Jim Phillipson: From Ownership to Stewardship

Late last year, I arrived at a quandary. I’d been hearing about how inaccessible land ownership is for younger folk, and how investment capital is still relatively slow to come on board the incredible broad scale potential of regenerative agriculture (notwithstanding often great intent). And I’d been hearing how even long-term legends in regen ag are still expected to be saddled with enormous debt and rates of return (to say nothing of squeezed prices), while they also regenerate the majority of the national and global estate on our behalf. Clearly all untenable. So I began to wonder out loud, what if there’s something fundamentally misplaced with the current approach to attracting investment in regeneration?

When thinking this aloud, I got some nodding heads and an introduction to Jim Phillipson, former pro-cycling champ, businessman, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Rendere Trust and Biodiversity Legacy. Join us as at Jim’s place as we delve into the transformative concept of stewardship over traditional land ownership. Jim's been helping people transition land and capital into stewardship models of ownership for a while now, having started with his own. And yep, he was advised this would never work. Here he shares his story and insights on how reshaping land titles to reflect stewardship can align investments with regenerative agriculture, potentially tapping all sorts of potential quickly, and how a related ethos is manifesting across media, politics, and reconciliation with First Nations.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers and a transcript, also available on Apple and some other apps. (Note the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read.)

Recorded at Jim’s place, on regenerating land in Gippsland, Victoria (as a dust storm blew up from surrounding vegetable farms), 3 March 2024.

Title slide: Jim & Heather Phillipson with AJ.

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from the film Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, featuring music chosen by guests (with thanks to podcast member Josie Symons).

Transcript

Jim: 0:00

So in one decade, two decades, five decades, you're not here, you're no longer. You have agency today. You have agency to set the course of that environment, of that property, of your children, of their children, of the whole next generation. You have the agency today. You don't have the agency when you die. And that is such a powerful thing to be able to enact that agency that literally it's transformative with an individual psychology. They have a real purpose and a real engagement and they literally come alive and they have a much more enriched life. So it's not letting go, it's about embracing in a far greater way.

AJ: 1:13

G'day. My name's Anthony James and this is The RegenNarration, Creative Commons Media, back at our ocean home on Wadjak Noongar Boodja near Perth. Thanks to everyone we managed to say hi to over the last month touring the southeast of Oz, especially you generous souls who invited us into your homes, along with the Cheng and Bate families for your heartfelt support, and Naka la, Darren and family for having us at Wormfest last week. What an event, and it was wonderful to meet so many listeners I had no idea were even out there. Thanks so much for your kind thoughts and, of course, great to see some of you older friends, listeners and supporters too. If you're also finding value in all this, please consider joining this wonderful community that makes the podcast possible for as little as $3 a month or whatever you can and want to contribute. Subscribing members get special offers, invitations, tips, behind the scenes stuff and more. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com/ support and thanks again.

AJ: 2:23

Late last year I arrived at a quandary. I'd been hearing about how inaccessible land ownership is for younger folk and how investment capital is still relatively slow to come on board the incredible broad scale potential of regenerative agriculture, notwithstanding often great intent. And I'd been hearing how even long term legends in regen ag are still expected to be saddled with enormous debt and rates of return, to say nothing of squeezed pricing, while they also regenerate the majority of the national and global estate on our behalf. Clearly all untenable. So I began to wonder out loud what if there's something fundamentally misplaced with the current approach to attracting investment in regeneration. W hile all the talk in regen ag and, for that matter, increasingly with some investors too, is of stewardship above ownership, the structure of land titles is often private ownership. So what if a significant source of our impasses is that, while region farmers are operating for people and planet, investors still see a land title in the farmers' individual names? In other words, the structure still suggests investors would be investing for farmers' private gain, so, logically, they'd continue to look for their private gain in investment returns. What if, instead, the property title reflected the stewardship ethos actually held by the farmers, that the structure of the title itself would communicate that ethos to investors before any words were even needed? Would that help inspire commensurate giving by people with land, capital and understanding? Well, when thinking this aloud, I was getting some nodding heads.

AJ: 4:16

And then Tanya Massy mentioned to me that she'd met a bloke called Jim Phillipson. He's been helping people transition land into stewardship models of title for a while now, having started with his own. A nd, yep, he was advised this would never work. I had to find out more, and Jim and his wife, Heather, were only too happy to welcome us to their place near Heyfield in central Gippsland, Victoria, a few weeks ago. So let's meet this former pro-cycling champ, businessman, philanthropist and co-founder of the Rendere Trust and Biodiversity Legacy. We talk about all this and how these models might also have something to offer the regeneration of media, politics and reconciliation with First Nations. I pressed record when Jim and I were sharing some natter ahead of our official chat, so let's just pick it up from there.

Jim: 5:15

So Philanthropy Australia and AEGN are the peak bodies for philanthropy. And AEGN is particularly focused on environmental philanthropy - 180 members. Philanthropy Australia is all philanthropy. But guess how much philanthropy from total goes into the environment?

AJ: 5:35

OK, I will guess 2%.

Jim: 5:39

You're pretty close, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's generally 3%. It's moving up a bit because there's more climate funding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, that in itself tells us how we respect the environment. And when it comes to the national budget, of course, the environmental budget is way, way lower than our defence budget.

AJ: 6:03

So yeah, yeah, which does make you then think about.

Jim: 6:07

What are we defending?

AJ: 6:08

What are we defending?

Jim: 6:09

Who's our enemy?

AJ: 6:11

Right on. Beautiful. Al right, Jim, an official welcome to the podcast. Thanks a lot for sitting down with me for a yarn. JIM: Thanks AJ, it's a real pleasure. AJ: Let's start precisely where we are and as the winds come up, but we seem to be OK amongst the fruit trees and other company here. How you came to be here? How did it start?

Jim: 6:34

Well, you could get quite esoteric and say that we've always been here. Ha ha, ha, ha ha.

AJ: 6:40

Great, let's start there. Beautiful.

