Paul Clitheroe

Ah, see, here we're probably speaking to the converted, I think, James.

But look, I think we'd all agree that the reason it matters critically and it matters across 26 million Australians, putting aside really young little bubbers, but it's fair even for financially literate listeners like yours, James, that, look, I think the big deal for me is that a modern economy, it allows you to do something humans haven't been able to do for some 7,000 years of documented history.

Since Bank Card popped along in about 1980,

For the first time in history, the everyday consumers, all of us, can spend money that we simply don't have.

We can spend money that we've yet to earn, and we're spending money that we hope to earn in the future.

Now, this really is new for humans.

In my uni days, it was probably the same for you, James, pretty straightforward.

Now, different to you, James, I was in uni in the mid-1970s.

If I didn't get to the bank by 3 o'clock on Friday, they shut at 3 o'clock, if I didn't get to the bank by 3 o'clock on Friday and I didn't get out my $20 spending money, I didn't go out on the weekend, and I went to the pub on Saturday night, which is pretty common, and I ran out of money,

I went home.

And so the system actually taught me financial literacy.

There was literally, if I didn't work in my bar job or come and dad used to help out with my uni college fees, $24 a week.

But basically, if I didn't have that money, well, I was going to get thrown out of college.

I wasn't going to eat and I wasn't going to have a beer.

So it's complicated, James.

And so it does matter now more than ever because in the past, the system did not allow you to get into dreadful trouble with money.

The truth is, James, the system now allows you to get in as much trouble as you like.

So you need to know the rules.

Yeah, it's a really good question.

This all started when I chaired the Australian Federal Government's Financial Literacy Board going back some 20-odd years, which is where the National Financial Literacy Strategy came from.