Bob Birrell and David McCloskey from the Australian Population Research Institute have released an explosive new report examining new household and dwelling projections for Sydney and Melbourne for the period 2012 to 2022.
The report finds that there will be a continuing scarcity of family-friendly housing in both cities, especially of detached housing, but an epic oversupply of shoe box apartments, particularly in Melbourne, if current construction trends persist.
The report estimates that if net overseas migration continues at 240,000 a year, and Sydney and Melbourne continue to receive almost half of these migrants, then Sydney will have to add a total of some 308,000 dwellings and Melbourne some 355,000 over the decade 2012 to 2022, with around half of this increase in demand coming from net migration (i.e. 199,000 dwellings in Sydney and 193,000 dwellings in Melbourne).
At the same time, there will be huge growth in the number of older households living in both cities. In the inner and middle suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, 50% to 60% of the detached housing stock was occupied by older households in 2011, and the report projects that their numbers will rise rapidly. Moreover, as of 2011, the share of older households living in detached dwellings does not start to decline significantly until people reach 75 years of age.
The net result is that younger households wishing to start a family will find it increasingly difficult to secure a detached home with a backyard, since the stock that is available will be taken-up mostly by older empty-nesters at the same time as the number of younger households is increasing via rapid immigration.
Given the explosion of apartment construction in both Sydney and Melbourne, the report projects that there would be a shortfall of approximately 28,500 detached houses and a surplus of around 59,000 apartments by 2022 in Sydney, if dwelling approvals do not adjust. Similarly, in Melbourne, there would be a shortfall of around 19,000 detached houses and ginormous surplus of around 123,000 apartments by 2022.
And since these new apartments are predominantly tiny (60 square metres or smaller), with no access to protected outdoor space, they are totally unsuitable for raising a family.
The report concludes that households of 2022 are highly unlikely to achieve the standard of dwellings afforded to their counterparts in 2012, given the increased competition for detached housing and the hording of such stock by the older generations. And while the impact will be bad in both cities, it will be worst in Sydney, given the city’s greater natural geographical boundaries, along with its stricter urban planning policies.
For mine, the report highlights four important issues.
First, the immigration intake needs to be tightened significantly. Much of the added demand for housing is coming from new migrants (see next chart), which are causing severe housing indigestion and congestion, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, thereby lowering the living standards of pre-existing residents (especially the younger generations).
Second, one’s owner-occupied residence needs to be brought into the assets test for the Aged Pension.
It is the height of unfairness that the biggest asset most households retiree with is essentially excluded from their capacity to fund their own retirement. And it is especially unfair to expect younger generations – who are either struggling under the weight of the high mortgage debt legacy they inherited or unable to afford a home altogether (see below chart) – to bare the full cost of their parents’ and grandparents’ retirement while they live in homes they themselves cannot afford.
Including the family home in the pension assets test would also encourage empty nesters to downsize to smaller accommodation, thus freeing-up larger family-friendly homes for young families.
Third, stamp duties must be replaced by a broad-based land tax. In addition to vastly improving tax efficiency, such a tax shift would encourage households to move to homes that best suit their needs by removing the punitive tax on moving (stamp duty), encouraging the highest value use of land, and penalising land banking and vagrancy.
Finally, artificial constraints on fringe land supply must be abolished, along with better provision and funding of housing-related infrastructure, and replacing the “first-user-pays-all” tax on new housing with long-term bond financing recovered through rate payers over time.
If the Government is going to persist with a high immigration intake, the least it can do is facilitate this growth via an adequate release of new land and the provision of housing-related infrastructure.
Without policy change, Australia’s young families are facing lower living standards than their forbears, and the unenviable reality of raising their kids in dog box apartments and townhouses while they support their parents as they live in homes that they will never afford.
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Exactly.
The unrelenting/untouchable/sacred Boomer entitlement to suck $60Billion annually for aged pensions, much of which is paid without genuinely testing eligibility… many folk even going to great lengths and expense to arrange their assets and investments with the primary consideration being to ensure they can extract the largest weekly “aged pension” pay-check from the public purse to supplement/top up their income from their pot of super. Safety net my ass
This is going to keep this nation’s budget in a downward indebted cycle for decades to come…. same story with the intergenerational theft that has been superannuation concessions that have benefited the same cohort for the last few decades…at the expense of our future generation…at the expense of the few million young Australians who are ineligible to vote to change this endemic cancer… isn’t that convenient
Shame there is no sign of things changing any time soon.
This behaviour reminds me of a certain arachnid … is it the black widow spider who eats her offspring to keep herself nourished? splendid
Mmmm, not $60 billion. Currently $42 billion.
PPOR should have a $1m cap and then any amount above counted into the asset test. It would be a zero sum game however as any savings should be used to increase the pension for those who actually do need it.
I think this blogs done a positive thing in bringing together a lot of like minded individuals.
Im sure from the blog owners perspective, its a great deal of work just in bringing such people together.
Im surprised it isnt taken further into the development of a Political Party that stems from it.
Even if the blog owner doesnt have the skills / time to do as such, Im sure there’d be people willing to help.
Who needs a back yard when you can Rent-A-Tent!
http://m.theage.com.au/victoria/multiple-tents-found-pitched-in-melbourne-apartments-and-rented-out-20151029-gkm20g.html
LOL that was too much for me.
LOL, reusa was right after all. Clever property investors, especially good looking ones, knew what they were doing all along. They can always find a way to make money from properties in this country!!!
Oh, I now know why good looking property investors love BBQs!! The events were for recruiting tenants!!
Tent + Heater + Balcony + Cladding = … 😉
MFB Fire Safety Dept will be none too happy
Verse 2 of our National Anthem contains
“We’ve boundless plains to share;”
Time to start living up to the whole thing instead of just singing Verse 1 before the footy kicks off. Goodness, that article is depressing…
WoW, I could easily fit 20 to 30 tents in my backyard, that’s heaps of extra cash @ 50 bucks per tent, per week.
Where are they all gonna take a shit though?
Is one porta loo enough for 20- 30 people? they can use the hose for showering at least.
Recycle, mate, recycle. I heard that is the way of the future.
The apartments being built today will be the slum clearance hotspots of the future….assuming they are ever completed.
Are you suggesting that Harry Oscar Triguboff AO Managing Director of Meriton Apartments is building the slums of tomorrow?
It is government policy to turn Sydney and Melbourne into Hong Kong or Shanghai and oblige the citizenry to breed on the smell of an oily rag.
Devour our children? You bet!
