Melbourne City Council is selling lanes to developers, according to The Age today. It makes a pretty penny, too, having pocketed $1.2 million from the sale of part of three lanes in the last 12 months alone. The article sparked an intense debate on the newspaper’s...
BLOG: infrastructure
Melbourne’s secret plan
photo credit: Lucia. . . A secret map of Melbourne’s transport plans for the next 30 years was published in The Age yesterday. Doubts were raised about its authenticity (weakly, unconvincingly) by the Victorian government. Average householders may shrug, but this is a...
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 state-commissioned...
The New Resources Tax Reduces Mining Risk.
photo credit: jcarter The Commonwealth of Australia was built on the sound principle natural resources are part of every Australian's endowment. The Henry Tax Review recommended and the Rudd government has accepted a new tax system for mining that builds on this...
Expensive land is changing the shape of Australia.
photo credit: Zach K The Melbourne versus Sydney rivalry has been reignited - Melbourne’s population is growing faster and is projected to overtake Sydney by 2037, a new report predicts. Going Nowhere, a report by BIS Shrapnel for a property developer lobby group,...
Economists Who Dominated the GFC Predictions
photo credit: Stuck in Customs On the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this piece sums up the cause to the GFC, as predicted by 5 economists who subscribe to the line of economic thinking we promote: land rent theory. Dirk Bezener, the academic...
Professor Michael Hudson Touring October
Leading financial economist and historian Professor Michael Hudson will be touring Australia October 12 - 27. Download the tour flyer See the Hudson Tour Multimedia Highlights Professor Hudson was one of twelve economists recognised for predicting the GFC. He is a...
Land Infrastructure Tax Concerns
The Brumby government's haphazard manner in dealing with Melbourne's 'urban sprawl forever' attitude is straining government revenues. The desperate actions following from this with the $95,000 Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC) are the result of the...
Ineffective Demand
# 2 12 December 2008 Ineffective demand: a picture of a tax-induced economic depression In the 2nd of this most important series of commentaries warning of the looming depression, Bryan Kavanagh interprets one of his most important graphs. Mr Kavanagh lists the...
Melbourne Rents deliver a smile for some
Saturday's Age article on Melbourne's rental growth outstripping all other states is reflective of current government policy at all levels - local, State and Federal. When combined with record immigration levels, property flipping will continue unabated. Prosper...