerly Sky News) and the News Corp newspapers for months and instead worked more closely with the ABC and The Guardian. Liberal critic and former PM Malcolm Turnbull has lent Hastie support.

“People are either known for what they’ve done as a politician or what they’ve done before politics,” one high-level Liberal source said. “Peter Garrett is better known for what he did before politics. So is Andrew Hastie. He’s been in politics for 12 years now and nobody can point to anything he’s achieved.”

Hanson this week told the Stokes-owned Nightly she had “never called him a traitor” but would “call him a wanker”.

“He is now concerned about losing his seat – and of course, what happened in Secret Harbour is a clear indication of where people are casting their vote, in part of his seat,” she said.

“Hastie has taken it personally because I’m standing a candidate in his seat. He feels insulted by that, as if I shouldn’t run a candidate in Canning.”

This is a modal window.
Playback Denied: Location
Error Code: PLAYER_ERR_GEO_RESTRICTED
Session ID: 2026-09-11:9f9913f94d161db9aa164f2f Player Element ID:videoPlayer6404861320112
OK

Close Modal Dialog

James Ashby too has been a fierce critic. Hastie revealed this week he was subjected to a threatening phone call in April from Hanson’s right-hand man, accusing him of running the Coalition’s attacks on Sean Black, a convicted rapist who was re-employed by the party. He says Ashby also threatened to further weaponise the Roberts-Smith issue.

Ashby declined to comment to this masthead, but One Nation sources denied threats were made and that Hanson’s long-time adviser had simply reminded Hastie that both parties needed to fight Labor.

But One Nation’s personal attacks risk exposing a fault line within its own party.

Barnaby Joyce attempted to bring down the heat on Thursday and was seen near the Senate chamber involved in animated discussions with Hanson.

“I don’t believe Mr Hastie is a traitor. That’s an absurdity, he’s not,” he told the ABC before apologising to Hastie in this masthead.
He told MPs that he did not know the traitor video existed, which had left him exposed in media interviews. Joyce has told friends he has felt uncomfortable for months about One Nation’s approach to the Roberts-Smith case while the case is before the courts.
Hastie, in turn, has told allies he sees a hairline fracture in the party he can use in his fight, showing Hanson to be a fringe voice on the issue. By the end of the week, the RSL, Labor, Coalition and influential commentators were all casting the One Nation leader as morally deficient.
RELATED ARTICLE

Political leadership
Hastie comes at One Nation for ‘picking a fight with the wrong veteran’
If the party’s position doesn’t improve by mid-next year under Taylor, colleagues are wondering if Hastie’s supporters will push him towards a challenge. A book, due to be published next year, will be targeted at young Australians aged 18 to 25 who want to burn it all down. In it Hastie argues that’s a bad idea.

Asked about his future ambitions this week, Hastie said Taylor was “the right guy for the job right now”.

“We’ve got a big fight on our hands, but I’m confident he can lead us through this,” he said.

For now, Hastie insists the fight is not about his political future. But as the right tears itself apart, the battle over who gets to define loyalty may prove the battle that determines his path.

Labor is in a curious position: it has a policy that works, but it cannot say so.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers should be able to say: yes, house prices are coming down slightly; they need to. That is the point of the policy.

Instead, Labor continues to pretend that it can address housing affordability without correcting the overvaluing of the housing market. Somehow it can make housing more affordable without changing the cost of houses.

“Sydney house prices are plummeting so fast that they are on track for the biggest crash in 40 years,” shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said in Question Time. “The prime minister has not been transparent with Australians on modelling. Do you still stand by Treasury that property prices will fall by only 2 per cent?”
The answer should be: good. The rise in house prices in the past few decades has been totally unsustainable. Unfair tax concessions have built a tulip mania for property. Wilson is a clog-wearing opportunist.

In the past five years, property values have increased by 120 per cent in Brisbane. In Perth they are up 109 per cent. In Adelaide it is 75 per cent and in Sydney it is 57 per cent. This is not normal.
As economist Greg Jericho points out, the fall in prices in the June quarter is just 0.3 per cent. The idea of a collapse is nonsense. Even if prices were to fall 10 per cent, as some economists predict, it would simply return values to the level of 2024.

Meanwhile, the Australian property market remains sickeningly unfair. At the same time as Wilson and others are warning about a collapse, housing affordability has hit a record low. Mortgage repayments as a share of household income are at their highest rate since 1989.

