Episode 207: New Contrarians CEO, Boomers' Budget, GYG Comes Home, EY Parental Leave Report
Adam and Adir welcome The Contrarians new CEO, discuss the federal budget, GYG and why leaving the US is the right call, and talk through the EY parental rort and what parental leave should look like.
The Contrarians catchup
Big news: Will Hayward has come on board as co-founder and CEO of The Contrarians Co. Will brings a career spanning The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and BuzzFeed UK, and most recently helped save Private Media from near-collapse.
Adir: “I said to you, it feels like this pod is reaching quite a large number of people, but I feel like it could be something much bigger. And we should get the best person in media to come in and build this out as a media business.”
Will: “I look at The Contrarians and I think, could I imagine this being a much bigger thing? Could I imagine this being something that’s got hundreds of thousands of listeners and we take it on the road and it’s got a great subscription product? Do I think that the way you two talk about business is something that a lot of people get value from? Like, absolutely.”
Adir went to see physicist Brian Cox at the Melbourne Convention Centre. His take on the economics: “He’s got 500,000 people on this tour. Let’s just say $100 USD. He’s making 50 million. And he’s got to be keeping half. It turns out that’s how he makes like a hundred million dollars by being a physicist. It’s actually an incredible bit of physics.”
Luxury Escapes held its first live event at the Melbourne Exhibition Building, attracting over 13,000 people against an aspirational target of 10,000. Adam: “I think we can do 20,000 next year.” The event was followed 24 hours later by Luxury Escapes’ first Maldives charter flight, which was essentially full.
Australia Post has a billboard in Albert Park that just reads “Delivering for 3206.” Adir: “Basically the question is, what happened that they needed to implement this? Does the ambulance advertise saying when you have a heart attack, we’ll come and get you? No, because there’s not a lot of competition. This is how they’re spending their money when they’re cutting services.”
Will’s take on the future of media: “The central unit would not be a website and a masthead. No one’s going out and setting up a thing and saying, look, this is the new version of The New York Times. The central unit would be a pod. What people want to hear is things that they wouldn’t be able to hear elsewhere. The hosts need to be opinionated, which obviously is pretty tough for Adam, but we’re doing our best to kind of encourage them.”
The budget: six days later, it’s still a disaster
A full debrief on the Albanese budget. Both Adam and Adir remained scathing, widening their analysis beyond founders to the full picture of intergenerational inequity embedded in the changes.
On who the real winners are:
Adam: “If you look at all these advantages, the primary residence exemption remains. The negative gearing remains if you own the assets, which of course you have to be old to own already. And people get their CGT value grandfathered. Every single thing has been tilted. We already had the most unfair tax system you could imagine for older people. And they just made it worse.”
Adir: “Retirees have long structured their financial affairs to qualify for an aged pension and get access to a lucrative pension concession card. This provides discounted doctor visits, medication, utility bills. Bear in mind, 63% of Australians over 67 get the pension. So it’s not like it’s a few people, it’s the majority of old people get it.”
On the super loophole:
Adir: “Super all of a sudden has a totally changed risk profile because of these tax changes. If you want to go and invest in riskier assets that are more likely to generate higher growth, but also might lose your money, the only logical place left to make that investment is inside super. Any asset that grows substantially over a period will be taxed at a higher rate of tax than a poorly performing asset. It’s pretty absurd really.”
On how much it will actually raise:
Adir: “Thirty-five percent of capital gains tax in Australia is paid by 1% of transactions. Whatever the government has forecast it is going to collect from these new taxes, it will be collecting much less than that. Because people will rearrange their tax affairs and not pay. People just won’t sell. They’ll just borrow off their holdings.”
On the path to recession:
Adir: “Australia has 1.1% GDP growth at the moment. It’s going backwards in real terms. Inflation is 5%. There’s increased spending. Unemployment’s just gone up. Property prices are going to go down. Rent is going to go up. What I suspect is going to happen in two years’ time at election time is there’ll be a massive cost of living crisis with people not finding places to rent and possibly a recession.”