Jim: 6:42

But given that we're talking practically, yeah, 40 years ago we were looking for a place to breed our family and we discovered this idyllic location just north of Hayfield, on the McAllister River, running up into the foothills of the Gippsland Elps. And, yeah, we'd known this area for a long time, in fact, we were both from close by and, yeah, it just felt right. And at that time owned by an older Grazier, and we exercised our first act of intergenerational transition for property and he sold it to us unofficially, without going to market, because he believed in that young gen having a go.

AJ: 7:34

Jeez, there's so much to say about that, because, by the same token, when you got here, the land you found describe how it was.

Jim: 7:43

The land was heavily grazed, in an agricultural sense, in a conservation, environmental sense. It was pretty buggered and therefore we had this challenge. We loved farming. We've always been of farming families, so we did. We farmed beef with a softer footprint, steadily fencing out riparian areas, encouraging natural regen, to the point where we actually stopped beef farming and started emu farming as a way of caring for country. This is not fertile country, it's a pretty tough country. And then we said, ok, the whole farm will now be conservation for the environment, for our families and for future generations, and we just love that transition. But that happened over 20, 30 years. We just learned and adapted and respected the land.

AJ: 8:45

I like how you've described it, in fact, a bit like having a child You've really got no idea what to do, but you do. You find your way because you've got to. And there you were in that situation, and so you've described how it had, what all of a dozen trees on it, something in this 100 acres or so, and a bit of cactus, because that was the only thing that grew on it at the time and now describe what we see now.

Jim: 9:13

Well, this is a living environment. It's a healthy environment, it's a healthy biome and it's healthy for people that live here, visit here, even people that don't. They know that properties like this are really, really important for the future of the planet and how do you see it?

AJ: 9:33

Describe our surrounds and what you've chipped away at bringing in and tending and being surprised by.

Jim: 9:40

Well, this is a connectivity property, so it runs alongside the river. The river is healthier than it looks. We've got resident platypus and a whole range of ricali and a lot of water birds, and the reveges is moved from the river up through the gullies and those gullies then connect to the north with remnant bush and then that bush runs right up to the Australian Elps. So there's a direct connectivity, just as there was 250 years ago, for people, plants and animals Really feels good.

AJ: 10:23

You then created a not-for-profit to enable more of this. Can you explain to us how that came to be and then what part of plating in making that connectivity?

Jim: 10:35

In a parallel world. We've always been part of the not-for-profit conservation world, starting with the origins of pre-bush heritage, pre-Australian wildlife conservancy, so we've been involved in, supported those organizations, grown with them, if you like. Our era has grown through land care and trust for nature, so it was natural for us to replicate that at a call it a micro level, at a local level. So really what we're creating is a mini conservation, now a bio link connecting with other properties that we've been fortunate to acquire, and building that connective chain again on that Avon Wilderness, mcallister River Valley through to the Gippsland Red Gum Plains.

AJ: 11:30

So when did you first think to do that? You'd landed here, you'd started the process of regeneration here. When did you first think, oh, let's incorporate something and see what it can do? How did?

Jim: 11:42

that happen? It's a good question because even today, I don't think there's too much thinking. I think it's more responding, interesting, just listening, observing, respecting and feeling what's right, so that everything we do is evolving, and that includes the whole range of organizations that we've either supported or helped to grow over 50 years. Many of those have been business-based. Now many more are not for profit, but it's the same culture that, if it feels right, we keep moving forward.

AJ: 12:30

If it doesn't feel right, Very interesting how it maps onto so much of what I hear with regenerative farmers or at least I'm just using that terminology broadly here and also those who are well certainly, for example, those who featured on the launch of the Sustainable Tale Report Regenerating Investment in Food and Farming. There was that language amongst them as well, so this is very interesting. In your case, you've moved into putting properties in trust type setups, commons type setups. Did you start with this property?

Jim: 13:09

We did. It's a philosophy that has been around forever, but we've lost touch with the commons over the last 500 years, but more particularly the last 250 years in Australia. But the commons is the foundation of all of our natural assets the air, the water, the land, plants and animals and we are not above the commons, we are part of the commons. So once we start to extract that natural capital for personal use, in fact we define that concept of the commons, of the environment for next generations. And the last 50 years has seen a massive extraction of nature and that has deprived next generations. So we've got an environmental overdraft that we're handing on to our kids and their kids and I think this is an opportunity to address that. And one of the ways we do that is to transition land to the commons, to community land trusts, to any form of entity that's not individualised and can't be resulted.

AJ: 14:25

So let's put some flesh on the bones as to how it works here. How's this set up here and, I guess, on the properties you've since acquired, to produce that connectivity at Goan North.

Jim: 14:35

So we've set up biodiversity legacy limited as a national not-for-profit. In its own right it can own conservation land and farmland and social housing land, but it also acts more importantly as a facilitator for communities to do the same. So our properties are dedicated to that. They're donated to that not-for-profit. Other people around Australia are donating their properties and people and their children can live, steward, love those properties, but they're safe in the knowledge that those properties won't be sold, they won't be subdivided, the plough won't go in, the trees won't be cleared and they'll be loved forever.

AJ: 15:25

Yeah, it's really something. So people donate properties and not just when they die, like to continue to live on them and set up the structures that suit them in that way, and they're all different. As I understand, you're really listening to what people want to do, including if they bring capital to the table, for example, and you match capital to land that's available. That it's still the same thing. It's like how is this to be governed, but just in a different sort of a way? Give us a couple of examples, then, of how it can play out what people decide to do.

Jim: 15:59

A really interesting property that we've just settled. Last week, first of March, is a property we call Meds Forest, south Coast, new South Wales, last remaining stand of old growth forest in that particular area connecting stand between the coast and the hinterland. Wow, this property was discovered by a 15 year old boy called Med. Med was recording in there, loved the property, noticed one day that the surveyor pigs had gone in. Property was to be subdivided into five and ten acre lots. End of old growth forest. He then shared that knowledge within the community. The community rallied behind him. A generous neighbour put the money in. We facilitated the purchase. That property is now owned with that protected community trust. The whole community own that environmental asset. They all love it. We call it Meds Forest, meds now 16, 17 and that is true in the generational, next gen transfer. The power is in the people. This is the thing. So stewardship of that is already locked in. Med's got another 50 years and so it goes on.