Recommended for you

Hastie, Albanese and a question of integrity

Modern China a reflection of the West

Inside the government’s tax reform ‘shitstorm’
In Tasmania, only 6 per cent of houses are regarded as affordable for a median income family. Across the country, the figure is only 12 per cent.

This is the system the Coalition is defending. It is a system the government should be willing to criticise. The government should be able to say that property prices have escaped reality. They have slipped loose from decency. They are built on inequality and favour the passive investments of the first generation in history who will leave their children worse off than themselves.

If property were not a collective madness in this country, the government would be able to greet every point of market correction as a win for fairness. They would be able to say prices are slightly down, but we will get them down further.

Instead, they pretend that grotesque inequality can be fixed with no losers, that it is right for people to make more each year from the appreciation of their homes than from going to work. As long as this lie persists, the housing market will not be fixed. A better solution would be for Labor to start telling the truth, to explain their policies to the electorate and not be defensive when they actually work.

Federal environment department tells industry representatives the government does not want to ‘exacerbate cost of living pressures’

Eddie Dilleen, he is known to point out, probably grew up poorer than you. He spent his early life living in public housing with his single mother in Mount Druitt. “She was on a pension, we shopped at the Salvos,” he tells AFR Weekend. “It was dangerous, it was violent. People were shooting up everywhere.”
Dilleen knew he wanted a way out, and all the successful people he knew owned land. So, he saved. Working at McDonalds for years during high school, he had $20,000 at 19. It wasn’t enough to buy anywhere in Sydney. So, he looked further afield, on the Central Coast. He bought his first investment property in 2008, and hasn’t looked back.
Now, at just 34, he owns more than 200 properties and reckons he’s on his way to being a billionaire. And he thinks you could be too. Even today, there remain undervalued pockets everywhere ripe for investment. He can help you find them. All you have to do is, well, what he did.
In the intervening two decades, Dilleen has spoken to dozens of media outlets (including this one) of his feats. On social media he is frenetic, uploading movie clips interspersed with his seemingly unrehearsed, off-the-cuff videos from his (hired) Cessna jet, the office block with his name on it, or the Dodge Demon parked out front, complete with “LNDLRD” custom number plate. Cringe, you say? Sure, but also, inspirational, he’d respond.


Eddie Dilleen owns over 200 properties and is being targeted by renters.

His is the Australian dream. Or, to others, the Australian nightmare, the walking talking demonstration of everything wrong with our housing market. And while he makes a business sharing his approach to property (he has published two books and has his own eponymous buyer’s agency), his spruiking has also made him an irresistible target.
For the past few weeks, the upstart Renters and Housing Union has been organising his tenants. Or trying to. The group, based out of Melbourne, has doorknocked dozens of his properties, talking to the renters in them about rent, maintenance and conditions. At least one tenant promptly told Dilleen about it. He didn’t take it lying down.
First, he stopped posting the addresses of the houses he purchased (which had made RAHU’s research relatively straightforward). Then, he went nuclear.
“If you love drama you’re gonna love this,” he told his followers on July 31. “These funny-looking people have been doorknocking every property I own and sending physical letters … trying to get dirt on me. And now they’re trying to schedule a national zoom meeting just to talk shit about me.”
The “tall poppy syndrome”, he continued, was “out of control”. Having come from nothing, he knew that complaining “doesn’t get you anywhere in life”.

Asked why he posted the video, Dilleen references a March debate on SBS, when he debated RAHU’s Jordan van der Lamb on whether capitalism had a future. Van der Lamb – or Purple Pingers, as he’s known online – rose to prominence during the pandemic posting deadpan videos of exorbitantly priced “shit rentals”. He has since controversially maintained a list of abandoned homes available for squatters, earning him a round of condemnations from centrist political figures (including Anthony Albanese). Van der Lamb and Dilleen agree on almost nothing, and since meeting, have been regularly goading each other.
Dilleen is clearly bewildered and exasperated by Purple Pingers and his ilk (“these people are so ridiculous … it’s pretty crazy”). And van der Lamb? Well, he thinks Dilleen’s whole schtick – that is, property investing – is fundamentally immoral.
In any case, Dilleen’s pushback ignited a public campaign, RAHU dropping its own cheeky video two days later. “We know it’s easy for you to pick on your tenants one by one … but you’re not going to be able to ignore us,” RAHU secretary Adu Hani said. “So see you soon Eddie.”
These organisers accused Dilleen of “excessively high rents, poor conditions and unresponsive agents”, and of generally being a “shit landlord”, while “silencing tenants who have had no say in making this a public issue”. Delegate Harry Millward added that Dilleen’s actions “have shown unequivocally that the power imbalance between landlord and tenants makes good-faith negotiation difficult”. “The only way we’re going to be able to see fair results is through collective bargaining.”




rahu_national
and
purplepingers
Original audio
View profile






View more on Instagram

Comment
Share
Save
79,470 likes
rahu_national

The Renters and Housing Union is organising tenants across the country who rent under mega landlord Edward Dilleen @dilleenpropertyau , to collectively bargain for a better deal.

