Letter to the Age Thursday June 26th WHEN we hear that the rental vacancy rate is less than 1% ("$155-a-week Lalor 'shack' highlights rental crisis", The Age, 25/6), we need to remember that this figure includes only dwellings offered "to let". If it included vacant...
BLOG: Letters to the Editor
Unprintable Remarks On The Budget – Gavin Putland
The day after the 2008 Federal Budget, Gavin Putland (our Research Officer) sent three letters to newspapers. This one was sent to THE AGE, which exercised its editorial discretion not to publish: Cop-out On Inflation And Rents If a Budget is to be anti-inflationary,...
Letter to Crikey on Infrastructure funding – Gavin Putland
Re. "Babcock bounces as Bear Stearns extracts more value" (March 25, item 17). The Macquarie infrastructure model is dead, not because of any failure to "internalise management", but because of a failure to tap the benefits of infrastructure in order to amortize the...
Duty to supply housing – Dr Gavin R. Putland
Letter to the Herald Sun Monday Jan 28th, 2008 It is appropriate that the surge in Melbourne home prices has rekindled debate on stamp duty, but not at all appropriate that the discussion has focused on the size of the duty instead of its base. Stamp duty is a...
Give the manufacturer a chance – David Barkly
submitted to the Age on January 22nd, 2008 Dear Editor, Martin Feil and Ernest Rodeck in “The debt penalty: a matter of great import to all Australians” (Opinion, 21/1) express concern at the accumulation of foreign debt, partly due to two decades of buying foreign...
A Place to Live, Or a Place to Invest – Karl Williams
Letter to the Age At last there is some openness from the property investor lobby! Caroline Lawrey, Housing Industry Association Victorian executive director, claimed that a property owner had the right to determine when and when it was developed (Age 16/11). With...
Interest Rates and the Healthy Economy – Bryan Kavanagh
Letter to the Age Dear Sir, So let me get this right. Messrs Howard and Costello say the economy has been going so well that the RBA intervened by increasing interest rates to slow it down again? But why should anyone want slow down a healthy economy? Did the...
Emissions Trading = Private Carbon Tax – Gavin Putland
Letter rejected by the Age (Melbourne) As the Federal Government is planning an emissions trading scheme — not a carbon tax — why will households foot the bill? ("Householders to bear brunt of trading scheme", the Age, June 25.) Answer: An emissions trading scheme is...
Differential Rate – Bruce Every
Manningham Leader Dear Sir, I am appalled at the ignorance displayed by the councilors and ratepayers alike reported in the Manningham Leader with respect to the rating system in connection with the differential rates to be applied to vacant land. Differential rates...
Act now – David Barkly
Dear Editor, Re: BCA: 56 taxes a company curse (The Age “Business Day” 10/4/07) We hear low overseas wages given as the reason our manufacturers cannot compete with Chinese imports, but we don’t hear of the penalizing effect of the multitude of taxes on our...