AJ: 17:20

Wow, that is a heck of a story. I'm curious, then, on the trajectory of it. I mean, this has only been 12 months, so it's really picking up as a thing, because it's interesting, right. I mean this is how we came to meet, that I was having this. I let that one go.

AJ: 17:42

I was having this conversation with increasing numbers of people and I remember, in a particular moment, speaking with Tonya Massey and you know, bouncing off. You tell me if I'm just missing the mark. You're the one in the heart of it, at the front line. But there appears to be a problem here whereby there's a range of impasses with moving capital, and you know she was behind that regenerating investment, food and farming report. With the sustainable table team. It's trying to find a way to shift that to go from where there's increasingly positive intent and language and so forth.

AJ: 18:20

But it's not that the old paradigm mould, if you like, is hard to depart from when it comes to the crunch and I said so there's this nonsense going on. In a way. I mean kindly nonsense, not a sort of pejorative where the farmers are doing it for Gaia, if you will, for the planet and future generations and investors when they get to the table, they still see a property title with a private name on it. And I said to Tonya and others at the time, at this particular moment, I said to Tonya that appears to be where the logical typings don't meet. You know, the ways of thinking don't meet. What would it mean to have an ownership structure that communicates what you feel, before you need to try and say anything about stewarding and custodianship and not ownership, and before you need to talk that way, even your structure communicates that.

AJ: 19:16

And it was a bit of a moment and she said, yeah, well, we've just met this guy who's been doing it for years you're kidding me helping families transition or these sorts of instances transition to structures that do reflect the clearly, the furphy that we would own nature and then communicate to investors or property owners. There's a higher goal here and that that is lubricating the wheels a bit, but tell me more about how you've experienced that. What, what are the people like who get animated?

Jim: 19:54

by that. It's a really interesting question, and if you ask any professional advisor, they're quick to say nobody will donate their farm, their house, their conservation property, zero, forget it, jim and I've been part of the professional advisory financial world for a long, long time, and so we've lived through literally hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rural clients working through acquisition, farming, succession planning, everything that opens and shuts.

AJ: 20:32

This was your business career. For what? 40 years or something, doing this?

Jim: 20:38

Yeah, I've been fortunate to have a really varied business career and I enjoy management, so the subject matter is is really less important. It's the management of the people. So the the different businesses that I've helped to evolve have been building finance for accounting, education, manufacturing, farming, etc. Is it?

Jim: 21:06

a really helpful cross-section of people. It's just a fortunate coincidence that management is common. People are the common element and I just love working with people, particularly young people, building teams, and we're doing that right at the moment. We've just transitioned a environmental consulting organization from profit to not-for-profit, rescued 30 people that would have been redundant, and that is wildlife unlimited limited, which is now up and about and a really valuable pathway for young scientists and that I didn't know about that in October. In November we'd actually set up the company, the new not-for-profit, and we transitioned first to December. So it's very quick, very effective and that's just become part of our toolkit to really reflect the changes in society. And this is the long way to get to.

Jim: 22:09

Your question is the baby boomers have been the major force for change in our society since the 50s and 60s. We've never seen the human impact on the world that we've seen. The baby boomers are now sitting in the box seat to be able to make a change for the better for all future generations and start to look at a longer term view and not a short term natural extraction view. Farms now are simply too expensive for young farmers and old farmers are bemoaning the fact they can't get young farmers on to country. Yes, the whole world wants better food and yet a 30 year old farmer with all the expertise and all the energy is blocked out because they haven't got 10 million dollars behind them. So we simply look at other ways for that person, that farming family, to be able to steward that farm, not own the farm. And that farm will never be owned by private individuals. It'll be owned by a community that can be a community of that particular family so it can protect the family intergenerational legacy, or it can be a community of communities and and protect the legacy that way.

Jim: 23:28

So old farm owners, who are now typically 70, 80 and 90 years old, realize that that bequeathing that farm to their kids and their kids will lose the farm, that that intergenerational transfer that perhaps was the reason that they arrived in that place is is no longer the same dynamic. There's four or five generations under that 80, 90, 100 year old person. The whole system, the whole culture has changed. We've gone from an agrarian economy where 80 percent of people were employed on farm to now 8 percent max. So we need to reflect that in our capital structures and this is an easy, easy transition to say that land will be protected for farming stewarded by that family for the next 100, 200, 300 years, but that family won't have to go through the trauma of recapitulizing every time a sibling says I want my share of the action or a bank says I want my share of the action. So bank of free farming is every farmer's dream. This is, this is exactly that.

AJ: 24:43

Yeah oh, that's so interesting. You know what? I think this wind might have got too big on it this.

Jim: 24:50

You've cracked to the wind.

AJ: 24:51

It's big hey maybe we should relocate we get the.

Jim: 24:57

It was really howling. I've never used that before. Do you like bank of free farming?

AJ: 25:03

that's good, that's a rip ridder. Yes, so, jim, we've had to defer to the wind and in coming back around to get out of the breeze for the moment. We're going to relocate again in a second, but just coming back around, I'm looking out over your property and then beyond it and we're seeing the early makings of a dust storm. We're seeing dust whip off landscapes behind the trees around here and it's another one of those sobering moments as we sit perched on top of a bit of a hilltop the stuff we've seen too much around the country.

Jim: 25:42

Correct AJ. What we've seen here is an evolution from 250 years ago. Fertile flood plains keep saying flood plains, highly fertile. That initial wave of farming grazing big impact. The installation of Glenmaggy irrigation system in 1920 led to the dairy industry a greater footprint. The current iteration is the vegetable industry. So dairy farms have been purchased by vegetable farmers, consolidated into 1000 acre lots and that whole thing is farmed industrially. All fences removed, all waterways removed, massive earth movement. The recent floods took away a lot of that. The wind today will be taking that away. The quarrying in the mining of our top soil in this fertile valley is a real loss.