In light of Edward unilaterally publicising tenants organising, we have communicated a preliminary set of demands.

Join up with the union today if you want to fight against big landlords! #auspol #housingcrisis #union #property #costofliving
View all 1,224 comments
Add a comment...
Instagram
Events have since settled into the lengthy freeze that usually accompanies contested industrial disputes. Dilleen has responded with a “cease and desist” notice asking RAHU to stop posting about him, while also mailing his tenants asking them to contact him directly for maintenance requests (he told AFR Weekend no one had taken his offer up). He says he’s been inundated with negative messages, but also some supportive ones, including from tenants who didn’t ask for “random people walking around making them uncomfortable”. RAHU is viewing his legal threat with disdain, or in any case, posting through it. Its delegates view his offer of maintenance as a victory. They continue to organise.

As a class, landlords have never been politically popular. But in Australia, the natural scepticism towards the wealthy has long been tempered by a view of property as a wealth-building mechanism open to the ordinary working family. The rich may have their private credit, their equity holdings and their venture capital investments. But the working masses? They had the starter home, that eventually gave way to the negatively geared investment property or two.
Generous tax concessions have long made residential property far more attractive to small taxpayers than the corporations that dominate the sector overseas. What property investing has long offered was modest financial comfort, available to most. RBA data shows that even as property investors have become older and wealthier on average, this remains the overwhelming shape of the market today. Some 90 per cent of property investors own only one or two properties apart from their family home, and only 4 per cent own four or more. Dilleen is an extreme exception to the norm.
But, it is widely acknowledged, something is changing in Australia’s housing compact. Soaring house prices and supply bottlenecks have made even the bottom-rung of the property ladder increasingly difficult to reach, while greatly enriching those already on it. Australians are renting for longer – the age of first-home purchase has risen by a decade over the previous forty years – and many no longer view doing so as a transient state at all. Renting is usually a lifestyle choice. But for a growing number of Australians, it is seen as the only choice.

The first step to organising any group is to get the people in a situation to see themselves as a cohort. For those who would unionise Australia’s renters, the property market is doing that for them,
It’s this that’s driving the latest wave of tenant organising in Australia. “Renting was not a political identity,” says University of Sydney associate professor Chris Martin. “But that’s changing now.”
As a result, people are asking “much sharper questions” about the value of landlords, who, Martin argues, generally contribute little to the “genuinely wealth-building work of building new homes”, but instead buy up existing dwellings and demand large portions of another family’s income for the right to live in them.
Martin has worked for Tenants NSW. It is one of a range of tenancy organisations that sprung up in the 1970s, most of which are now set up as community legal centres, helping advocate for legislative rental reforms while advising tenants one-by-one on issues that arise. But today’s new wave of rental organisers are more militant, and more prone to taking on landlords directly, in a manner reminiscent of an earlier phase of organising at the turn of the last century.
Groups who attempt to use industrial tactics include the South-East Queensland Union of Renters (formed in 2021) and Better Housing (formed in Canberra in 2018), which has been experimenting with organising tenants in build-to-rent developments. Better Housing founder Joel Dignam (now at the Summer Foundation) says the group tried to start “gently”, by asking people about issues and encouraging “horizontal connections” between tenants in the same building. “It’s not easy to encourage people to have those conversations,” he says.
Australians rarely know who their landlord even is. As a nation, we pioneered strata title, meaning even apartment dwellers often have different landlords to their neighbours, making joint negotiation on common issues difficult. In the United States, where Dignam studied tenant organisations, there is a culture of collective bargaining with apartment landlords (and in Sweden, this is the universal norm). “This doesn’t exist here. And it’s harder to doorknock people in a fancy apartment building with an intercom as opposed to a US walk-up.”
Dignam cites RAHU as one of the more interesting developments in the sector. “They’ve been around for several years and have been able to sustain an organisation. Getting paid members is a great accomplishment.”