As people are now realizing, urban housing price extortion has done more to depress the Chinese birth rate and bring on China’s looming demographic and fiscal crisis than the one child policy.
Well at least that’s something Positive for all the humanity loathing Greenies to cheer about, Dave.
A Global Islamic takeover may not seem so ridiculous in another 50-100 years.
What have the Greens ever done to you, ya tradie dill?
just 20 years ago that would be unquestionable, but now it seems more likely that nice outer suburbs will turn slums than Meriton shitboxes
Australia’s young families are facing lower living standards than their forbears, and the unenviable reality of raising their kids in dog box apartments and townhouses >>> its already too late. In 5 years time very many of you will be out of work, lost your house and probably your wife, your drug addicted kids will be in prison, and you will still be arguing over climate change and sport.
The cat is out of the bag, Capitalists have you in a puppet like trance.
This upheaval now has to play itself out.
Ha ha ha, wot? As down as I am on Australia, it’s the youth who will save the place. Drug addicted kids in prison? I don’t think so.
Lots of people will lose their shirts, mostly the over-leveraged. But the economy will recover. And the kids will be alright so long as their sell-out parents stop supporting the importation of pre-skilled migrants during an unemployment catastrophe.
Edit: if the people of Australia decide that ramping immigration and 457s is the thing to do in the coming depression, THEN I’ll agree completely with your assessment. I don’t think they’re capable of it though.
L the kids have no role models and no money, more likely massive debts.
I think the Hexs bill is now 6 billion.
Drugs are everywhere. its the easy way out,
I don’t buy it. Consumption of Australia’s #1 most destructive drug (booze) per capita is at a 40 year low. I’ll bet a fair chunk of change that other drug use correlates with booze consumption.
Until you can provide some ACTUAL EVIDENCE that today’s kids are all stoned or jacked up on ice because of their pathetic inability to cope with reality, and their total inferiority to the awesome boomers, I’ll remain skeptical.
From http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/topics/statistics-trends:
“Among Australians (aged 14 years or older), the largest increase in illicit use of drugs was in the 50+ age group.”
“The proportion of young people (12–17 years) who are choosing not to drink has risen from 63.6% in 2010 to 72.3% in 2013.
The age at which young people (aged 14–24) are having their first drink is being delayed, rising from 14.4 years in 1998 to 15.7 years in 2013.”
“There was no increase in the proportion of Australians (aged 14 year or over) who use meth/amphetamine (including ice) in 2013 compared to the 2010.”
“Significant declines were seen in recent use of ecstasy among Australians (aged 14 years or older), from 3.0% in 2010 to 2.5% in 2013.”
“Significant declines were seen in recent use of heroin among Australians (aged 14 years or older), from 0.2% in 2010 to 0.1% in 2013”
These stats aren’t that easy to interpret, but they hardly suggest some kind of worsening drug problem among Australian youth.
LD,
http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/ndshs/2013/illicit-drug-use/
LD, ICE is the scrounge of regional Australia, I’m not as down as WW on drugs / kids BUT something needs to happen to restore value / dignity to these lost souls or this will develop into a full on epidemic, somewhat akin to the Chinese opium problem of the late 1800’s. The trend really is that bad.
China-Bob: I will agree that ice is the scourge of regional Australia. As it is in regional areas in the US.
Thing is, almost no-one lives in regional Australia. Australia is one of the most urbanized nations on the planet. By all means, let’s make things better there, but the plight of regional Australia is about as relevant to the plight of most Australians as the plight of aborigine’s in the bush. Should we fix it? Yes. However, it has no bearing on whether drug use is increasing for the average Australian youth.
skippy: Yup, those abuse trends you linked are all down and flat for Australians over 14. Hardly indicative of some kind of emergency. If it’s an emergency, it’s a bloody long one.
Agreed all capable young people in regional Australia find their way to the cities leaving behind dysfunction that feeds on itself and amplifies the problem.
However imagine, just imagine, an Australia where young people had real opportunities in places like Port Macquarie. For a start we wouldn’t have a housing affordability problem because viable choices would exist, unlike today where the choice is a totally dysfunctional regional town, with no future for its youth, OR an unaffordable capital city. Some choice….fixing this is important …it’s infinitely more important than creating an ever larger welfare system that has no greater purpose than to feed a property investing middle/upper class.
If our newly elected PM is looking for guidance than I’d say there is no greater good for Australia than to restore value to regional Australia, this needs to start with equal opportunity education and the development (support for development) of regional industry.
Well said LordDudley.
The oldies and conservatives are always trying to portray the young as a bunch of drug addicted bums who just need to go and get a job. The facts and figures suggest Gen Y and the Millennials are actually far healthier and have a greater sense of responsibility than they’re given credit for.
Drugs are great fun.
Todays teenagers had it way better than I did – and I was a world better than what my parents experienced (Boomers).
Self-centred verbiage will get us nowhere. Be thankful that the Boomers have left the world in a better place than when they arrived.
You really do live in a parallel universe, don’t you? In your world, high youth unemployment and record high youth underemployment, combined with the worst housing affordability in history and escalating student debts, are somehow beneficial to Australia’s youth.
Mate – you haven’t seen anything. When I grew up – and it wasn’t that long ago, unemployment was <90% in my area. My father didn't have shoes until he was 10, and didn't have his first pair of reading glasses until then ether because it didn't really matter until he was a teenager. Too bad about primary school. And I suspect he had it a lot better than my mother… whom doesn’t talk about her childhood much. (both my parents are boomers)
I like you UE – but you are too soft and pampered. You don't know tough because you have never experienced it. I mean that in the nicest way…
Ha ha ha! Rocks were heavier in Researchtime’s day. Back when unemployment was lower, houses were cheaper, student debt didn’t exist, and wages growth was an actual thing.
Up is down, black is white, and the world is only 6,000 years old, eh RT?
Lord D., once you get at least two science degrees – then we may have a discussion! Cosmology, geology, even genetics of you want, and no, the world is not 7k years old. It maybe where you are, but not where I am.
Don’t worry, RT. Where I grew up, “unemployment was <90% in my area" was ALSO TRUE, as it was for basically everyone in Australia. You're still getting those less-than and greater-than symbols confused, I see. Remember, the alligator eats the bigger thing.
What's that, you say? You have two Bachelor of Sciences? No you don't. You only get one of those, with multiple majors. Perhaps a master's degree. You know one of the things you would do in said majors or before said master's degree? You'd learn how to read a bloody 'less than' symbol. Especially if you'd done cosmology, which requires physics, which after second year is basically applied advanced calculus. Y'know one thing you do before all that calculus with the tricky partial differential equations… you do algebra, and you know what they scatter around in algebra… LOTS OF GREATER-THAN AND LESS-THAN SIGNS.
