Prosper Australia

“Gillard must come out strongly and call the lobbyists for who they are. She must assert control over the RSPT rather than negotiate with each and every individual company.

photo credit: Gary Denness Harold Mitchell, advertising supremo, summed up the mood that led to Kevin Rudd’s downfall, as quoted in the AFR, 23 June: It is an ‘amazing fact’ that ‘ordinary people on the street are barracking for five people…who have got so much money they don’t know what to do with it’. The [...]

photo credit: looseends   Saturday mornings at the Richmond market. I hear a fruit stall worker calling his wares: “Last of the carrots! A dollar a bunch! AND THERE’S NO MORE!” Of course, he has carrots by the boxful under the table, but his solemn warning means he sells out every day. Shameless lying by [...]

    photo credit: Schaffner Sometimes the ignorance of experts makes my blood boil.  Why can’t they do the arithmetic, the sums plainly before them? The Victorian Transport Plan will cost $38 billion and produce benefits of $180 billion, according to a state-commissioned report by Ernst and Young.  If these numbers are right, the Plan [...]

photo credit: karola riegler photography Thursday June 24th 7pm, 1/27 Hardware Lane Dr Gavin Putland The powerpoint and audio have been uploaded here Australia’s residential land prices, commonly but incorrectly conflated with “house” prices, started falling in 2008. Having seen what falling “house” prices did to the financial systems of other countries, the Federal Government [...]

photo credit: loungerie The Henry Tax Review recommended a resource rent tax to the Australian government, carefully designed to maintain incentives and reward risk. The miners responded with apoplexy and a campaign of deliberate misinformation that has left the economically literate gobsmacked. Let’s get a few things straight.  Searching for ore-bodies is not done by [...]

photo credit: Yuga. The government must focus on the rate of return between those who benefit from economic rents and those that are entrepreneurial. The Age reports today: …a Senate estimates committee was told the average profit in mining was 37.1 per cent, compared with 11.4 for the overall economy. Some projects had ”extraordinarily high [...]

photo credit: funadium Yesterday’s ABS release of a 14.8% fall in seasonally adjusted building approvals shows that property insiders understand that a crash is coming. If not them, then the banks curtailing credit for housing is another signal that housing is over-priced and well overdue for a major correction. Last weekend’s housing auction figures showed [...]