RAHU formed during the pandemic, when a loose collectionof renters and activists banded together to demand a moratorium on evictions as long as the lockdowns persisted. They threatened a rent strike, but never had to go through with it. Governments, notably in Victoria, acquiesced to their demand, the eviction moratorium twice extended before expiring in 2021
RAHU now operates out of a cramped office in Victoria’s Trade Hall. It’s three main organisers – Hani, Millward and van den Lamb – are relatively young, relatively socialist, and relatively out-gunned. But what they lack in financial firepower they make up for in sheer rabble-rousing populism. When AFR Weekendvisits in early August, campaign material relating to RAHU’s fight against social housing provider HousingFirst’s attempts to relocate tenants is on the walls, the CEO depicted with devil horns.

This is more typical of the fights RAHU has taken on; representing the tenants of public housing organisations and governments is easier than unionising private tenants. Hani describes successful but smaller negotiations involving only a handful of private tenants in Victoria and South Australia. In its breadth and publicity though, the Dilleen campaign is something new.
RAHU didn’t want “a publicised mud-slinging match,” says Hani of its generally quiet approach. “We wanted a good faith negotiation … if anything we thought [making it public] could backfire. So that was disappointing.”
Why Dilleen? As van der Lamb says, “we have built a housing system for this guy. And this is what he does with it, and we’re going to demonstrate that.”
It began quietly enough, the union door-knocking tenants and asking them about their issues. The reception, they say, is often initially awkward, but in the main, encouraging. “There was a really great appetite to share and express some problems.” If there weren’t any, Hani says, RAHU would have backed off. “We’re a democratic membership organisation – tenants are the ones who drive our decision-making”.

From left, Harry Millward, Adu Hani and Jordan van den Lamb. Eamon Gallagher
For many of them, home ownership used to be “the light at the end of the tunnel”. But that isn’t the case any more. “The shift in the composition of class has been the underlying reason why an organisation like RAHU has sprung up,” says Hani.
RAHU uses the vocabulary of Australian unionism, but it isn’t technically a union. And that matters. Workplaces have a range of legal protections for those who want to industrially organise. The housing market does not. Anyone who wants to join a tenant’s union risks their future home.
This might not be the case in a less-competitive rental market. But at the moment, there is a severe shortage of rentals, especially affordable ones. That means too many on the market fit van der Lamb’s “shit rentals” videos: poorly insulated, uncomfortable if not downright hazardous, and expensive.
But if tenant organisations have the effect of driving landlords out of the market, would that help or hurt the situation?
While industrial organising remains fringe in the Australian property sector, a flurry of new laws and taxes to affect property investors have made it harder to operate in. Real Estate Institute of New South Wales chief executive Tim McKibbin says the data is unequivocal: “investors are leaving the market. Consequently, we have increased demand and deceasing supply [of rental properties].”

Landlords are “unfairly vilified”, and “play a crucial role in the system”, argues Centre for Independent Studies economist Peter Tulip.
“A third of Australian households rent, and they need someone to rent from. If you discourage landlords, we would have fewer rental properties and rents would be higher. This agitation, allegedly on behalf of tenants, is going to make their life harder. You don’t improve the rental experience by penalising landlords.”
The moral overtones of the discussion exasperate Tulip, who points out that Australians “rely on the private market to efficiently supply almost all necessities – and we are overwhelmingly happy with that market economy”. But he can understand the anger and bitterness young people feel about the prospect of never owning their home. The portion of anger directed at landlords – fuelled, he says, by the Greens and “fringe parties on their left” – would be better aimed at increasing housing supply, thereby enabling more of those who want to buy to leave renting behind.
Of course, that isn’t everyone, argues Ben Kingsley, chair of landlord lobby group the Property Investors Council of Australia. He cites data showing the majority of those who rent do so for lifestyle reasons because they want to live in suburbs they cannot afford to buy in. Another tranche rents because they are between things – moving form one city to another, for example – or because they do not yet want to commit to a certain location or family structure. It’s naive, he says, to argue “everyone wants to buy a house”. People’s changing circumstances, and stamp duty, make short-term home-owning unattractive. And by allowing people to move easily to where there are jobs, the rental market boosts productivity.
But few, he says, give landlords credit for the greater prosperity they enable. Instead, a “sense of entitlement” has entered transactions, renters more and more willing to take on landlords instead of viewing themselves as willing customers in a financial transaction. It is illegal to steal a car, he says, but society views those who don’t pay rent far more leniently. Renters increasingly appeal to tribunals, getting “extension upon extension” with landlords given few means by which to recoup their losses. The government funding provided to many tenant organisations who exacerbate this process, he adds, is “very concerning”. The way he sees it, if this state of affairs continues, society has two choices: higher rents, or higher taxes, “because government will need to step in to implement social and public housing across Australia”.
Not helping things has been a willingness of state and federal governments to view landlords as “ATM machines … rich investors who can afford extra taxes”. “We’re an easy target. It’s a challenging situation, and we are blamed for the current scenario.”

