photo credit: itmpa Last week Treasury made public its Red Book – the economic advice it gives to the incoming government. In it, Treasury lays out a big, bold reform agenda. On housing, the Red Book is scathing: “Access to adequate housing affects all Australians...
BLOG: Articles
Ending the Fire Services Levy – almost excellent
At the moment, Victoria’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade and Country Fire Authority are funded by the Fire Services Levy, a charge added to fire insurance. But the FSL gives a free ride to uninsured property owners – they don’t pay for the level of fire cover provided....
Did you remember to sell the house today?
Prof. Ross Garnaut gave the Hamer Oration at Melbourne University on Thursday. He pointed out that Australia has not experienced a recession for 17 years, a record for The Lucky Country. Such a period of unbroken growth is not just an Australian record, it is a world...
Making the Commonwealth a Bankers Bank
photo credit: Powerhouse Museum Collection Hon. Clyde R. Cameron A.O. Australian Minister for Labour (1972 - 1975) H/T - Liberty Australia Keynote address by Clyde Cameron to the Victorian Country Conference of the recently amalgamated Association made up of the...
History of Debt and Property from the Ancient East
Michael Hudson As first published in The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, eds., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010):8-39. Also on Michael's website. A...
Mining Democracy
photo credit: Urban~Spaceman Miners finally agree to tax reform. What are the changes? The attempt to harness economic rents for the public good has been renamed from the Resource Super Profits tax to the Mineral Resource Rent Tax. The MRRT kicks in at the...
The Counter-Enlightenment
Michael Hudson The Counter-Enlightenment, its Economic Program – and the Classical Alternative Based on a talk given to Prosper Australia on Friday October 16th, 2009. First published in Progress Magazine - Autumn 2010. Download Progress #1096 here. The last few years...
Australia’s Needless Foreign Borrowing
photo credit: Adam_T4 Michael Hudson and Shann Turnbull* Confronted by the global financial crisis that is burying foreign economies deeper in debt deflation each month, Australia needs to protect itself – indeed, to liberate itself from as many costs and...
Dear Australia, the world is watching, waiting for our bubble to burst
photo credit: robertivanc The great property speculation game is over in America and Europe. The music has stopped. Forty years of steadily increasing pressure has been released. Houses are worth a fraction of what people paid in better times, while the giant...
Planning, Property and Economics
photo credit: earthsharing australia Thomas Kokkinos-Kennedy Semester 1, 2009, Assessment Two Research Essay Are the concepts and ideas proposed by Henry George in 1879 still relevant in understanding socio-economic aspects of the property market in contemporary...