On what they should have done instead:
Adam: “If you’re gonna tackle intergenerational inequality, do it properly. Put some tax on the primary residence, not 50%. Get rid of negative gearing completely, not the grandfather garbage they’re doing. Actually make it fair so older people don’t have these benefits. There’s so many things they could have done that actually would have been brave, harsh moves that may you or I may not have liked, in terms of personally, but were the right thing to do. This is the wrong thing to do and it targets the wrong people. Targets the young, not the old.”
GYG is a masterclass in knowing when to quit
Guzman Y Gomez co-founder Stephen Marks announced the closure of its US operation, just months after claiming it was on the verge of a breakthrough. Investors sent shares up 26% in days, with the market cap back above $2B. RBC analyst Michael Toner had noted the US business was not expected to break even until 2037.
Adir: “I will say something very positive about Stephen Marks. CEOs often fall in love with their own ideas, and the more that people disagree with them, the more enamoured they become. He accepted the reality. That’s very hard to do. He’s been very honest about it. He’s done this mea culpa that said we’ve made lots of mistakes, this is one of the mistakes, I’m shutting it down. Founders can look at the way he’s handled this for some lessons.”
Adam: “He gave it a real shot, which is great. He copped the personal fallout, and then eventually it became so obvious he had to pull out. The short-term vicissitudes of the market shouldn’t be determining your business strategy. I think he gave it a real shot.”
Adir: “GYG is more profitable for franchisees than McDonald’s in many cases. As long as your franchisees are making money, you’ve got plenty of TAM because you just pop up new stores. If your franchisees are making two and a half, three million bucks at a GYG store, that’s unbelievable.”
Adir: “If you really believe in this business, you think it might 5x plus off the IPO price, maybe more. Form a view, have a thesis, invest in it. And unless something changes with the thesis, like the founders leave or they do something crazy, I think you should just form a thesis on the business and the founder.”
EY parental leave clawback: sensible policy, woke outrage
EY announced it would require employees to repay two months of their six-month parental leave if they resign within a year of returning. The move was immediately condemned by commentators including Carol Schwartz, who called it “a conditional loan.” Adam and Adir had a different read.
Adir: “I play this game with my kids, we find funny signs and we have to say, what happened for them to need this sign? There’s no sign without some disaster that preceded it. Basically the question is, what happened that they needed to implement this policy? Like it didn’t come out of nowhere. Obviously this was some kind of problem.”
Adam: “Carol Schwartz claimed that if people are walking out within a year of returning from parental leave, something’s broken. That may be the case, but much more likely is someone’s gone, show me the incentive. I can get my six months pay. I can get a bigger pay rise at PWC across the road. I’m just going to get paid double. That’s what that does.”
Adam: “We have a clawback by the way, hundred percent. I’ve only used it once. But do you have a return-to-work bonus? Because I actually like supporting working women. I don’t give people a payment not to work, a payment to work. So you come back to work, we’ll give you a bonus.”
Five other stories worth following:
Oil slid and global stocks rose as investors bet the US and Iran are edging toward a deal to end the war, reopen Hormuz, and ease energy-driven inflation pressure across markets in recent days.
The UN cut its 2026 global growth forecast as the Middle East energy shock drives oil, gas and inflation higher, with developing economies most exposed and Europe facing especially weak growth through 2026 overall.
Kevin Warsh has taken over the US Federal Reserve as inflation, gasoline prices and Treasury yields climb, tying Trump’s economic credibility to a divided central bank with limited room to cut rates decisively anytime soon.
Pope Leo XIV used his first encyclical to demand tougher AI regulation, warning autonomous weapons and corporate concentration could destabilise society, while Anthropic’s Chris Olah said oversight must extend well beyond Big Tech itself.
Russia and Ukraine traded fresh missile and drone strikes after one of Moscow’s heaviest attacks on Kyiv, killing civilians, damaging infrastructure and showing US mediation has failed to meaningfully reduce battlefield escalation this week.