If the RBA and our economic mandarins observe a national strategic advantage they have an obligation to foster it and deploy it to the advantage of all. One of ours is space. We have chosen to welcome migration, dig up minerals, grow crops and animals – but also to strictly ration by price the access to land for young adults.
BLOG: David Collyer
No Land for You, Melbourne
The Napthine government is determined to limit land supply and thereby further increase the cost of land for all in Melbourne.
The price of freshly subdivided land on the outskirts of cities reverberates and amplifies all the way to their centre. Constricting supply has profound implications.
ABS considers ending Residential Property Price measure
The good data provided by the ABS boosts buyer confidence and actually lifts land prices. Their absence after the Abbott Government’s cost-cutting can only reduce them. This may even be the pin that pops the land bubble.
Queensland’s Retrospective Theft
Midnight Wednesday, the Queensland Parliament amended the Local Government Act and the City of Brisbane Act to legalise the theft of around $2.3 billion in differential rates charged by 20 councils on non-resident owners over the last twenty years. The...
The eternal sunshine of the empty mind
The Queensland Supreme Court has struck out the differential rate some Queensland councils charge investors over and above residents on similar properties. Councils may be forced to pay it all back. $300 million a year is in doubt. This landmark decision exposes the...
ACT landowners are revolting
The Property Council of Australia is ‘vehemently opposed’ to Canberra’s special land levy to part-fund the $600 million light rail project from Gungahlin to the city, calling it “just another property tax in disguise”.
Goody Goody Goody!
Sometimes, through the smoke and fireworks of the national debate a political commentator sees the path forward and points the way. Today in the Australian Financial Review, Alan Mitchell takes a far-sighted approach to the crisis provoked by the Abbott government in...
Victoria spends on Road, Rail. Pity about the Stamps.
There is a better revenue base available to Victoria today: State Land Tax. Just remove its exemptions, thresholds and wheezes and consign Stamp Duty to the scrapheap. That SLT has deadweight losses of nil, so no wasted lives or people trapped in and out of housing.
WA shows tax reform leadership. Well, I hope so.
WA Treasurer Mike Nathan has heard the call from REIWA President David Airey to end Stamp Duty and fund this by removing exemptions from State Land Tax
REIWA: Abolish Stamp Duty for State Land Tax
Yesterday REIWA president David Airey issued a call in the West Australian newspaper for the WA government to abandon Stamp Duty and fund this by removing the many wheezes from the tattered State Land Tax. Hooray! Airey says: “It’s time to recognise that stamp duty...