Anyway, given the complete and utter shit that you’ve been dribbling, I don’t believe you grew up with a living standard comparable to parts of Africa – not unless you’re an aboriginal.
Edit: oh, and calling the blog author ‘soft and pampered’. You’re gold, Researchtime. A laugh a minute. I reckon you’re about to take the ‘wrong about everything’ mantle from 3D.
RealturdTime strikes again… funny that despite all that education you claim to have garnished for yourself, you still come across as a ignorant, conceited out of touch twat who has about as much life experience as the smegma under Pope Benedict’s foreskin.
Researchtime is a Young Earth Creationist, so science hasn’t had much influence on his life, and probably explains why he gets his less thans and greater thans confused.
But 2 science degrees! 😛
Holy toledo, this site can be a scream! 😀
Think that if you wish LD – hope you have a great day…
Please sort out your spelling and grammar too RT. It’s “my mother… WHO doesn’t take about”, not “whom”.
This kind of thing is painful to read.
And while we’re at it can we all please understand the difference between “your” and “you”re”!
Hmmm. its a matter of speed, and doing posting in the midst of other things. And forgive my grammar, some of us didn’t do Eng. Lit. for a reason.
And to be fair, I am better off because of it. You should see my spelling ability. Crazy!!!
RT I just wanted to point out that I only wore shoes on a Sunday until I was 12. Cheap Kmart ones at that. I was born in the 80s. My father (born in the 40s) often pointed out (when looking at my class photos etc) that people often read too far into pictures from his youth where people wore no shoes. I realise there is a difference between choosing not to wear shoes, and not having shoes to wear. But my father grew up in a tin shed with no electricity or plumbing and doesn’t make a big fuss about it. At my Nanna’s 90th one of her children went on and on about how hard life was as a kid. My Nanna was a bit embarrassed and said she’d never remembered it in those terms.
Gen Y does have access to cheaper consumer goods. It has access to a wider variety of food than previous generations and in more stable supply.
Our challenges are different. We don’t grow up in a tin shed in 40c heat with bare shoes and an outdoor loo. I have a lot of respect for the conditions that especially rural people have lived through before my generation. But don’t think that this generation has no challenges. Just as not every household grew up in regional Australia (and not all in tough conditions), there are still kids and Gen Y adults who grew up in comparable conditions. Or did the Boomers solve poverty?
My own brother had his education severely hampered because our dad didn’t want to pay for glasses. Again I mean no disrespect to the men who shore sheep in the worst conditions, but I highly suspect an illiterate or poorly educated person would find more opportunities in Australia’s past than its present or future. My brother has had a lot of hard jobs on the stations in NT, properties in NSW. Has worked the shittiest jobs in an abattoir. He is also Gen Y. I guarantee his life will never be easy. And unlike the people who grew up hard in Australia’s past, I very much doubt he’ll ever own a house or be sure of his ability to provide for his kids.
All that said, I often find the language on MB towards boomers to be pretty aggressive. I get the bitterness but honestly its hard to maintain when I see people like my mother taking every odd job they can get just to make ends meet. I wonder if boomer women have it a lot worse than the males. That might be an interesting article sometime, though not MBs standard thing I guess.
Mate – you haven’t seen anything. When I grew up – and it wasn’t that long ago, unemployment was <90% in my area. My father didn't have shoes until he was 10, and didn't have his first pair of reading glasses until then ether because it didn't really matter until he was a teenager. Too bad about primary school. And I suspect he had it a lot better than my mother… whom doesn’t talk about her childhood much. (both my parents are boomers)….blah ….
Bloody luxury. I grew up in a puddle…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
just keep in mind that living in a small home may lower living standard but may actually significantly improve quality of life. Not having space to store pointless crap may not only free time for some other more meaningful activities beside shopping, but may also provide opportunity to spend less time at work.
We have to get out of post WWII consumerist “bigger is always better” mindset and reclaim lives back
+1000000. Downsizing only causes psychological issues for those who are emotionally attached to owning and hoarding literally tonnes of junk.
The blessing of living in times like this with a family with small children is it makes you good at saving, and even better at not buying junk because it won’t fit in your tiny apartment. I suspect half of Australia’s population would have an aneurysm if you took away all the junk in their pool room (which is next to the rumpus room, which is also full of junk, plus they’ve got 3 – 4 bedrooms, plus a shed, all loaded with crap).
George Carlin on stuff:
https://youtu.be/MvgN5gCuLac
Good – about time some life sacrifice was forced onto a generation who’ve known nothing but good times.
one of the best things about moving internationally every five years or so is that you simply dont accumulate junk. All the crap that’d otherwise occupy some shed of spare bedroom is gone, who knows where who cares where. A dearth of physical possessions and no desire to acquire junk also gives you time to study.
I noticed that RT wanted proof of 2 science degrees, I wonder what hurdle rate I should set?
Nicely put. Consumerism is one of the biggest problems in our society. I get labeled as a tight-arse by some simply because i can afford a much better car/motorcycle/phone… but refuse to upgrade. I think its very much about ego and materialism and people wanting to fit it. It’s very sad in many ways seeing adults who can’t see it.
@CB, very good point and also works nationally if one keeps on the move interstate.
CB – actually have more than 2 degrees (they are just my science ones), and currently adding on top of that; no hurdle rate. People making assumptions which given previous posts I have made, find a bit surprising…
Not arguing the point. Try and give each his respect.
@RT not dissing you mate, just wondering how this “prove your worthiness to post” game would work and what the point of it would be.
seriously to what point: prove my education frankly I could care less what other think, I usually leave all higher degrees off my resume, for th most part because I’m a strong believer that one should always under-promise and over-deliver.
So I hope MB never degenerates into a community that demands proof of worthyness, it’s all just BS paper anyway.
If the quality of life is that good, wont the apartment’s value to the market increase? If its market value goes up, wont the asset test come out the same and therefore confer no advantage to downsizing? I agree that people should downsize later in life, but not sure how to compel it. The older you are, the closer you need to be to services (hospitals, doctors, suitable transportation). You need better facilities (bigger bathrooms, wheelchair accessible/elevators). It is important for your mental health to also be near people you know. So if you grew up in inner Sydney, shoving you to the western suburbs could be a shock. Climate control might also be important for heat regulation (insulation, air con etc). So in the end you still end up with what amounts to a very expensive apartment, coming close to the cost of a house.
