Can a tax be beautiful?

The Senate Select Committee on New Taxes is pondering the implications of the Mineral Resource Rent Tax, holding a hearing yesterday in Perth. Here is a new tax measure that, even diluted for the election, will still raise over $10 billion a year. This is a beautiful...

Selling alleys and lanes: latifundia at work.

Melbourne City Council is selling lanes to developers, according to The Age today. It makes a pretty penny, too, having pocketed $1.2 million from the sale of part of three lanes in the last 12 months alone. The article sparked an intense debate on the newspaper’s...

Melbourne’s secret plan

photo credit: Lucia. . . A secret map of Melbourne’s transport plans for the next 30 years was published in The Age yesterday. Doubts were raised about its authenticity (weakly, unconvincingly) by the Victorian government. Average householders may shrug, but this is a...