13 June 2012 Victoria Planning Minister Matthew Guy has made big land price falls on Melbourne’s outskirts a certainty with his extension of the metropolitan boundary by around 7000 hectares. “The gaping chasm between developer supply and buyer demand has…
The NSW Treasurer flew a kite in Saturday’s AFR (Baird flags insurance levy reform in budget). We should all come to attention and salute a positive change. We pay for fire fighters through a charge on insurances – in NSW,…
Dwelling construction continues to fall, according to the AIG-HIA Performance of Construction Index for May. Commercial construction and house building activity weakened to 34.7, where anything below 50.0 represents contraction. In parallel, the ABS Building Approvals graph looks like a…
Victoria’s Taxi Industry Inquiry headed by Allan Fels is a breath of fresh air to a monopoly riddled area that overcharges passengers and keeps drivers in poverty. We wrote about the inquiry – Taxi! Tax Me! – back in February.…
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…
Tidal Race. Definition: a stream of exceptionally fast tidal flow created when the tide is forced through a constriction. Australians are saving like mad and quickly paying down debt. But we stand in a Tidal Race, where the water rises…
Reposted from Bryan Kavanagh’s thedepression.org.au, an excellent source of dissident economic analysis. It helps that he is correct. If you jump off the top of a tall building, you’ll go splat at the bottom: that’s simple physics. We are told…
Corrected at 1730 to adjust (upward) the renovation figure. Many thanks, Steven Shaw for pointing out my error. Toby Johnstone is out again in the SMH recording how two brothers wasted nearly two years of their lives and endless toil…
The Productivity Commission has just released a draft report on climate change adaptation for public comment. The report examines economic reform options in two broad categories: adaptations to uncertain future climate trends with benefits only under certain climate change scenarios…
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald has a breathless article about a flipper couple who bought, renovated and have for sale a Marrickville terrace. The underlying message: there’s profit in the renovation game. My back-of-envelope calculations based on the article’s figures show…