by Bryan Kavanagh reposted from On-line Opinion I’m constantly told Australia’s land prices are astronomically high because of our high rate of immigration and the shortage of supply of residential allotments So, it seems the price of a block…
A fact-free defence of urban planners in The Conversation yesterday has left me fuming about how this group is immersed in process and blind to The Game being played around them. The Game boosts land prices, creates serviced land shortages…
“When you’ve paid your rent, you’ve paid your tax.” “So what’s a Georgist?” you ask. A Georgist (or at least a “full-on” Georgist) is someone who says there should be no taxes except those on land values, payable by the…
The mascot of the anti-land-tax campaign is the “poor widow” — you know, the one who will allegedly be forced out of her home because she doesn’t have the cash flow to pay the tax on the astronomical value of the…
Linc Energy today announced a major shale oil and gas discovery around Coober Pedy in South Australia. Unrisked prospective reserves have been separately estimated by two independent consultancies at 103 and 233 billion barrels of oil equivalent. That is…
The latest annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey ranks all Australian capitals as Severely Unaffordable. They’re right and the statistics back them. Housing has two elements, the building and the land. What fluctuates is the land price; structures are…
15 January 2013 MELBOURNE – The REIV yesterday forecast stable or declining nominal rents if current trends continue. This means rents are falling in real (after inflation) terms. “Shrinking residential rents are a profound set-back for negatively geared property investors,”…
Changing the GST was always intended to be hard and is getting harder by the week. Under the so-called intergovernmental agreement on implementation of the GST, any change in the rate or the base required the unanimous approval of the…
11 December 2012 Charging Victorian taxi license holders a stiff annual fee as Prof Allan Fels proposes should be welcomed by every citizen and immediately enacted by government, says Prosper Australia. “TaxiLink director Harry Katsianabis manages 160 taxi licenses worth…
The Victorian Government wants to, needs to, spend billions on Melbourne transport to catch up with the city’s explosive growth. As John Legge kindly points out in a must-read at The Age: “The affluent have crossed the Yarra and now…