Only someone young and/or poor would move into most of the lousy apartments Australia builds. I lived in an east facing one when I first moved out and it was unlivable some days in summer. The body corporate fees alone would make a more convenient apartment hideously expensive.
I’ve never read an MB comments thread full of such ridiculous presumptuousness, snide, snark and just outright elitist rubbish.
Hilarious.
Go short on MB negativity.
Dr X +1
Actual drug abuse on a per capita basis peaked in the early to mid 70s – basically the baby boomers spent the best years of their live, getting drunk and pissing it up against the wall.
Ice “epidemic” is a minuscule problem compared to the carnage on our roads during the 70s thanks to Boomers unable to handle their piss, hoping in their cars and killing themselves or some other innocent party on the way home.
Reading skippys link gives the strong impression – given drug use is only increasing in over 50s – that any apparent increase in drug use is driven by hippies who never grew up or who want relive their youth before they’re in a pine box.
LOL – a prime example of why the kids of today should stay away from Acid, and the risk of a never ending trip.
Yes my dad drove home pissed every day for over 40 years, when they brought in the breathalyser, he had dozens of angry arguments with the coppers about how Unaustralian all this breatho bullshit was. The coppers let him off an equal number of times (he never got charged) after the crystals turned purple. Eventually, he finally gave in and and stopped driving intoxicated ( mostly anyway).
I still think of sitting on his lap, steering the car at 8, 9 or 10 years old, on the way home from Kogarah oval after watching the saints, with the stink of piss on his breath, whenever I’m scolded by my wife for letting our tall 7 year old daughter sit in the front seat of the car.
Social evolution at work
STOP ARGUING ABOUT SPORT !!! thats bullshit WW
You are correct on all the other points, I think.
Mate, you’re a friggin plumber, what is this about cant put a few pedestals in the back yard.
Get with it mate, entrepreneur ism, thats the next G O.
Just ask Turnstile who has never invented anything (tangible) in his life.
Upheaval, in Australia? Ohhhhh Phleeeeze … the sheeple are far too sedate and comfortable for that.
We have been lulled into thinking that all we need to do is work harder and invest in housing and we can “make it too”.
One of the benefits of having a multicultural society for the ruling elite and the cryptofascist corporates is that with new waves of immigrants coming in every 10-15 years AND a population ponzi in place, society becomes too fractured and atomized for any coordinated and coherent pushback.
All we are capable now is whining and whinging about it via Facebook and Twitter and maybe a protest vote every four years.
We are also all far too busy competing against each other in order to afford the next new toy and flashy car.
The lesser aspects of human nature have been exploited by our masters and used against us.
Its quite brilliant really.
Australia’s youth of today live online, so physical addresses don’t really matter to them. Facebook, Minecraft, Instagram, twitter land is where most of their lives play out. Their measure of wealth is how many friends and likes they accrue. Their only requirement for a physical place of presence is to take a dump, eat and sleep. As long as they have an iDevice and internet access, most XYZ generations are happy.. until they wakeup to the real world.
Yeah… This is not true, even for a generalisation.
Here’s another idea.
Don’t put GST on new dwelling purchases.
If you want to incentivize new dwelling construction and sales, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense or fairness considering the buyer ALSO pays Stamp Duty.
Of course, the States won’t like it but IF Canberra goes ahead with an increase in the GST to 15% it seems like a rolled gold opportunity to add a GST exemption for residential dwelling construction.
Fair point.
They won’t reign in immigration. It will only happen if the immigrants decide to stop coming, combined with recent immigrants leaving.
They won’t clamp down on 457’s unless things get REALLY bad. They’re making our industry ‘competitive’, remember.
They won’t assist youth; they’ll just label them lazy profligate bludgers, while importing more already trained immigrants.
Australia is a rapidly declining country populated by fat, self-entitled future-eaters. The problem won’t be solved through the actions of Australians, because the problem is with the people of Australia. They’re basically pretty awful.
The best case, and also likely scenario, is a depression that absolutely smashes Australia’s cost base and causes a big reset. The immigrants will stop coming of their own volition, and even the government will be forced to limit 457s when the unemployment rate cracks 10%. If the reset doesn’t happen, stick a fork in Australia, it’s done; not worth coming back to for any young person who has left.
Depression and Anxiety are increasing rapidly amongst the younger generations. Boomers will probably just see this as an opportunity to invest in mental health care. We have been sold out, and i am completely over Australia. I can barely even bring myself to read MB anymore, it makes me feel sick!
There is no future in Australia without a recession (and before anyone suggests it, yes, i have lived through a recession, and if you keep your job in a recession, its all positives. Sorry Baristas and Personal Trainers)
There’s about 8 quarters of data showing immigrants are deciding not to come and people are leaving already.
I grow increasingly uncertain that my kids will ever come home from their lucrative jobs overseas. It pains me that I may only see them occasionally for the rest of my life 😥
Problem is we had a cap at 220,000 last year and only attracted 173,000. Just turning up the lever does not work anymore.
I’ve been trough 457 10 years ago and it wasn’t easy, but I remember the DIMMIA employee in charge of my case told me they had millions of applications. It’s not 173k who wanted to come, it was 173k who met the minimum requirements: recognisable qualifications and proven professional experience in industries with skills shortage, plus a written offer from an australian business, and that business also needs to meet a range of criteria and prove it cannot find the skills they require locally, and also agree to pay market rates and private insurance, and then go through a bunch of paperwork that almost requires a dedicated person. That’s what it took back then to even be considered, and from talking to people it’s not easier now.
If they want more people in, they can always relax the criteria somewhat.
Interesting. At that is with visa (457) criteria being relaxed in recent years.
I dont think so… from talking to people trying to get (there’s actually forums about it), the criteria have actually tightened somewhat in recent years. Just take my word for it, there’s a LOT of people who want to come to Australia, especially from S. Europe, and that’s not even counting Indians and Chinese.
You speak of downsizing far too blithely, we are the only couple in our cohort I know who have done this, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
We did it on purpose to set up the next two generations whose finances were not sound. Even though we had agreed to this 5 years before I stopped work and my wife is a sensible woman who knows the value of money it very nearly caused a divorce. No amount of monetary consideration is worth possibly breaking up a 30 year long marriage.
In Brisbane at least the housing stock is completely unsuitable for downsizing for economic purposes. Good retirement housing stock is prohibitively expensive.
Lastly I abhor the idea of construction bonds, the erection of new suburbs needs to go back to local government through federal government grants financed through increased taxes ( top rate was 66.6% when I started work and we enjoyed ourselves more in those days ) That way people won’t be able to pay stupid amounts for housing even if they wanted to. No foreign interest at all should be allowed in Australian real assets.
