Today’s big announcement promoted by the Rudd government: The $512 million Housing Affordability Fund, promised before the last election, is expected to help 50,000 new home buyers in the next five years. “What I am signalling loud and clear is that we want to tackle the housing affordability crisis for Australian families which has gotten out of control, and we … Read More
Speed Renting Takes Off
Quoted in today’s Melbourne Leader: DESPERATE room seekers fret not: speed renting has arrived. In ways similar to its dating counterpart, speed renting gives desperate room seekers in Melbourne the chance to meet leaseholders without excess travel or advertising costs. Tomorrow dozens of potential housemates and leaseholders will gather at digital arts bar, Horse Bazaar, for the first ever Melbourne … Read More
A Fair Deal On South African Land reform?
photo credit: derekkeats Mark Braund Guardian UK The South African government’s recent decision to abandon its Expropriation Bill, aimed at addressing the painfully slow pace of land reform, prompts the question: how can the country move towards a more equitable distribution of land and natural resources 14 years after the end of apartheid? Given the catastrophe in Zimbabwe following Mugabe’s … Read More
Bursting the Bubble – SBS Insight
Last night’s Insight focused on the tragedy unfolding in the housing market and it’s effects on the rest of the economy. It was good to see that Housing Supply side issues got some time on air, but again the property lobby had large numbers in the crowd, no NGO’s got a guernsey, the omnipresent Ross Gittins took the softly softly … Read More
Economic Rehab – Lesson 2: Efficiency
Tohm Curtis continues his slightly sarcastic journey into the underpinnings of economics Okay in Lesson 1, I concluded with the not so startling revelation that the economy was ultimately limited by the external environment or reality. Economics is a science because it’s constrained by reality, and hence people use observations to make predictions on how the natural environment will behave. … Read More