photo credit: aphasiafilms Letter to the Editor David Collyer Balwyn THANK YOU, Tim Colebatch, for your clear-eyed review of our hopelessly distorted housing market (”Housing at these prices will leave us all a heavy debt to bear”, Comment, 23/3). Your…
photo credit: CarbonNYC Media Release “We have the means at hand to liberate the citizens of our great country from their current financial difficulties,” Prosper Australia’s Karl Fitzgerald said today. “The answer lies in reforming our tax system. A major…
photo credit: mugley Letter to the Editor David Barkly Nunawading Speculators have excelled themselves with their land banking. A realistic flat-rate land tax would discourage speculation. It would be equitable because land values rise due to community action, including the…
Huge land bank puts squeeze on buyers ‘We release land in a staged manner to meet demand because it would not benefit anybody to flood the market” said Stockland’s General Manager Andrew Whitson. Wouldn’t benefit anybody Andrew? Well perhaps it…
Consider these three points: Property developers have openly stated they are reducing the supply of property to the market in order to massage land banking profits: While some already owe more than their home is worth, the result of prices…
You’ve got to love real estate spruikers. They are so consistent and always so wrong. David Morrell purports to be a buyers’ advocate. On 5th March in The Age he was saying how you can’t go wrong with “land banking”…
photo credit: Ravages by Gavin R. Putland If the Australian economy has come through the Global Financial Crisis in such fine shape, why do we have an official unemployment rate over 5%, and a real unemployment rate two or three…
The Rudd Government has reviewed the tax system. The Henry Review came out strongly in favour of capturing economic rents for the common good. Read our analysis of the report here and here. The Rudd Government has written off any…
photo credit: elodole MICHAEL HUDSON Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, February 16 outlining how to put the U.S. economy on rations. Not in those words, of course. Just the opposite: If…
The Brumby government’s ill-fated Growth Areas Infrastructure Tax was defeated in the Victorian Senate last evening. This spells the danger of poor land policy. Why did they attempt to charge $95,000 per hectare as a flat fee? Why wasn’t this…