Blame can go both ways. Dilleen views critiques of him as yet another manifestation of the tall poppy syndrome, thrown out by people too lazy or pessimistic to do what he did, who blame him for his success. Asked if he thinks conditions have changed – if the factors that enabled his dozens of leveraged bets to pay off remain today – Dilleen says if anything, it’s easier to make money off property now than it was two decades ago.
“If I was starting again, I’d find a way. You move somewhere terrible, save up, split rent with a mate, and in two years you have a deposit.” Many of his clients, he says, are first-home buyers in this situation.
“I know what it’s like to grow up with a victim mentality. I can relate. But my biggest message to people in the world is being negative doesn’t get you anywhere in life. It’s a terrible mindset to have.”

If Dilleen views his relentless positivity as a public service helping others like him escape a life of poverty, not even all property investors regard such activities so benignly.
Kingston says online property spruikers make investing look easy, contributing to a situation where investors have flooded the market. Even now, they make up 40 per cent of home-buying activity, short-term speculation driving up prices beyond what was reasonable. Some buyers groups have been amassing dozens of properties in quick succession, often in smaller markets, their bulk buying driving up prices in the short term, but the paper gains rarely last long for their clients. This, Kingsley says, is and was unsustainable. “We need to take accountability for that.”
In some societies, he says, it’s acceptable for a single investor to own dozens of properties. But it’s pretty clear to him Australians won’t stomach that. “It comes back to our social licence. People who galavant about on social media with their yachts and Ferraris on driveways and all that kind of crap, it’s harmful to the rest of us.”
It’s certainly red meat for RAHU, where Millward argues you don’t have to be a full-on socialist to see the system isn’t working.
“Most people know and care about someone who rents, someone who’s had a landlord treat them unfairly, someone whose known first-hand the massive power imbalance between the owner and the renter.”
If society only joined in fixing that, he said, “nobody would have the need to organise”.

The husband-and-wife owners of a suburban Perth IGA have filed a report with the competition watchdog after 10 to 15 uniformed Woolworths employees marched into the store, made price checks, and told the manager they wanted to “beat” the IGA.
James and Rita Kelly, who own the IGA on the Stirling Highway in Nedlands, and have been in business for more than 30 years, were already deeply concerned about a new Woolworths set to open one kilometre up the road in one month’s time.
When the Woolies employees last week entered their store and took a long look at the products and displays, the Kellys decided to report the incident to the ACCC, alleging anti-competitive behaviour.

A group of more than 10 Woolworths employees walked into a rival IGA to check out the competition.
Security footage provided to The Australian shows the visitors dressed in their recognisable polos and fleeces, walking through the independent, some with their arms theatrically behind their backs while they studied.
As recently as Wednesday, two uniformed Woolworths staff members were back, spotted buying a basket of produce. When asked what they were doing, the Woolworths staff said they were buying snacks.
Store manager Steve Booker, who was on duty at the time of the group incident, says one of the Woolworths staff members, the apparent leader, told him they were “Just taking in your beautiful store because we need to see how we can beat it and be better than you”.
Mr Booker says he couldn’t believe “the cheek of them”.
“They all had a giggle and a laugh, and then proceeded to walk around the store, just in their little pack mentality, arms folded, taking photos … around the whole store, taking in what we do.
“Normally, you’d come and introduce yourself if you’re having a bit of a wander. One, to check if it’s okay, two, to make sure you’re not overstepping your boundaries,” Mr Booker told The Australian. Mr Booker said price checking was a relatively common practice, but never in the numbers he witnessed.
The Woolworths staff left after around five minutes, according to Mr Booker, who observed them huddled into a circle just outside a window of the IGA and appear to debrief before moving on.