AJ: 26:51

It puts a different lens on a vegetarian diet, and I say that as a form of vegetarian right before all this learning frankly and through the podcast. Well, I guess it preceded that little bit with eating so-called pests, thinking that was doing a favour to the land, but I guess that's been the evolution of my change over 20 years or so, but a long time vegetarian, and I have a lot of respect for people who are still choosing that or other forms of different diets like that, trying to be lighter on the earth. But then you hear of that. Veggie farming is the source of that, as much as any cattle farming might be, it's really. It again paints the picture, doesn't it? Which I guess is one of the key things I've learned. The dichotomy that we need to be aware of isn't between foodstuffs so much as the nature of how the food is done and the land stewed in is done, and so our commonalities amongst people who care about these things again are much bigger than perhaps what we've taken advantage of, what we've come together on so far.

Jim: 27:57

Correct. We live on a biome. Our gut is simply a container for bacteria. It's not us. It's how healthy our gut bacteria is, our flora and fauna. That comes directly from our food. The food comes directly from nature's biome. If we have a monoculture of nature, we've got a monoculture of food. We've got a monoculture of our gut bacteria. We've gotten far less resistance to disease. So it's pretty simple. It's all in balance and that's all that sustainable life is about. It's about balance. And if you institute an industrial regime run by accountants, run by bankers, as I said before, banker-free farming is our nirvana, because that leads to a whole lot of balanced decisions rather than decisions that are made purely financially and I'm sure the vegetable farmers are governed by the accountants and by the bankers and by a return per hectare, but not sustainability of that natural ecosystem.

AJ: 29:07

And there it is in macrocosm, where the land biome is thin on the ground, there goes the ground.

Jim: 29:13

Yep, that's our gut biome, biome away.

AJ: 29:16

Right, let's relocate to a really comfortable location. We'll continue. I should get a photo of that too, eh.

Jim: 29:24

Yeah, it's dark, isn't it? Yeah, that's vegetable farm there and you can see within a short period of time that family-owned, well cared for country has moved to industrial ag. Yeah, it's this capitalisation of farming and, conversely, that's what you lead there. You lead the way.

AJ: 29:46

You lead the way. Alright. So here we are, and if we're going to be forced inside, we might as well sit on the comfy couch, with the sun beaming in the back.

Jim: 30:04

I like it here with the sun, 100% straight, how's?

AJ: 30:06

that Terrific. So I'm curious about so many aspects of this you mentioned before this will never work moment or moments that you get, but it does. So in what ways do people defy those bits of advice you get from those people, these other people, and face, I guess, what some people, even listening, might think of oh how would I face that fear of letting go? Or how do people come to do it.

Jim: 30:39

It's an interest in discussion. Sometimes in 20 minutes you can see the transition from resistance to bewilderment to yes, because the fact is we all die and that's, even if you don't want to let go, that's the go. So in one decade, two decades, five decades, you're not here, You're no longer. You have agency today. You have agency to set the course of that environment, of that property, of your children, of their children, of the whole next generation. You have the agency today. You don't have the agency when you die. And that is such a powerful thing to be able to enact that agency that literally it's transformative with an individual psychology. They have a real purpose and a real engagement and they literally come alive and they have much more enriched life. So it's not letting go, it's about embracing in a far greater way.

AJ: 31:49

And this is so empowered. And this is essentially what you felt. This is what got you onto it as well.

Jim: 31:59

Fortunately, it's always been part of our culture as a family, as a family as individuals.

AJ: 32:07

Yes, tell me about that. So when do you feel like where did it come from? Or when do you remember it, starting for yourself?

Jim: 32:16

This is nature and nurture. I think it's to a degree innate. It feels right, but always it's trusting other people, supporting other people, and that is so healthy that we just keep doing it. And it's like children you don't take from children, you give, and then that reciprocates.

AJ: 32:41

It sounds so obvious when you say it like that so in your childhood. So you grew up on a farm.

Jim: 32:50

Born in Bomballa, up over the border. Yes, interstate, what we call Far East, far East Gippsland.

AJ: 33:01

And what may have been the capital of Australia if the sliding doors had slid the other way. I was just informed of this Because it is literally the midpoint between Melbourne and Sydney, about this Bomballa. And then, pretty quickly though, you're in Gippsland as part of a farming family, as is your wife Heather, and you're doing all this together and as a child, I'm wondering them what impact this has. I know you said to me about farming that that taught you about working together, so you can see how that's pivotal part of what you've just described. Then I'm wondering I mean, we hear so many stories about people's trauma and various kinds that brings this dawning of what seems obvious to actually like. I'm going to do it whatever thing it is, and in your case that I'm curious. You had a surprise turning your life when you realised you were decent on a bike. What part that had to play, perhaps? But tell us first of all how the spirit arose in you to be competitive cyclist. How did you stumble on that? I?

Jim: 34:10

don't think anything's a stumble. I think it's an evolution of your own spirit and inherently it's trusting yourself. So if you trust yourself, you'll be the best that yourself can be, but you'll be very contented. So the aspirations are what you entrust in yourself and not what others tell you. So that was an early awareness that it's act in accordance with your own intuition, gut, feel and independence. So cycling was simply an expression of independence, the same as we do a lot of back country skiing and bushwalking. And every organisation is the same. It's got that spirit of independence and empowering people to be independent and to take their own agency. And today we're employing over 50 young people and we encourage that independence. They've often been constrained by education, by finance, and we just say it's just, you have brilliant agency over your life, your career, your families and futures. We trust you. And so, as environmental philanthropists, we invest, and we invest fully, mainly with young people, so that they can do the heavy lifting over the next 50 years.

AJ: 35:48

You have committed to spend down to.

Jim: 35:49

I believe it's intrinsic. We don't believe philanthropy is an intergenerational castle to protect future generations via wealth transfer. We believe that is a responsibility and a privilege to be able to deploy our assets, in our case by 2030, to fully commit to invest in a better environment and, quite frankly, a better lifestyle for us. So again, it's the story the more you give, the more you get.

AJ: 36:24

Yeah, so interesting and in doing so I mean the sum of the difference in how you're doing it compared to other things I have seen is that the structure's different, so it gets back to what we were talking about before. And so still, as a young bloke you met your wife and I gather you met a kindred spirit in the ways we're talking.

