Prosper Australia

15 May 2013 MELBOURNE:- Yesterday’s federal budget highlights again Australia’s unbalanced reliance on wage and salary taxation for government revenues, says Prosper Australia. “Taxation discourages. That is why we tax gambling, alcohol and tobacco. Unfortunately, it has the same effect on work. We tax it so heavily it must also be a very bad economic [...]

Canberra Times March 17, 2013 Christopher Erskine (Time for a new lease on life, March 9, p7) is correct that it was the writings of American political economist Henry George that inspired Canberra’s founders to put in place a leasehold system of land tenure. It was envisaged by many, including Walter Burley Griffin, that land [...]

30 January  2013   Prosper repeats its call for timely, national data on property sales to be collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Buying and selling houses in Australia suffers from ‘information asymmetry’ – some participants know a lot more than others about current market prices,” David Collyer Campaign Manager Prosper Australia said today. [...]

Independent MP Rob Oakshott stepped into the media spotlight yesterday saying both the Coalition and Labor want to raise the GST rate – after the election. Sadly, he is correct. ”It shouldn’t just be about the GST. This is about why on earth in Australia we have insurance taxes at all. Why do we still [...]

15 November 2012 The mining investment boom that carried Australia though the Global Financial Crisis is declining rapidly and new engines of growth are urgently needed to steer around the ‘Controlled Depression’ that is driving the world into a spiral of misery – country by country. “Tax reform is something we can do by ourselves, [...]

PM Gillard’s defiant speech to the Minerals Council of Australia yesterday – asserting national ownership of our mineral wealth and the country’s right to a share of the bounty being dug up and shipped out – was good politics, good economics and a much needed assertion that government makes the decisions, not the wealthy. But [...]

From the Canberra Times 5 April 2012. Your article “Capital’s housing prices highest in the country” (April 3, p1) was missing one very important word – land. As we move toward Canberra’s centenary celebrations it is time to reflect on the great wedge that is driving an ever increasing gap between the privileged and unprivileged [...]

Philip Soos’ latest withering attack on privilege from The Conversation today. Over the last year or so, the Occupy movement has garnered wide attention, with people of all backgrounds gathering to protest the deteriorating social conditions. However, these grievances have been running for decades. The bottom 80% of US income earners have seen their wages [...]

12 January 2012 Prosper calls for timely, rigorous and transparent statistics on property sales to be collected by the ABS. “Property is the single largest asset market in Australia – worth around $5 Trillion,” Prosper Australia Campaign Manager David Collyer said today. “It is of profound importance to individual and national prosperity. The lack of [...]

Australian land prices are falling. They will continue to fall until their fundamental economic link to incomes and rents are fully restored. Many with large mortgages will be crushed by these towering liabilities when their equity is erased. This claim is bitterly resisted by the politico-housing complex and most homeowners, who see the exponential land [...]