The Napthine government is determined to limit land supply and thereby further increase the cost of land for all in Melbourne.
The price of freshly subdivided land on the outskirts of cities reverberates and amplifies all the way to their centre. Constricting supply has profound implications.
The good data provided by the ABS boosts buyer confidence and actually lifts land prices. Their absence after the Abbott Government’s cost-cutting can only reduce them. This may even be the pin that pops the land bubble.
Midnight Wednesday, the Queensland Parliament amended the Local Government Act and the City of Brisbane Act to legalise the theft of around $2.3 billion in differential rates charged by 20 councils on non-resident owners over the last twenty years.…
The latest edition of Progress – our 1111th – is now available on-line (PDF) * Prosper’s submission to the Senate inquiry into Affordable Housing * Financial Rules for Constructing a Strong State by Fred Harrison * It’s Time to Shift States…
The Victorian State Council of The Greens updated their Finance and Taxation policies last weekend. Normally, I find their soft-left-populist stances mind boggling. Their tax polices, however, deserve attention – and applause. On gambling, The Greens stepped past…
The Queensland Supreme Court has struck out the differential rate some Queensland councils charge investors over and above residents on similar properties. Councils may be forced to pay it all back. $300 million a year is in doubt. This landmark…
The Property Council of Australia is ‘vehemently opposed’ to Canberra’s special land levy to part-fund the $600 million light rail project from Gungahlin to the city, calling it “just another property tax in disguise”.
Sometimes, through the smoke and fireworks of the national debate a political commentator sees the path forward and points the way. Today in the Australian Financial Review, Alan Mitchell takes a far-sighted approach to the crisis provoked by the Abbott…
There is a better revenue base available to Victoria today: State Land Tax. Just remove its exemptions, thresholds and wheezes and consign Stamp Duty to the scrapheap. That SLT has deadweight losses of nil, so no wasted lives or people trapped in and out of housing.
There’s only one reason we have devastating house price booms and busts – the pre marker to any recession and economic disaster, and that is speculation induced in this case, through the privatisation of unearned gains.