Jim: 36:43

The interesting thing is the tribe, this is the community. Both of us, multi-generational, were from this area. In fact my great-grandfather was a blacksmith and most likely worked in Charlie Massey's shearing shed with Charlie's great-grandfather because the blacksmiths were the core of farming and forestry and so that that culture, our family, really has been bone-angleboss based, and the same with Heather's family from the Maffra-Stratford area, multi-generational. So I think that makes it very easy that there's so much common culture. And of course in the early 70s the world was about change and we embraced that vigorously and that was just a fortune of our generation, that wasn't of our doing, but we certainly fully engaged and it's just been a brilliant life.

AJ: 37:52

I wonder if this is another moment like that. I wonder if the 20s, as it were.

AJ: 37:58

For people like us, it probably still sounds like we're talking about the 1920s even me but I wonder if the 2020s, I wonder if we're in a similar moment and perhaps perhaps we haven't found the joy part that was so synonymous with 60s and 70s. But even as I say that, I mean there was assassinations and Vietnam, like in some ways, it was every bit as terrible as what it is now in those ways, but every bit of the joy and the fulfillment and the richness and the spirit is available too. So let's keep going with the story. Then you guys headed off because you were winning everything here and you followed the lead on the bike and you went together to Europe and it was crossing over with this time, this 70s time. So describe that a bit to us and how your lives unfolded over there.

Jim: 38:55

Well, I'll just make a minor correction. I wasn't winning everything. That I was personally very satisfied and I thought I won't win any more. I'd won some big races here and was really satisfied. But the exploration, the independence, the thirst for knowledge was overseas and that was our maturing process to one way ticket and living in central Europe for a number of years and really growing up in that much broader environment and challenged by everyday living and, yes, having a really fulfilling time, but knowing that that was simply that it was a transition. It wasn't a destination and our heritage, our home and our destination was always here, but it was a bit like an accelerated learning experience. And then coming back to Australia, overland with two small motorbikes over the course of a year. Again, it was a different lens on that, prior to that, working in London and learning a lot about business there. So we landed back in Australia as really very mature individuals, still 25 years old.

AJ: 40:20

Yeah well, so where things go wrong, I guess you must get these questions right the reason why private ownership became so attractive to people. I'm in charge. I'm not gonna be dependent on other people and have to worry about them. I'm gonna decide what happens here. You know that sort of thing. I guess you must get those questions about how the governance works then.

Jim: 40:43

Our current governance system, our finance systems are simply construct. This is relevant today, but in future people will look back and say that was totally inappropriate, ridiculous, or we just don't understand why they did what they did, as we do when we look back 100 years or 200 years. So we need to take a longer term view that is this healthy for the human species? Is it healthy for the planet? And quite clearly we've taken a sidetrack that we need to recognize and retreat from and get back on the main road of sustainability. So it's simply that logic that we don't necessarily know what's wrong or what's right, but we get a sense that we're going wronger rather than righter.

Jim: 41:35

And let's just start looking at how do we do tomorrow? A little bit better than we've done today.

AJ: 41:42

Yeah, yeah. So then I mean, part of that then is that old paradigm I was referring to before, where a lot of finance that essentially wants to come into regeneration in some form or other seems to be at it impasses because it's looking for the same, if at the lower end still the same variety of return to maintain itself and ideally grow. That sort of dynamic is partly what you're referring to. So how does that shift with these structures? Is it just purely as you've been describing?

Jim: 42:15

it's just giving there's a wonderful saying to a man with a hammer everything is a nail To finance, everything is financial return. Yeah, we will not change the current paradigm by using the same tools that got us here and those tools have been extremely successful and the people that wield those two tools extremely successful at that, so they've got no imperative to change. So the change comes from a change of tools so that we've got a tool that doesn't search for a nail and that tool is using intergenerational transfer. It's value in nature for its own sake and value in nature for future generations in a way that's non-monetary in the large but still operating within the monetary system. And that's simply the transition of land to the commons.

Jim: 43:11

Much of Australia is already in the commons. Canberra is the commons. Northern Australia is largely pastoral. Properties are largely commons. Thought, our island, the total island, is the commons. We're used to these Native title even, I guess Native title is the commons. So this is land that can't be monetarized, can't be extracted, and will be valuable for all future generations, not just for the current owner.

AJ: 43:36

It's so interesting to think because you could say the internet is a commons, for example, because we don't think of it, we don't charge Zuckerberg or whatever who are extracting with the use of that commons, but not having to value it in any way because we're not valuing it.

Jim: 43:55

Correct. We've got to respect the commons and then we have a return on investment of some kind. Doesn't have to be monetary, but simply protecting. It is a big start and the commons will protect us.

AJ: 44:10

So you're seeing an increasing number of people coming on board this ethos and you have a system to do that. I guess you see where it's not happening too. Hey, I'm curious about how you see what's stopping people. Do you see that, yes, sometimes it takes time, or sometimes, yes, some people just won't come at it, at least not in the foreseeable future. Like, how do you see the ones who aren't coming at these sorts of transitions?

Jim: 44:34

Change is a cascade, so there's early movers, early recognisers, early adopters, and they're the people that are recognising and starting to act today. That cascade accelerates. So every person that is an early mover today will influence five, 10, 15, 20 people in the next two or three years. That cascade we're just starting to see the acceleration of that. So we're not wedded to a particular recipe or structure. We just really encourage the whole ecosystem and support the whole ecosystem. But it's essentially a distributed method where local communities and individuals can do this themselves. A bit, like you said, the internet. Everybody can access it, learn from it, and we may not even know that people are doing it and I'm sure that's starting to happen here already.

AJ: 45:35

That's the beauty of it. I am seeing that increasingly so. You have talked about the diversity of stewardship options available to people like whether it be conservation or value-adder enterprises, or education or, of course, First Nations re-stewarding the area. You've had some experience in this too, even just with the properties we've seen in the last 24 hours where indigenous folk, original custodians, are coming back on.

