Andrew Sadauskas
It was a cold Thursday morning when I set out on my quest. My mission? To find the heart of Melbourne’s housing affordability and traffic problems. My quest took me to the middle of Melbourne’s great southeastern sprawl, which now stretches as far as Pakenham.

After a morning spent hunting for it on Melbourne’s public transport, I reached my unlikely destination: the carpark behind the Village Green Hotel, in Brandon Park.

On its asphalt surface stand the cars of about a dozen gamblers, who can’t resist their early morning gaming fix, and little else. Buried under its acres of asphalt, where the morning puters have parked, are several acres of land where houses don’t stand. Across the ever congested Springvale Road stands Brandon Park Shopping Centre; a shrine to the 1980s that Centro’s cash-strapped management now almost certainly regret buying.

If the Coliseum symbolises Ancient Roman cruelty, what does this carpark say about us? Are we addicted to the car like those punters at the poker machines inside? Are we willing to lose the house for our habit?

Ammend the UN Human Rights by signing this petition.

The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights is failing humankind. Indeed it’s failing planet Earth itself.

The evidence is everywhere: a billion citizens live and die on a dollar …

‘Corporate Raiders Eye Rural Australia’ drills the The Weekly Times headline (June 18, 2008). With the Macquarie Pastoral Fund having $1billion in it’s pastoral investment kitty and PrimeAg having invested $225million since December 07, the 3.8% of Victorian agricultural land in corporate hands is tipped to rapidly escalate.

Concerned readers of George Monbiot’s Small Is Bountiful article last week will be scratching their heads. Monbiot quotes several well researched articles showing that large corporate farms have a lower output per acre than smaller, labour intensive farms.

However, the profit-motive of corporate investments is clouded by the tax deductive subsidy that Managed Investment Schemes can write off. Much controversy has surrounded the role of MIS’s in the avalanche of tree plantations taking over the countryside. Read this well balanced report from Landline. 100% of the first year’s investment can be written off by taxpayers, regardless of whether the trees survive or not. This investment pool of cash gives MIS’s a huge pool of cash from which to outbid the average family farmer. MIS funds have been growing at extraordinary levels for the last 6 years, with 93% growth in capital in 03/04, and 54% in 04/05.

Moscow property market soars, driven by oil wealth states:

As prices slump in the United States and elsewhere, Russia is wrapping up a year of an extraordinary, oil-driven real estate boom. Moscow, for instance, now ranks as the fourth-most-expensive city in the world for office space, trailing only London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, according to some surveys.

Over in oil rich Venezuela, where $13.9billion in health and education funding is having little effect on living standards, inflation hit 29% over the last year to April. The article similarly states:

And rents in upper-middle-class neighborhoods of Caracas have soared to New York levels — as much as $4,000 a month for a two-bedroom flat.

Andrew Sadauskas
It would be a gross understatement to point out that there is a significant gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Following the introduction of the Northern Territory Intervention, as well as commitments made by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson following the Apology to the Stolen Generations, this gap has become a question of significant national debate.