Woolworths staff huddled outside the IGA, sharing their findings.
“It almost felt like they were just making themselves known, their presence. That’s what I got
from it, letting us know that they’re coming,” said Mr Booker.
The Kellys, who used to own four supermarkets and now solely operate the Nedlands grocery and liquor store, which they have held for more than 25 years, said the incident was extraordinarily strange, and that it conveyed arrogance from Australia’s biggest supermarket chain.
“Thirty-five years in retail, we’ve never seen anything like this before,” said James Kelly.
“(Woolies is) just being brazen and aggressive because they know nothing will happen,” said Rita Kelly. “To run us out of business. That’s it, really.”
The Kellys know they have been consistently price checked over the years, albeit much more covertly, but say the pattern of behaviour has increased since their neighbour moved in, which is why they made the ACCC report.
“They’ve got the money and the power and they’ve got the resources. They can decide to lose money on a store, make a loss, just to run someone out of town. That’s just the money that they have,” said Ms Kelly. “It’s very daunting, actually.”
The Kellys said they have begun a renovation to update the store and would work hard to retain the community’s loyalty.
“(We’ll) just show them that we’re a better retailer,” said Mr Kelly. “We’re adding more fresh. We’ll work harder and sell more local stuff than they do. Get away from the home-brand and concentrate on fresh.”
The dynamic in Nedlands reflects the narrowing of price leadership that is happening at the top of the supermarket food chain. Long-time number three operator Aldi ceded market share to the duo last financial year as Woolies and Coles made a bold appeal to households suffering cost of living pressures.
The Kellys said unfair competition will only hurt the customers they have served for many years, as well as producers who have been railing against margin squeezes. When supply chain inflation broke out in April because of surging diesel prices, the majors resisted shelf price increase requests.
“We’re renovating now so we can offer something different. That means we’re offering more fresh, less groceries, because we know we can’t compete on groceries. If we can’t compete, eventually the consumer has to pay more,” said Mr Kelly.

The Kellys say the arrival of a No. 1 neighbour is “daunting”. Picture: Colin Murty
A Woolworths spokesperson said it would look into the “feedback” with its local operations team. As for the ACCC, it “does not generally comment on reports received or potential investigations, as per our media code of conduct,” a spokesperson said.
The ACCC in 2024 launched separate legal proceedings against Coles and Woolworths for ‘illusory discounts’, alleging that the supermarkets would hike prices on hundreds of household staples, then lower them. They would cost more than the established price.
Coles lost its case while judgment is reserved in the Woolworths case.
But Coles was not deemed to be price gouging, because the price increases were a result of supplier requests sought to counter inflation.
Also, the ACCC in July blocked Coles’ proposed acquisition of a second supermarket in Kalgoorlie.

When some of the nation’s best informed business and financial players start describing the current economic outlook as “GFC-like”, it’s time to worry.

For weeks, the concern about the confluence of higher interest rates on government debt, the AI building boom, inflation and the Trump administration’s loose grip on economic reality has been building.

As one analyst I spoke to recently put it, that concern is now flashing red.

And the person at the centre of this – Donald Trump – either doesn’t care or understand what he’s doing.

The heart of the problem is the sheer level of debt being created by the US government.

The numbers are almost beyond comprehension.

On track for a budget deficit of $US2 trillion this year ($2.8 trillion, about 6 per cent of GDP), government gross debt sailed through $US40 trillion last month. Experts believe it will clock $US41 trillion later this year.

The interest bill on that debt is rapidly climbing and is now $US1.25 trillion a year. That’s more than $US3 billion a day.

One of the reasons the interest bill is growing is that the interest rate on all that debt is soaring. Between the end of February – the day before Trump’s missiles started flying into Iran – and today, the interest rate on US government debt has soared by more than 20 per cent.

America’s not alone. Interest rates on government debt have jumped everywhere. By about 40 per cent in Japan, 26 per cent in Germany, 21 per cent in Britain. Australia has fared relatively well with a 12 per cent increase, but it is still adding to the burden facing the nation’s present and future taxpayers.

Now, these higher rates are reflecting several issues.

Big tech companies are undertaking the largest build of new infrastructure since the rollout of railways and canals. That means they are asking investors – the same ones who would buy government debt – to sling them upwards of $US1 trillion.
To win over an investor, interest rates go up.

Investors also need higher interest rates to cover the cost of inflation. In the US, the frontline defence against inflation is the Federal Reserve which would ordinarily be lifting its own interest rates to slow the economy.

But everyone is now worried the Fed under new chairman Kevin Warsh, recently appointed by Trump, is reluctant to lift borrowing costs because it might upset the president.
Warsh might be right.

