Overseas buyers of Melbourne real estate have had to pay a Foreign Purchaser Additional Duty since mid-2015. The tax raised $133 million last year, according to official figures released to The Age under Freedom of Information. The newspaper tried to suggest this tax is intended to peel money off outsiders, “a significant money-spinner for the […]
Meander Valley Council in Tasmania will sell a family’s home at public auction in three weeks unless they pay their overdue rates. This reluctant display of the authority of government illustrates the limits and strengths of land title in Australia. The Examiner explains: “The owners of Chudleigh’s Melita Honey Farm have less than three weeks […]
Rodrigo Duterte attacked mining companies in his State of the Nation address to the Philippine Congress over their abuse of the country he leads. His concerns are threefold: • Environmental degradation • The export of raw ores without processing • Miners’ failure to share the revenues of resource extraction The Philippines is the world’s largest […]
The Greens have a new housing policy out. They begin with the high principle that all should have access to land then veer off with emotion at the tax rorts available to the wealthy. Everyone Needs A Home calls for an end to negative gearing, the Capital Gains Tax discount and proposes exchanging state-based Stamp […]
by Emily Sims One of the games in the Game of Mates is the Public-Private-Partnership. PPP projects such as Citylink in Melbourne and the Cross City Tunnel in Sydney are financed and built by private consortiums with high, ongoing returns guaranteed by the government. In terms of how we pay for infrastructure, PPPs are essentially […]
West Australia should not raise mining royalties because GST revenues are distributed to human need, according to the Minerals Council of Australia. Their logic is as twisted as a snake in a maze: both state boundaries and orebody sites are accidents of geography, also known as luck. The MCA’s submission to the Productivity Commission inquiry […]
by Bryan Kavanagh “The more tuned out the general population, the more James can get away with his Game before voters notice.” A full house for the Melbourne book launch by co-author Dr Cameron Murray of the “Game of Mates: How Favours Bleed the Nation” at RMIT’s Francis Ormond Building on Friday. I’ll let people […]
The Andrews government intends to sell Victoria’s land titles registry to private interests for an expected $2 billion – a mere detail in the May budget. This is no ordinary asset sell-off: land is the single largest asset class in Australia and the central public register of who holds what is arguably the raison d’etre […]
The West Australian National Party is like a dog with a bone when it comes to taxing the big iron ore miners, unbowed by their resounding defeat in the state election. Their plan is simple: increase the iron ore royalty from 25c to $5.00 a tonne and spend as much as possible in the bush […]
Economist Peter Abelson has dropped a bomb on Sydney’s madly expensive land market, asserting the usual demand and supply equations have little influence on prices while major positive benefits are available from ending Stamp Duty and using land tax. His views only came to light after journalist Adam Creighton used FOI to prise his report […]
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