Jim: 46:01

Correct. We're actively supporting First Nations people who are traditional owners and traditional custodians to access private land, to transition private land into the commons. But also in Gippsland, ghanai Kurno have been particularly active in transitioning public land through co-management of parks and public land and eventually to sole management. So that's a really. Gippsland is primarily public land a lot of forested land, a lot of wetlands and coastal lands and we're seeing just this wonderful transition of that being managed by politics out of Melbourne to community and we're deeply engaged in transition of public land to community management.

AJ: 46:58

Much healthier We've mentioned the regenerative agriculture stuff and in so many ways it parallels perhaps predates, but certainly parallels the shifts you're seeing in finance, that it goes from those early folk innovators and then builds. I'm wondering, has that been part, a significant part of the properties that you have worked with to date in this way, or is it more that that's coming on now where regenerative agriculture and the idea of moving into the commons trust scenarios with land ownership is happening? Has it been happening for a while? Is it part of what you're doing?

Jim: 47:37

It's an accidental outcome, really? Yeah, the beauty of pioneering is that you don't know what you don't know, and we have never envisaged that agricultural property would transition to the commons in the clear way that conservation property and social housing property obviously fit the commons. But the reality is that caring farmers have contacted us to say this is fundamentally matching my belief system that I don't want to see this farm sold, subdivided, eroded. I've loved care for it for generations and I think this is something that's worth considering. That's interesting.

AJ: 48:28

So would you say this is still a work in progress, to land or other examples so far where this is happening.

Jim: 48:36

We've got farm owners that are committed. We're working through that process now. Generally takes about 12 months, okay, and we build the team to support that and we now employ a dozen people around Australia working with landowners to work through that process. So it's a very careful process with a strong eye to the stewardship that particular farm owner any farm owner then decide how long they'd like to steward the farm, whether they have their family. That provides the stewardship ongoing. Perhaps it's a transition to First Nations, perhaps through the world of young farmers, an opportunity for young farmers to establish their lives on that property in a secure way, in a nature-positive way and the stewardship agreement is essentially nature-positive. If you can enhance the capital value of that property, then you can continue farming. If you start to reduce the capital natural capital on that property, then the stewardship terminates.

AJ: 49:46

And how assiduous is the measuring of those returns, if you will, because the reducing of it in measurement is a bit of an issue too right, you can never measure the essence of life itself, which is what this is all about. Yet it can be helpful, I gather, to be measuring parts, and is this where it happens? You measure some things and then take it into a broader account. Is that how it works?

Jim: 50:10

Correct the mysteries of any accounting system, can strive for perfection but totally lose the plot. Yes, so holistic measurements. We use woodland bird population and species variety, for example, as a proxy to the health of the environment. You can do that with many, many species. So there's simple, effective, enjoyable. It's far better sitting down going out and doing a bird count than sitting down and doing a try to reconcile a set of books, but that is a really strong guide because birds are mobile, they choose to live in a healthy environment and migrate through.

Jim: 50:56

They do, and if birds are there, you know that the habitat is there. There's many species that move around like that that we can have a proxy for the health of that habitat.

AJ: 51:08

Interesting. And when it comes to the things we do hear about, like biodiversity credit programs, carbon credit programs, is that part of what you have your eye on?

Jim: 51:19

It's part of the reality of transitioning from a our mode of thinking that everything should be monetised can be, monetised. It can be the start of the conversation, but it's generally not the end of the conversation. So it is currently an emerging tool. But the important thing is we start to measure biodiversity, we start to respect it, we start to understand it, we start to value it, Irrespective of the purpose, if we're improving biodiversity, we're on the right track.

AJ: 51:58

It's so important, isn't it? Because a lot of these programs and bless them, and bless the people doing a lot of hard work in them, and even the politicians with the courage to do what has been done before. All that, but it's still so. Current paradigm it's still let's get the markets will do it. So what you described there is still the turn to make the market is still a hammer searching for now.

Jim: 52:22

Yes, I.

AJ: 52:23

Wonder how you've continued to learn. Has it been really largely in the experience of doing these things? Have you had inspiration points overseas still? Do you even keep in dialogue with some overseas portals? I guess what's the broader, the broader movement on this looking like it's interesting.

Jim: 52:44

I never learn, I simply reflect and I reflect that into a really wide network of people and they are empowered so purely the, the microphone and the, the amplification and and yes, not the repository of knowledge. I'd go mad if I was trying to assimilate all of this and distill it and then teach it. I'll just move it on and that's a commons of knowledge. It's really important.

AJ: 53:15

Oh, that's so important. You know, when we first talked online and it was with Lulu, one of the people that work with you, and when we were talking about media and Story and how you, I think you essentially said, yeah, big egg is still the story of ag. And we talked, I put to you guys, because one of the things that stands out about to me, about what you're doing, is that you're not Recreating the wheel with the company structures. It's bog, standard Company structure and to think that we could just pull off the shelf a Revolution, as it were, precisely the transformations we need, just put off the shelf from the current paradigm, so it's not chucking out baby with bathwater or anything.

AJ: 53:58

And then I wondered if we needed a similar thing with the media Landscape and I wondered what sort of meta group, like biodiversity legacy, is doing in this domain. Some overarching group or set up could assist people transition or or start Media that is geared the same way to stewardship and does tell these stories and does operate out of the bounds of needing those Financial returns. A whole kid, very similar sort of parallel. And Lulu said in a bolt of inspiration, the story commons that landed with us on that call. I've continued to think about it. What do you think about it?

Jim: 54:42

It's critical, the, the conversation, the, the. Call it a newspaper. Here's the commons. It's a all around the world now in extraordinary. It's a huge quiet achiever, but it's the commons from the university sector through to the philanthropic and community sector, the.

Jim: 55:05

The interesting model with the commons is that it's journalists facilitating Deep subject matter experts and he's exactly like my comment before. The journalist is neutral. The journalist is facilitating the conversation and guiding the wordsmithing, but the content and the spirit of that is is is straight from the heart of the owner of that knowledge or creator of the knowledge or the custodian of the knowledge, and that knowledge is straight out and shed that. That knowledge is now going into mainstream newspapers because journalists there are being under resourced, so they reach for the, the recognized and genuine integrity, through conversation and through other not-for-profit media. Like yourself, what you're doing represents the, the, the change to the commons of of where our communication would have been 500 years ago and even currently in some areas, which was good for all, free for all, free to air all of these things not Monetarized. As soon as it's become monetarized, it's become politicized, it's become a lever to protect the elite.