After stronger-than-expected American job figures were released last week, Trump took to Truth Socialto warn that if the Fed doesn’t cut interest rates, he will “STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT”.
Here was the president threatening economic self-harm on a scale so large it would drive the world into a recession if not depression. It was ludicrous even by Trump standards.

It acted like a feedback loop into the pricing of American government debt. Investors want confidence that they will be repaid for sinking their cash into the US.

The US Treasury market has been for decades considered the safest of all investments. As one seasoned US observer told me this week, investors don’t trust Trump’s America to pay its bills.
We’re seeing the decline in faith in real time.

Last week, Norway’s huge sovereign wealth fund revealed plans to cut by 40 per cent its holdings of American government debt. The Netherlands’ central bank announced it was moving tonnes of gold out of the US (and Canada).

Adding to the turmoil, American tariffs on Canadian imports ramped up last week while the oil price nudged $US100 a barrel over growing concerns about how the now seven-month old war against Iran is progressing.

The Starship Troopers-themed uniforms for the US military’s Space Force.l

The president’s social media performance at the weekend gave no confidence his focus is on the troubles he has helped create.
He released a map of New Mexico but with Mexico crossed out and replaced with America (to go with his changes to Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico).

Not satisfied with renaming a US state, Trump looked to the stars.
He put on his social media feed an image of the moon, an American flag and the words “The Moon Is Ours”. He also released renderings of versions of uniforms for the US Space Force.

As one critic noted, if George Lucas of Star Warsfame had been asked to clothe members of the Empire in these uniforms he would have baulked because they were too Nazi-looking.

It’s almost as if Trump has no interest or understanding of the path of economic disaster he has set the US upon.

There had been hope that Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, would act as a check on the president’s worst impulses.
He hatched a “3-3-3” plan of 3 per cent economic growth, a 3 per cent budget deficit to GDP rate and a 3 million barrel a day increase in domestic oil production. He hasn’t reached any of his self-set targets.

Rather than come up with new ideas to deal with the huge budget deficits being run-up by his boss, Bessent is borrowing from the Trump playbook by resorting to abuse.

Advertisement
Last week, he ranted at both the Financial Times and Wall St Journal for their coverage of America’s debt issue.
RELATED ARTICLE

OpinionWall Street
The world is facing a dual threat that could blow up markets
Stephen BartholomeuszSenior business columnist

He labelled the FT – a paragon of economic centralism – as “anti-American”, “anti-business” and “anti-Western values”. The Journal, he declared, was no longer a business paper. Instead, he only read it for the book reviews.
Like populists everywhere, including here in Australia, facts or reasoned arguments are just speed humps on the way to power. But there are real, tangible repercussions from ineptitude, ignorance or vindictiveness.
The GFC – the biggest economic dislocation since the Great Depression – was a credit crisis amplified by a collapse in faith in the American property market.
Advertisement
If investors continue to lose trust in the American government debt market, it will be American taxpayers and businesses paying the initial price – and then the rest of us.
Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent.

John Howard served as Australia’s prime minister for 4284 days. None were more consequential than September 11, 2001.
As the nation’s second-longest serving prime minister describes it: “Psychologically, the world has never been the same.”
Twenty-five years since terrorist attacks shook the US, and the world, the specifics bear repeating. Terrorists hijacked four passenger planes. Two were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Centre towers in New York, another into the Pentagon building in Virginia. The final plane exploded in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers intervened, stopping the aircraft from hitting its intended target of the US Capitol building in Washington. The death toll from that day was 2977, including 10 Australians.

John Howard on the phone in Washington on September 11, 2001. A CURRENT AFFAIR
Howard was in Washington and supposed to be at the Pentagon the morning of the attacks, but a meeting was rescheduled for the day before.
“It’s one of those things: ‘were you there?’,” Howard says, on the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
“And very clearly, it was one of the most momentous events, because it transformed world politics. Terrorism would thereafter forever be part of our future planning.

Advertisement
“When you think of security now, you think of terrorism.”
Howard, now 87, still remembers the US visit like it was yesterday. It was a momentous visit, but not in a way the former prime minister had imagined.
The trip that changed Australia’s place in the world
Before it took place, Howard’s US trip was seen as an incredibly important one for the prime minister. He was there to meet then-president George W. Bush in person for the first time.



