Latest News & Commentary
Without revenue reform this is a pointless election
By Bryan Kavanagh, Director Land Values Research Group Reposted from On Line Opinion So September 14 has become September 7? Would it be too churlish to think that's about the biggest political change we can expect "going forward" as they say? Oh sure, the Lib/Labs...
Rentals Brittle, Under Pressure
Last week the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) held a seminar in Melbourne on the serious stresses on renter households that have emerged over the last twenty years. Dr Wendy Stone from Swinburne found: • A decline in overall private rental...
Saul Eslake @ 122nd Annual Henry George Commemorative Dinner
Link to presentation Saul Eslake is one of Australia's most highly respected economists and a renowned critic of Negative Gearing: "In my view it is impossible to conclude that negative gearing serves any purpose than to allow wealthily affluent tax payers to defer...
GetUp flunks economics again
We tried to bring GetUp to speed with housing policy with our Dont Buy Now campaign. They ignored that and continue to ignore basic economic science. More money on a fixed planet is destined to raise land prices. A Land Tax acts to equalise the natural advantages...
China: should land’s rental value be the basis of the tax system, or that of the financial system?
by Professor Michael Hudson How can China avoid the “Western financial disease” – a real estate bubble followed by defaults and foreclosures? The U.S. and European economies originally sought to avoid this fate by taxing the location’s site value. A rent tax was the...
HIA should advocate inexpensive land
MELBOURNE:- Very poor residential land sales have prompted fresh pleading for the construction industry by the Housing Industry Association today in ‘Land Sales Signal Slow Home Building Recovery’ as new home buyers remain unwilling to commit at current high land...
Victorian Values
‘A Guide to Property Values 2012’ by Victoria’s Valuer General was released July 5. It has been comprehensively ignored. The report dissects property transfers and prices lodged with the titles office. This dataset is the actuals, the definitive historical record, and...
Cigarette Tax hike defies economic logic
By Sam Oldfield, an economics student at Latrobe University and an Associate at Prosper Australia. The Rudd government’s sudden increase in cigarette taxes completely disregards sound economic practice. Joe Hockey calls it “policy on the run” – he couldn’t be more...
Victorian Government entrenches Englobo
Places Victoria, a government agency that once competed with private land developers to limit their pricing power, is to sell all its remaining land holdings on Melbourne’s outskirts to a single buyer, the AFR reports today. Rebecca Thistleton has Places Victoria...
How land-value windfalls could pay for the Doncaster railway
The Herald Sun reports research by PRD Nationwide showing that on average, across all Melbourne suburbs, the presence of a railway station in a suburb adds about $48,000 to the value of the median “house” in the suburb. This average rises to $59,500...
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