Category Commentary

Scenarios for Australian house prices

photo credit: TerenceKearns.com Residential planning approvals fell another 6.6 per cent in May. No, this isn’t proof the housing bubble is over, but it hints broadly at that conclusion. I try to warn friends of the impending crash.  They dismiss…

Gillard to Game Machiavellian Miners?

photo credit: Gary Denness Harold Mitchell, advertising supremo, summed up the mood that led to Kevin Rudd’s downfall, as quoted in the AFR, 23 June: It is an ‘amazing fact’ that ‘ordinary people on the street are barracking for five…

Housing shortages? Really?

photo credit: looseends   Saturday mornings at the Richmond market. I hear a fruit stall worker calling his wares: “Last of the carrots! A dollar a bunch! AND THERE’S NO MORE!” Of course, he has carrots by the boxful under…

Victoria’s Transport Plan a No-Brainer

photo credit: Schaffner Sometimes the ignorance of experts makes my blood boil.  Why can’t they do the arithmetic, the sums plainly before them? The Victorian Transport Plan will cost $38 billion and produce benefits of $180 billion, according to a…

Housing Data Beckons Fall

photo credit: funadium Yesterday’s ABS release of a 14.8% fall in seasonally adjusted building approvals shows that property insiders understand that a crash is coming. If not them, then the banks curtailing credit for housing is another signal that housing…

Pay the Rent, Boys

photo credit: ~Brenda-Starr~ Letter to the Editor – AFR 25/05/2010 Bryan Kavanagh, Glen Waverley Ross Garnaut and Ken Henry are undoubtedly correct about the benefits of the so-called super-profits ‘tax’ on miners. It’s actually a resource rent and acts vastly…