Last week I offered a solution to the blight caused by vacant or disused sites in central Melbourne. Everyone is diminished by landowners leaving valuable land unused while they agitate for rezoning profits. The Age’s Bruce Guthrie hopped into the discussion...
BLOG: Newspapers – The Age
Selling alleys and lanes: latifundia at work.
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...
Make up your mind
I had a letter published in The Sunday Age on the 25th of May. Real estate agents and their constant spruiking of the “boom” had finally gotten up my nose. They go around crowing about the rising prices while ordinary Australians get priced out of the market. When you...
Housing affordability plummets
Is The Age suffering from split personality disorder? On page 8 of The Sunday Age (18.4.10) we read that house shopping is a "nightmare", the market is "out of control" and that we are heading toward being a rental society where only the rich can afford to own a...
Landlords claim a $3 billion subsidy
Negative Gearing provides cream for nation's wealthiest Our topsy turvy tax system sees commentators claiming: "In most businesses, losing money is frowned on. In this one, however, it has become the spirit of the game, with landlords writing off their claimed losses...
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...
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...