N mate you need a motorhome. This time of year you should be up at Normanton chasing barra.
I have one, and best, is its fully solar powered, including air con, no rent seeking asshole to get between you and the sun.
Just that thought gets you up early to look at the sunrise. soon those Watts come flowing in.
Is that you & your wife in the Origin Energy solar ad Wiley ?
Burnsy, every time I see that add I wonder is it photo-shopped or is it real.
What is real is that once you get a taste of this free energy caper, you realise just how every aspect of modern urban life is taxed or part of a rent seeking scheme to keep most employed.
As I posted on the WE the capitalists have most well and truly in their grasp. in previous times we could forecast an outcome, but this time computers have level led the playing field, so that a keyboard jockey in Burma, can do the work of a Brisbane jockey. I dont know how this is going to play out.
System voltage 25.4 Amps in (net) 10.6.
+1 Top stuff WW!
Buying a gigantic, heavy fossil-powered tin and plastic box on wheels is about the least intelligent thing I can think of doing, right now, and especially into the future. 🙄
R2A, have plenty of room you’re welcome to park up along side. I have a mercury vacuum pump as part of my fridge kit, we can maintain that vacuum between your ears down to a couple of millibar, just in case some knowledge seeps in. You’re 5 weeks late with the letter. Spent too much time on our medical benefits have you?
WilliW is out there living the life, chewing up fossil fuels at an enormous rate in his behemoth Winnebago.
Ah, the WilliWanka philosophy: Après moi, le déluge!
No fool like an old fool 🙄
@ WW Looking for a 32V Lister driven genset for my bush block, my brother will rewind it for me. I see they still have kerosene fridges in China US $ 500, haven’t got a freight price yet.
N Mate there are plenty of Lister x windmill pumps out around Charliville etc. Any of the museums out there will know where some are. Not hard to have them rebuilt.
The Chinese make permanent magnet generators for wind turbines, very low RPM very high output. could be direct coupled, your Lister will run on used Fish and chip oil.
I once looked at the option of an ammonia system, for an icebox, to run from Lister type exhaust gases.
there is plenty of xcess heat.
WW after I get a Powerwall or equivalent with a Fronius hybrid to go off grid, a wind turbine is next. We face the Pacific ocean and have a reliable wind source.
Then add a diesel gen for east coast lows.
Then next is the hot water per our previous discussions
My main issue is finding time to do all this!
Note, I was down in Geelong the other day and noticed the roof of the city council buildings has Savonious rotors on top. Maybe 2 or 3 Kw each. Gunna may know.
The Chinese make some very clever VAWT now, check out the internet.
On the other hand, Australians with families who refuse to get into massive debt are forced into downsizing. Families of 4 to 6 people in 2 bedroom apartments aren’t uncommon anymore.
Yet here we have someone older speaking of how downsizing for 2 people almost ended the marriage. Holy-moly, if there was any indication that the older generation are a mollycoddled group of self-entitled pampered brats, this is bloody well it. Australians have had it too bloody easy for too long; 40 years at least. The ONLY people to have actually sacrificed during this period are the small percentage of the population who served in Vietnam, and today’s youth.
Let me guess, you lived in a 5BR Queenslander in Brissie, right, and it went from being worth $300,000 ten years ago to well over a million bucks when you sold it, but you’re pissed because you could have held out and got $1.6 million. I’ll bet money on it. And you’re whining about the cost of downsizing.
No sympathy at all. Zero. Nada. Zilch. You’ve made out like bandits, and you’re whining about it.
Aren’t they a generation of self serving out of touch scumbags.
They say pneumonia is an old person’s best friend, hopefully a couple thousand of them went for a long walk in the cold English rain after their Rugby.
They all get vaccinated against pneumonia these days so no dice.
“No foreign interest at all should be allowed in real assets”
+1
Or at very least we should tax the bejesus out of it which is what they do in places like Singapore.
The official MB line from the beginning has been that foreign investment in “new” dwellings is all good because it adds to existing dwelling stock. BUT as this report highlights, that housing stock is mostly of the wrong type to assist Australian families AND it displaces suitable dwelling construction to the less desirable commuter suburbs.
“The official MB line from the beginning has been that foreign investment in “new” dwellings is all good…”
Rubbish. The official MB line is that it is better than investment in pre-existing housing, since it at least adds to supply. This does not make it “all good”. We have highlighted the problem with the proliferation of dog boxes dozens of times.
+1 So being a totally self-funded retiree, who has paid for the total upbringing and education of my now two adult children and has never had the benefit of the extraordinarily-generous family allowances/child care rebates and other handouts that are now a rite of passage, I should sell up my home, pay a truckload of stamp duty (to be p.ssed up against the wall) for the “privilege” of buying elsewhere and move to a severely overpriced/poorly-constructed dog box and get even more up close and personal with neighbours I want nothing to do with because we’re all busy with our own lives – and so, what do I achieve?
The underlying message from government is why don’t we seniors just move on (in a hurry) to a “better place”, if such a place exists.
LOL – “self funded” thanks to either a generous superannuation tax break that allow you to fund a generous retirement for yourself by denuding the tax base and forcing the cost of society onto those your kids that you claim to care about, or “self funded” thanks to another generous tax break that has allowed you to accumulate enough buy-to-let apartments that you can collect exorbitant rent from your kids generation until you die lonely and alone in your giant empty house.
In this brief post, I hope to clear the ground by proposing two simple rules to which neo-liberalism can be reduced. They are:
#1 Because markets.
#2 Go die!
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/neo-liberalism-expressed-simple-rules.html
@Stewie Griffin,
The commenter did none of those things, those were neoliberal policies which benefited those that crafted them – manifold – more than people like above.
Skippy… it gets nonsensical to always project the blame on the consumers… rather than the architects.
What sought of pathetic get out of jail card free was that Skippy?
It wasn’t our fault, it was the fault of our Democratically elected leaders of both parties who set the agenda and who we repeatedly voted for as they punished us by humiliating golden showers of share certificate from CBA, Telstra or any other asset they could privatise, and then dehumanised us further with unbearable tax cuts and benefit inducements….
….oh the pain the pain, the insufferable pain.
Stew what part about the neoliberal pogrom from its inception from MPS, to becoming the dominate narrative in the 70s and basically taking over the democratic governments part of it all did you miss – ????
Skippy…. are you even aware of the what the Washington Consensus or Thirdway – IS – ????
Struggling to figure out how to downsize is not a hardship.
