Who really runs Australia, and where you fit in

[pensive music] The first layer many people meet is local government, or you might have heard it called your local council.

You might not think about it until your bin doesn't get collected, your business needs a permit, or someone decides 7:00 a.m. is the perfect time to start drilling next door.

[drill whirring] For Fidel, local government showed up when he tried to build something of his own.

Um, [speaking Arabic].

What I just said in Arabic is that my name is Fidel, and I've been living in Australia, in Melbourne, for about eight years now.

Fidel's family came to Australia from Iraq, and like many families building a life here, they worked hard to create stability.

For his family, that work was cleaning.

But for a while, they were doing that work through someone else's business.

They were doing the labor.

Someone else held the contracts.

Someone else knew the rules.

Someone else had control, and Fidel wanted to change that.

So I took my parents out of the, the contracts that we were in.

I found our own clients.

That was the first step, but then came the second step, learning what it actually means to run the thing yourself.

Being your own boss sounds great until you realize the boss is also the admin person.

Freedom arrives, along with a new set of responsibilities.

Now you're the boss.

You have to kinda adhere to all the compliances.

You kinda have to do all the checkups.

You kinda have to make sure that everything is within what's legal.

That was a very big challenge at the start because you don't know where to, where to go.

You don't know how to ask.

You don't know what to do.

And that's where local government showed up, not as some big political idea.