https://www.copyright link/rear-window/gurner-got-his-start-with-loans-from-his-boss-grandfather-20230913-p5e48zRich ListerTim Gurnertook to the stageat this newspaper’s Property Summit on Tuesday to rail against “arrogant” employees and lazy tradies, and make a bewildering call for unemployment to rise “40 to 50 per cent”.
“We need to see pain in the economy,” Timbo said. “We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.
Property developer Tim Gurner said unemployment needed to rise by between 40 per cent and 50 per cent. Michael Quelch
“There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. It’s a dynamic that has to change.”
We need tens of thousands more Aussies out of work, so the spiv patrol and I can sell more tacky luxury apartments in Melbourne. The tradies are quiet quitting and Timbo has some feels. Incoming Productivity Commission chairwomanDanielle Wood,are you taking notes? This is how you make a policy argument!
This masthead posted the comments on Twitter and boy have they gone viral. Even New York congresswomanAlexandria Ocasio-Cortezused them to make a point about CEO pay. As we write, the clip has been viewed more than 11 million times. It’s also popping off with teens on TikTok.
Anyone with half a memory will know Timbo has form. He became a pre-pandemic meme in property circles as the “Avocado Toast Guy”, suggesting that people priced out of the property market should simply eat less brunch.
This year, Timbo spruiked his $150 million luxury anti-ageing brand, Saint Haven. It turns out Timbo is not just obsessed with staying young – a red flag in itself – but he’s building “cult-like” man caves, where he can rope in the rich to steam themselves and drink tequilaTimbo, with all this chilling out in oxygen chambers and fiddling around with your oura ring, it’s no wonder Australia’s productivity is so low!
Fellow Rich ListerHarry Triguboffonce called Timbo “the future”, whileMorry Schwarzhas been fingered as a mentor.
A few years ago, Timbo revealed that he first bought a St Kilda apartment for “180k” and then had “my boss at the time approach me to renovate it while he fronted the money”.
He fronted the money. The boss did. Golly it must be nice to have an employer who doesn’t think you’re a lazy arsehole, but rather reaches into their pocket to help out a young fella.
Timbo went on to say that he later “took out a $150,000 loan using the $34,000 from his grandfather”.
Of course! Because it’s a tale stitched into the fabric of the Australian dream. The lump sum inheritance, or the familial guarantor. The financial backstop that’s always there in every story, though never in the headline. They are the foundational facts that are glazed over in the origin stories of Australia’s over-levered property wunderkinds.
The reason Timbo’s comments have resonated globally is not so much that he’s a capitalist edgelord who is willing to publicly say the thing that other bosses are secretly thinking. Although there are surely readers of this newspaper who are quietly agreeing with him.
It’s because Tim Gurner encapsulates all the fears that regular people have of the property industry. That when landlords and property developers go into functions and hotel ballrooms, they all privately gripe about the ungrateful serfs. But the mask didn’t slip here. Timbo ripped it off.
The next time Timbo chunters on about any aspect of economic policy, or about the current predicament of employer-employee relationships, he should be forced to staple to his forehead how he really “made it”. Lord knows there’s enough room.
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