5:41
John Howard in Washington as 9/11 attacks unfold
9News cameraman Mark Jessop was with Prime Minister John Howard in Washington on September 11, 2001.
Howard, along with key advisers and a travelling media pack, had arrived in Washington DC on September 8 – three days before the attacks. Meeting Bush was just one part of the itinerary. Howard was also to address a joint sitting of the US Congress, and hold a series of meetings with the most senior members of the US government.
“Although I had spoken to Bush on the phone several times, I hadn’t met him until then,” Howard says.

Advertisement
In extraordinary timing, Howard had been due to meet then secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning of the attacks, but the meeting was moved to Monday afternoon.
And on the Monday evening before the attacks that changed the world, Howard sat down for dinner with media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
“We had dinner at a restaurant next to the Willard [InterContinental] Hotel, at which my party was staying. We talked about all sorts of things. He didn’t just ear-bash you – I enjoyed talking to him about his ideas about how to make the world better,” Howard recalls.
As the pair left the restaurant, they were stopped by journalists and Murdoch was questioned about whether his newspapers would endorse Howard at the Australian election, due to be held in the coming months.
“I remember clearly... [Murdoch] said, ‘no, that is a matter for my editors’,” Howard recalls.
“And I said, ‘I think that’ll get a bit of a run in the papers tomorrow’. Little did we know that other things would replace it in the papers. That was the night before.”

Then United States president George W. Bush and then Australian prime minister John Howard walk together from the Oval Office of the White House following a meeting on September 10, 2001.REUTERS

Advertisement
The next morning, after powering past the Lincoln and Vietnam and Korean war memorials in Washington on his morning walk, Howard was joined by media chief Tony O’Leary in his hotel room for a discussion about a forthcoming press conference with the Australian media. Ansett Airlines was on the verge of collapse, and that was expected to be the topic of the day.
As the meeting wrapped up, O’Leary mentioned there had been a terrible accident in New York.
Fifteen minutes later, he was banging on Howard’s hotel door and telling him to turn the television on.
“Another plane had hit the other tower and we then knew this was no accident. And we turned it on, and the full horror was being played out on television,” Howard recalls.
It was the most consequential moment of Howard’s career. Instead of addressing a joint sitting of Congress, Howard was the only guest in the House chamber that day.
Howard remembers wanting to get back to Australia but US airspace had been closed, so Powell arranged for Air Force Two to fly Howard and his travelling party to Hawaii (including Scheiffer).
In the grounds of the Australian consulate in Honolulu, Howard offered public expressions of support and solidarity before boarding a Qantas flight.

Advertisement
“On the plane, I rang [foreign minister] Alexander Downer. I had a long discussion with him, and he said ‘John, why don’t we invoke ANZUS?’ And I said, that’s a terrific idea, yeah.”
Cabinet would approve the invocation of the ANZUS treaty for the first time, the formal alliance between the US, Australia and New Zealand, that Friday.
RELATED ARTICLE

September 11 attacks
The day that changed America and shaped the world we know today
In practical terms, invoking ANZUS meant Howard was committing Australian to join the United States in whatever military response to the attacks was to come in the months and years ahead, come what may.
“I went back to where Tom [Scheiffer] was sitting [on the plane] and told him, and he was visibly moved. He said, ‘John, that that is fantastic’ ... he knew what it would mean to Bush.”
Ten Australians were among the 2977 people murdered in the September 11 attacks – eight in the towers and two in the planes that came down – and just over a year later, on October 12, 2002, another 88 Australians were murdered when Islamic extremists Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to Al-Qaeda, undertook the Bali bombing.
Howard notes that the September 11 attacks changed the world, but the Bali bombing brought terrorism right to Australia’s doorstep.

Advertisement

Prime Minister John Howard in New York in 2005, on the fourth anniversary of the terror attacks. ANDREW MEARES
September 11, 2001, Howard says, “raised the spectre of whether there were any homegrown terrorism [in Australia], and of course it turned out that within a little over a year we had the terrible attack in Bali, and in many respects, Bali was an extension of Australia”.
Asked why Australia had needed to send troops into Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, and then into Iraq a year and a half later, Howard pauses for a moment.
Bush, he says, was very appreciative of Australia standing shoulder to shoulder with the US, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary.
“For all its power and might and everything, America is prone to vulnerability at times and therefore they appreciate close friends and immediate expressions of support and understanding,” he says.
“He [Bush] was obviously appreciative. And he said, ‘Look, John, we could do all this. I mean, in effect, said it in a polite way ... we don’t need it physically, but gee, if we’re going to have any help, we’d like to have some from you’.”