AJ: 56:26

Yeah, I'm really learning with me that. Another key aspect it's become a key thread on the podcast increasingly as well that you've worked with is what we talked briefly about last night the forest dialogues. So you've conducted some forest dialogues here too, but there's an international mob court literally called forest dialogues international. This is another form, it seems and again being going for decades with success, of how people have come together across divides the.

Jim: 56:57

The forest dialogue started over 20 years ago at Yale University and quickly flowed to countries where with major forest assets that were being depleted by international corporates. So the community in those areas had no voice, had no agency. The dialogue was a means of engaging that agency and representing that through to local gov, to their Federal gov but probably more importantly, internationally. So these dialogues then became a joint decision-making Forum so that government could work with the community to Manage that international forestry In a way that was more sustainable.

Jim: 57:47

Australia's been a laggard in this area and we've fostered and facilitated the first Entry into Australia of the forest dialogue with Gipsley and as the pioneer in area. So the Gipsley and forest dialogue has had four active dialogues in the last 12 months. And that's engaged Forestry industry, it's engaged the agencies, it's engaged the community, the not-for-profit conservation sector, the ag sector because eggs got a lot of heavy lifting to do with forestry and very, very importantly the youth and First Nations. So it's a pathway for Deeper engagement, better decision-making, more longer-term thinking Rather than shorter term, compromised, political sized thinking. Everybody in the forestry sector agrees we're in a perfect storm of no win for anyone.

AJ: 58:44

So you get better. Yes, yes, well, that's it. But that's the tragedy where these processes aren't engaged, that we all continue to lose, and we all know we lose. That's why we're all getting angrier. But here here are, and there are multiple of them this is another thread that I didn't know about that produces results, and so what have you seen so far out of those dialogues that's been promising, or what you're building on?

Jim: 59:08

the interesting thing is that on Friday I was with a group that we spent a few hours with the Victorian environmental Minister and the Commission of Sustainability in the environment. We're seeing a clear line of communication from top to bottom. Every day we're dealing with local governments. They're very cognizant that this is a legitimate voice and it's not just the forest dialogue, it's, it's the action of community engaging with agencies. That's the important thing and, and that is the same with egg, we're working, always have worked closely with land care. Landcare is increasingly recognized as a healthy, resilient culture within regional community?

AJ: 1:00:01

it sure is, and you know we could speak for another hour on each of those threads and and the work you've done in those spaces, some of which has just been extraordinary and some of which you can find on your websites too, with the, the reindeer trust, as much as biodiversity legacy and the Australian environmental grant makers network, etc. There's stuff to be followed up online. I'll put some links there. But you mentioned there there's, there's sort of an underlying thing. That's the bigger work and that's just engaging in the cross threads between people and agencies.

AJ: 1:00:32

And that reminds me, of course, of the community independence movement in Australia. That, again, it's been talked about a lot on the podcast and I'm I've been really interested in it. And, yes, not so much because I'm interested in who particularly is going to win elections, which individuals, or even they're independent, necessarily, but it's just in this context where the party dynamics have become so toxic and so limiting that that appears to me as one of the biggest stories in town, if not the biggest, but it's with the same ethos. So, whether it's occurring in those dialogues or in this political domain, the same ethos and, unsurprisingly, in that way you said, yes, you've had some involvement in that tell me how you're seeing that dynamic and what you're trying to support.

Jim: 1:01:18

It's exactly right. We're seeing the evolution of politics to the, to supermarket politics. Your choice is the two supermarkets and if you're not happy you go to the other one.

AJ: 1:01:29

And what was there? What was that slogan?

Jim: 1:01:31

that's almost as at all the down-down yes on prices, because down, down, down and down, as I think that's that's the dynamic in politics and that's been the respect you know With parliament a couple of years ago and they've been moaning the fact that they wouldn't. They were below car salesmen and real estate agents In terms of the trust of the community. So you know that that had hit an all-time low and that was that was politicians federal politicians saying that they weren't arguing, that they were.

AJ: 1:02:03

They're actually their primary votes continue to go down.

Jim: 1:02:06

Yes, yeah, I haven't bottomed out yet, yeah, so so part of part of our, if you like, the evolution of the same is Community democracy. So community democracy is coming in through many forms, but it's how it always used to be and it's often called kitchen table democracy. It's been Perfected, if you like, in the seat of Indio with Kathy McGowan, but it's always been around and it was much more normal, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, and can be normal today and tomorrow silly. So we really support local gov. So community democracy, starting with local councils having integrity in that process, having younger Councillors having a voice for the community, and that's the pathway then to state and federal. But it's simply that if your Average electorate has 50, 60,000 people typically, then a thousand, two thousand people are the hubs or the nodes for that community democracy and they gather around 10 people each or 20 people each, and then there's a fairly natural evolution of the voice of the community rather than a very constrained, elitist system is their, their movement in this realm afoot, here in this district.

Jim: 1:03:45

Gippsland is fertile ground for that. Gippsland has been blessed with its natural assets. Its Rallity of isolation from from Melbourne is is is actually a blessing rather than a curse. But Gippslanders are Becoming more aware that we're the tail on the dog of state and federal politics and we'd like to get a little bit more bark in our politics. And I think our politicians very much aware of that, and it individually. I think they'd be striving to represent Gippsland first and their party second. So we will encourage that and if that encouragement leads to a broader democratic process within Gippsland, then that'll be a more resilient outcome.

AJ: 1:04:34

You're passionate about the intergenerational stuff. Obviously you mentioned to me a podcast idea, do you remember?

Jim: 1:04:41

this I don't. I forget a lot more than I remember.

AJ: 1:04:46

Knowledge comments. It just passes through.