Fleeing a wartime, dealing with abusive family members, looking after someone who is unable to look after themselves with little support, living on the streets. Those things are hardships.
The Dr I met who ran a hospital in Iraq and wads terrified of ambulances as they were used to smuggle in bombs and evil dudes
He had it hard.
Moving house, of your own volition because you have the resources to do so is a nuisance.
Why would someone liquidate their best asset and place of shelter to be thrown into the free market machinations.
Skippy… Once you sell your right back out in the cannibal pit…
Yes, why should oldies downsize when it means giving up a home they’ve loved and cared for and renovated for decades to move to something overpriced, badly constructed (usually), noisy (because on a smaller block), and uncertain (buying a house in Australia is like playing Russian roulette, because sellers can lie to you and conceal defects without fear of being sued, unlike in the US where you have to declare faults)?
Because two people living in a home built for five will have a way oversized carbon footprint?
Au contraire, stat. These older houses are cooler, no need for a/c. The new ones, the “downsize” ones, with no eaves, are another story.
There’s a fair point there. New houses are generally poorly designed and positioned with regards to natural cooling, all but necessitating air-conditioning.
A good old house in QLD probably only needs the aircon on a couple of weeks a year, at least until you get up past Mackay. A new one probably needs it running 1-3 months a year, even down in Brisbane.
Who said they had to buy a new apartment? Apartments built in the seventies and eighties are wonderful. Also in an apartment you don’t have to do the weeds.
Pantone, but doing the weeds is what keeps me healthy! I’d die in an apartment.
But if it’s good for our politicians (see the Fisherman’s Bend thing posted over the weekend), it must be good for us right?
Looking for corruption…? Some guy wins a gold medal right there.
only an ideologically brainwashed person would think that suburban houses are only or the best family-friendly housing.
In addition to all educational and developmental opportunities that come form inner city living, kids growing in apartments spend more time outdoor in nature and more time with parents and siblings.
There was a study done in USA that found that regardless of home size the families spend nearly all awake time in a space of 40 sqm almost exclusively in the kitchen, family room and dining room. They also found that on average kids spend less than 1 hour a week in backyard (parents spend less than 15min a week excluding time used to maintain backyard)
“only an ideologically brainwashed person would think that
suburban housesapartments are only or the best family-friendly housing”.Let me guess, You don’t have kids? I can think of almost nobody, other than you, that believes raising a family in a small apartment is beneficial. So, who is the “ideologically brain-washed” commentator here? I think it is clearly you.
What people “think” is not data driven and last time I looked data does not have any agency… e.g. ideological.
Hey, those kids on Different Strokes lived in an apartment and they turned out fine….
I spend first 8 years of my life in a large house in one of Sydney’s “fine” suburb and than moved with my parents to NYC and spent rest of childhood around Lincoln Square. My kids grew up in apartments and there is nothing wrong with them. Actually, they grew up in much better social environment and had much better opportunities because of that.
Your thinking is so backward and blinded by ideology that it must follow from it that most Europeans kids who grew up in units had miserable childhood and turned into failures.
I can make an endless list of benefits of living in a small apartment in inner city while your list for suburb may get only to the few points.
I’d certainly agree that backyards are over rated. You give up a lot in terms of proximity to facilities for a patch of grass you can dump young kids onto.
Sorry UE but I have a big family and they loved living in our apartment in Shanghai. they could look out the window and see when their friends were on the playground, the whole compound was super safe so parents had no qualms about having their kids play outside . when we moved to Australia they hated having to arrange to go over to someones house just to see their friends. I’m sure there are plenty of bad apartment experiences but trust me there are also plenty of good outcomes.
edit: even my older kids loved the mobility that was possible because they lived in an apartment, we had a fantastic subway system that was two blocks walk away, we had taxis waiting at the compound gate to take you anywhere for a couple of dollars.
I’d certainly agree that backyards are over rated. You give up a lot in terms of proximity to facilities for a patch of grass you can dump young kids onto.
How are you defining “proximity” and what facilities are you giving up ?
By proximity I mean time and distance to shops schools and the rest. I didn’t say you gave anything up entirely – just that things are further away and little is gained in return.
“arrange to go over to someones house just to see their friends”
Yeah, but you lived on the north shore didn’t you? An area full of barren women, those raised as kids on the north shore can’t afford to live on the north shore.
No wonder playing with other kids requires a booking, they’re a scarce resource.
Suburbia for many of us was wide roaming spaces, low traffic flows, sporting fields galore, disused compounds such as gravel pits, where we’d explore, build cubby houses and the like.
District sporting contest on locals sporting grounds on Saturdays, under 12’s in for free. Pro sport on Sunday.
And a street full of kids. You didn’t even attend school with them, nor were they in your school year. Kids flooded out to play, you joined them. It even extended to some mayhem now and then, and if you pissed to wrong old man off, he gave you a whack.
If you’re father found out, he’d also give you a whack for being a little turd, instead of suing the old man.
There was plenty of green space, being sporting fields with lawn, instead of native plants. It didn’t seem a problem.
Backyards were big enough for large social gatherings, commonly parents inviting their friends over, and you’d meet new people, mingling in ample space.
I spent the first 6 years of my life in apartments, suburbia was bliss. Any cultural facility was a train ride away, it’s not something that is commonly evening fare.
My grandparents lived in the bush, and frequented there. I understand how some would be resourceful out there. It was easy to also get bored, and one had to roam far and wide to meet other kids, typically needing to be ferried by car.
Suburbia (old 1930’s Sydney suburbia, Merrylands/Granville) looking back I never ventured more than 3 km from my house, and I never ran out of things to discover.
In fairness, half the problem is helicopter parents who are terrified to let their children out of their sight.
@Rusty Not sure what your point is.
I’m not saying suburbia is all bad not at all just saying that apartment living isn’t all bad either.
for instance my kids learned to ride skateboards/rollerblades the huge marble area outside Shanghai’s Science&Tech musseum, they learned to ride bicycles in Century Park. they regulary went on scouting camps to Chongming Island and Huangshan (Yellow mountains) during the summer they typically flew back to the US for Summer camp. NOT having a house to look after makes a lot of these choices possible, you can just lock up the apartment for 3 months in summer and enjoy yourself …that’s not really possible with a house. wrt Sydney’s Lower North Shore it is definitely no longer the kid frendily place that I grew up in.
This is the current expectation in Australia. I’ve read plenty of American, British and Australian articles about younger Gen Y natives preferring urban environments, while suburbs become the domain of immigrants and multi-generational families. I’ve actually met lots of people my age who never bothered to get a drivers license in any form. Including a brother. We’re in our 30s. I live a more traditional lifestyle and can’t imagine it any other way, but he has doctors that make housecalls (because its cheaper apparently? Melb) and McDonald’s delivery.