AJ: 1:04:48

Yes, exactly, I didn't forget those very interesting you said that you imagine a dialogues of 90 year olds with nine year olds. 90 year olds with such as actually quite a number of them, you said to me, still alive and kicking and and with a big asset base, and that they they would have dialogues with nine year olds About what they're going to do with that. For them, it's a lovely idea. I even came up with the title you could call it 90 to 9 and I've got a nine year old. What we'll start with you. It's a great idea.

AJ: 1:05:23

You obviously think a lot about that and in that sense, you must think a lot about how we educate young people or, potentially, how they're going to educate us. I don't know, what do you think in that domain? We've obviously had our nine year old gets a bit of a mixed Learning process, and I do tend to speak about it more as learning rather than even schooling or or much less education, to get with that institutional flavour of it. I guess I sort of try to get back to the heart of the spirit of things as well. What does it mean to learn and are you learning? Are you, is your spirit alive? Yes, okay, let's keep going sort of thing with the life we're leading the people he's meeting and obviously relishing being with you guys here too. What do you think about this and that you've observed, having brought kids up yourself and now with grandkids?

Jim: 1:06:15

The. There's wonderful TV show with kindergarten kids. Go to a home that, that is, everybody will warm when they watch. It doesn't matter what they say are, but the interaction of the Older gent and young gent is the chemistry of life. So our 90 year old demographic has grown six fold in our lifetime. Wow. So there's 600% more 90 year olds based on a rising population. That's probably effectively 20 times more 90 year olds in Australia now Than ever been in history. Wow, they're in the main, healthy, well balanced. The they're probably Similar number of nine year olds, maybe even a lesser number. So so children are a dwindling resource in Australia and should be respected rather than Disrespected. And that combination of of nine year olds in the room with 90 year olds Would be sheer magic and I'm sure that would easily happen. I think there'd be a waiting list on both sides of the demographic really confident yes, totally, totally.

Jim: 1:07:33

The 90 year olds are just bursting with to give, to give, well, to engage. Loneliness is the is is now our biggest disease and Some quarters aging is called as disease because Theoretically you could live forever. But combined aging with loneliness You've got two Massive vectors that are going against a healthy life, healthy mind, so wax and some youth into that and rather than having a physical injection of youth, have a societal injection of youth and live forever.

AJ: 1:08:14

Love it and vice versa to a like.

Jim: 1:08:18

It's just so important to get the elders you we, we are Quarantine our kids, our young people, from reality. We don't let them out of the the, the school box till the mid-20s, and that is an absolute travesty. And just this last week, labor declared they wanted to double the university placements. That means putting our kids in an academic prison for 25 of the most formative years of their life. Essentially, it's the supermarket of learning?

AJ: 1:08:52

Yes, it is, at best it's training, vocational training, but but yeah, it certainly maps onto my story. Got out, it got out. Listen to my language. I was on the school. I should only get paid to study University too, but it was 21 on when do I start? With life itself, that's a 17 years got me mechanics, like I was obviously doing well, quote, unquote, but it didn't get me everything else of ultimate value. So, yeah, you can't, you can't lose the spirit for the, for the mechanics. Mechanics are cool, but yeah, with the spirit, all right. So that was. That's an invitation of sorts to would be podcaster potentially, certainly to To some people out there. They don't have to be 90. Let's face it, we could be flexible, but maybe elders.

Jim: 1:09:37

Maybe you know a nine-year-old podcaster that can engage in this exercise. Stand by. Shameless plug.

AJ: 1:09:47

That's right. So, to close, for people listening, or even people listening who might be thinking of others that they might bounce this along to, who might be in that more senior dynamic, or maybe even not that old but with assets that at least they could Experiment with in part in some of the ways we're talking about, what would your invitation be to them right here?

Jim: 1:10:08

and now Engaging the broader sense. A simple thing is to is is to write your epitaph what goes on your gravestone, and if you've died with a fortune that goes on your gravestone, if you'll be the most generous person in the community, that goes on your gravestone. So write your epitaph today and then take action on that beautiful.

AJ: 1:10:36

So literally to close. I know you don't listen to podcasts, but thankfully your wife makes up the difference. But to close, every episode I speak to my guests about a piece of music that's been significant to them in their lives, maybe even transformative or or accompanying a transformative time. Does something come to mind for you?

Jim: 1:10:56

Well, maybe it's it's. It's not the typical one, but yeah, Johnny Cash is always a yeah 100. So yeah, changing societal dynamics uh, it's Johnny Cash to a T and and being able to personal dynamics for everything be able to tell the story, to connect so deeply and and to go to the heart of it. All about the spirit of it?

AJ: 1:11:27

wasn't he feeling goose bumps all over? We don't want any particular song.

Jim: 1:11:31

Well, I think false. And prism is, you know, that's, you know you bridging the bridging to divide the, the way that we incarcerate people that we don't like to look of and we the way that we can so easily dismiss Our human, racial genocide as a norm. I think that speaks exactly to that and At the time, the US and possibly still is has got a world leader in incarcerating disadvantaged people, indeed, making an industry out of it, monetizing it, yes, and of course you can draw the thread right back to nature itself and everything we've talked about.

AJ: 1:12:16

So, yeah, that's ah, there is the - for us all, really I think - as an ongoing practice, to denormalize what becomes part of the furniture, isn't it constantly? Cheers, Jim. It's been terrific to meet in person. Thanks for having us at your place and thanks for speaking with me.

Jim: 1:12:33

Well, thanks for all the great things you're doing, because you represent this change as much as anyone, by the very nature of your podcast. AJ: Thanks mate. JIM: Thanks AJ.

AJ: 1:12:46

That was Jim Phillipson. For more on Jim, The Rendere Trust and Biodiversity Legacy, see the links in the show notes. You can also see some photos on the website and more on Patreon for subscribing members. And I've been having more conversations with people who are starting podcasts, so if you're also thinking about trying one, feel free to reach out too if you think I can help. Thanks to you generous listeners for making this podcast possible. If you've been thinking about becoming a subscribing member or other kind of supporter, please join us. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts, thank you. Thanks, too, for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it wherever you can. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden and at the top, Green Shoots by The Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.