Granted he has no children but I know plenty of people who believe in 2 working adults, daycare for the kids, and inner city living for the convenience. They are no hindered by apartments, provided they’re not the usual lousy Australian ones. ie they expect good use of space, proper orientation of the rooms, insulation and parking.
I grew up in apartments and in houses. The backyard is unnecessary when there’s a park just around the corner.
I grew up in a small apartment in Athens, Greece, with my parents and 2 sisters. We just went out more, and spent a lot of time on the balcony. Old apartments had nice big balconies with marble floors and deep awnings. Aussie homes, including mine, seem very wasteful and unsustainable to me. I can sort of understand the allure of the back yard sometimes, but front yards that people don’t even set their foot on and long driveways make my blood boil, especially when people complain about how expensive land is.
Kind of a moot point when the bulk of apartments being studios or single bedroom have no pretence of being a place for families.
most of units being build in inner city are two bedroom while most of families are single child families – so I don’t see a problem with that.
Problem in Australia is not the fact that units are being built but rather poor building code and high building industry corruption that makes those units of poor quality. Also, property bubble created environment where no buyer cares about quality because everyone is buying just to resell in few years. This is probably even more issue with houses.
Looks from this more than half are studio or one bedroom –
http://blog.corelogic.com.au/2015/03/only-1-out-of-100-apartments-has-4-bedrooms-in-melbournes-cbd/
And certainly it confirms virtually none are 3 or more bedrooms. At TFR of 1.8 most families must have two orris kids.
Well said drX, when the housing bubble started RE became a value added commodity that’s warranty was reflected in the amount of time 4 x 6 years before it was flipped.
Skippy… all that track housing is built with those considerations in mind.
Having lived in Europe and here, the difference is the quality of apartment living. If we had decent medium density housing instead of dog boxes, it’d be different.
Haven’t lived in a European apartment but stayed in a few – in general better accommodation than most australian detached houses I’ve visited or lived in. I’ve also inspected dozens of apartments in Melbourne in the hope of living in them – incredibly difficult to find one suitable for a couple let alone a family.
+1. The quality and size here is awful. Poorly, poorly designed dog boxes.
I live in a Melbourne apartment which I bought in 2001 – suffice to say (at least for a recent development) it’s better than what you might find in the Docklands, but not a patch in livability (size, ceiling height, ventilation, etc) on most European apartments I’ve stayed in.
The apartment buildings going up around the place are all about maximising volume (quantity) of apartments to maximise the profit.
Housing (including houses) in Australia is such a bad quality because people are willing to pay million without even seeing them. Only in Australia someone is willing to commit to pay 10 yearly wages to buy something they spent 5 minutes inspecting.
and reason for that is simple, we are nation of speculators who buy homes not for raising kids but for price speculation
I’ve bought and sold two of those. Both times someone overseas bought them based on a couple of photos (you know the stupid ones that show a cafe downstairs and a lane pool in the basement), and whatever the agent told him. So why would anyone bother with quality?
In addition to all educational and developmental opportunities that come form inner city living, kids growing in apartments spend more time outdoor in nature and more time with parents and siblings.
There’s no “nature” in inner city living. There might be small artificially constructed parks with some convenient non-native flora, if you’re lucky.
I am happy to profess personal bias, as I was someone who grew up in the country and moved to the city, but it has been my consistent observation that children raised in the country are far more able and likely to transition to city life, and consequently have a richer life experience, than vice versa.
my point was that inner city people more often go to national parks and other nature areas than suburban people.
I also agree with you about rising kids in country. I find suburban living the worst option not having any of the benefits of country living nor any of the opportunities of inner city living – only the worst of both worlds
Yeah but it’s suburbs vs inner city not country vs inner city.
Suburbs, based on my experience growing up in one don’t have the advantages of either country or inner city.
my point was that inner city people more often go to national parks and other nature areas than suburban people.
I hope you understand how I may have struggled to infer that from your post. 🙂
I also agree with you about rising kids in country. I find suburban living the worst option not having any of the benefits of country living nor any of the opportunities of inner city living – only the worst of both worlds
Suburbia now is shite, it is true, thanks to tidgy blocks almost entirely filled by houses bordered by 6′ high fences and helicopter parents.
However, suburbia of ye olden tymes with blocks big enough for backyard cricket or soccer and little more than a few poles with some string up between them to mark boundaries, was a different matter.
In suburbia there is the possibility of actual “nature” (eg: Mt Coot-tha in Brisbane). In the concrete jungle of inner-city there’s not.
When were those olden times? I grew up almost forty km from the centre of Melbourne around thirty years ago ( newly developed about eighteen months before I was born ) and no one had a back yard that you could play cricket in once we’d passed the age of six and had a vague chance of hitting the ball with the bat.
Never went to Melbourne as a kid. Only family in Sydney lived out at Smithfield and did have a yard big enough for playing in. My parents had plenty of friends in Brisbane so we were there often enough. The Centenary suburbs and The Gap are two places I remember visiting in the ’80s as a kid where people had yards big enough for some backyard cricket.
living on a small farm on city outskirts just 25km from CBD would be ideal but unfortunately our growth fetish combined with centralization craze made that impossible. You cannot house 5 million people on one acre blocks because the city size would need to be 140000 sqkm (120km by 120km). Infrastructure cost would be enormous and quality of life poor in such city.
Unfortunately our government copied English system instead of European
living on a small farm on city outskirts just 25km from CBD would be ideal but unfortunately our growth fetish combined with centralization craze made that impossible. You cannot house 5 million people on one acre blocks because the city size would need to be 140000 sqkm (120km by 120km). Infrastructure cost would be enormous and quality of life poor in such city.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting everyone live on an acre block. I’m certainly not.
I’m on lots of acres, and I love it. I walk among the trees, listen to the birds, bliss.
I’d like to extend to you an invite to my residence.
I hope you like
freshly squeezed OJ from one of the trees. We can mix ruby grapefruit in
fresh mangos, plums, nectarines, avos
bring your Driver as we’ll be hitting balls to the bottom paddock
Or we can fire up the Yamaha DT175
Perhaps some trap shooting?
Playing outside in Melbourne’s weather?
Good luck with that.
The first generation in a family makes money (goes from rags to riches); the second generation holds or keeps the money; and the third generation squanders or loses the money (and so goes back to rags).
富 不过三代
Fu bu guo san dai
“Wealth does not pass three generations”
My father passed that bit of wisdom down down to me as a young boy and by reference to my maternal grandfather and great grandfather who had made it big in the 1890’s property boom/bust holding a large number of properties right up to the 1930’s depression.
I’ve subsequently started reading Strauss & Howe’s “The fourth Turning” for further insight.
When I look at my paternal side of the family, I see that the family held a number of Pubs on George Street Sydney. The combination of gambling,sly grog, economic and social changes (six o’clock swill) saw that all the pubs disappear from the family.
surfless, ‘Fold’ by emilygrant (apologies, v poor quality,the only free recording I have at hand)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJpRPzXRZN8
GST to 15% please!
The end of the backyard was the click bait for the story on Fairfax
I’m in the inner middle east of Melb and you can spot who has bought up what old house by what they do with it, the locals will knock it down and build two townhouses.. how they intend to make a profit I’m not quite sure as they have paid $1.7 million, then have to knock down, build, and are lucky to get $1.1 million for each townhouse
The others that buy are the Chinese, old clinker brick gets knocked down to build a 45sq Henley Home that is built up to the fence line of both side, the house towers over the neighbours clinker bricks who then get fed up and sell themselves within a year and all of a sudden.. I’m living in a new housing estate
*Noodle Boxes/Noodle Palaces*
LOL. Totally self-funded – mostly from after-tax savings (you may have heard of the concept) as the way the pollies toy with super in this country it is too risky to put too much in to it, no part pension entitlement, funds will likely run out, no negative gearing etc etc. Thanks for that.
What, couldn’t work out how to post your reply under the same thread?
Still don’t get it do you – EASY to achieve after tax savings, when you have access to massive PRE-TAX deductions. Neg gearing, super and let us not forget a tax regime that didn’t tax ANY capital gains for a large part of your existence (let along the 50% scam your favourite politicians passed back to you)
Same here. And we get no respect for it. 😡
I agree with all of that Leith except: artificial constraints on fringe land supply must be abolished
Population growth on the fringe is the last place you need it. Regional centres perhaps, and infill development, but on not on the fringe of what are already some of the largest cities (in terms of land area) in the world.
Besides, if you implement the first three measures the last one probably won’t be required.
Ah, Chardonnay Socialist wakes up! Hope everything is good with you Lorax. Meanwhile, the australian economy is stuffed despite your shrill calls for rate cuts, young are getting poorer, the oldies are getting richer.
This must be the Straya you dream of.
What I called for is a lower AUD and slow melt of property prices as the best possible outcome for Australia. Not sure that a slow melt is possible any more thanks to post mining boom housing bubble, but I doubt an epic housing crash will be good for the country.
Ah Lorax, what has happened to your mate Swampy Marsh
Last we heard the valuers were going to his place (Lismore environs) to do a valuation.
No news is probably bad news. He probably was done for chopping down all the camphor laurels.
Where is the nearest jail down there?
He’s still around.
Always easy to send a note to tim.
Camphor laurels are a terrible weed. Doubt you can be “done” for chopping them down…
Dunno. Is he selling the farm?
Incorrect.
Val was for a purpose that has no bearing on current discussions. Not selling.
All is well, thanks for the note.
Been busy with baby, chopping bush mangoes down (blocking view, also no good for relish WW, not as good as the Bowens and Nam Doc Mais and Kensington prides) and other assorted things.
Chopping camphors? Nothing doing. I have allowed a few camphors to take root to provide screening of property from road. Benefits are clear:
nice tree
hang swings
good for climbing
can harvest branches for goats
good to mulch
fast growing
In any case you can easily dispatch them as far as I am aware without needing a permit.
Easiest thing is to drill holes in the trunk and fill with glypho.
You really are a bigot, Stewie. All of the (very real) problems afflicting younger people are entirely due to bipartisan government policies that have been supported by politicians of all ages, not just Baby Boomers. These policies were not instituted to help some mythical collective of Baby Boomers, but to benefit the politicians themselves and their Big Business mates, on whom they depend for election funding and lucrative job and investment opportunities after they leave politics. The petty exploiters lower down in the food chain, who also come in a wide range of ages, are just taking advantage of the framework that the politicians have created, although that doesn’t excuse them for profiteering on a necessity of life. Most Baby Boomers worked at very ordinary jobs, don’t own investment properties, don’t have a lot of super, and are lucky to own their own (modest) homes. If you can blame them for anything, it is for voting for the major parties, but if you do that, then you also have to blame the younger people (now the majority of voters) who also voted for them.
Bigotry is ugly, regardless of its target. People can no more help the year they were born in than they can the colour of their skin. Your ageism also encourages harsh and uncaring treatment of vulnerable people. The government ought to be taxing estates to recover money spent on pensions and superannuation tax concessions, but forcing elderly people out of homes that they slaved for decades to pay off is only worthy of some Communist dictatorship. Let the politicians reduce immigration and decentralise to fix the problem. You also deflect attention away from the real source of the problems, the major parties. I have been putting them last for decades. And no, I am not a Baby Boomer.
“If you aren’t putting the major parties last, then you are part of the problem.”
Tania, wise comments, we need to hear more from you.WW
+ many. Very few sensible comments when it comes to baby boomers threads but its getting silly the least to say especially assuming that ALL boomers are rich evil human beings that had this massive plot to make the next generation’s lives hard and miserable.
Yes, I personally despise the term “grey gouge” and have said so many times on this forum. It’s pure ageism, it’s actually up there with racism and all the other nasties I thought we left behind post Vietnam War era.
To vilify a segment of society due to some attribute and classify according is plain stupid dumb ….. sigh.
Skimming through vacant expressions during QT all I can see are fossils. “Politicians of all ages”, huh?
There is so much anger and digression in these posts and comments that it convinces me that the neoliberals are winning the war. Someone posted a chapter from Marx on the Gunna links on the weekend and I reckon you should all read it.
I a nutshell, the purpose of life has been lost in a pointless debate. The .1% want us to be mortgaged to the hilt. They want us to be squabbling over the meagre scraps of personal advantage gained over a lifetime’s work. They want the young and old to be arguing over the unfairness of building their own share of the national wealth. They want to bust organised labour and outright home ownership because it suits their purpose to maintain the populace in a cringing debt laden state whilst they steadily tuck away the national income. They are aided by politicians, think tanks and ideological commentators shilling for them as though the answers are to make “tough” decisions, to take austerity on the chin because it’s good for the country and all the other neocon nonsense.
The reality is that little has changed since Marx made his observations. Australia is endowed with the economic resources of plentiful land, a benign climate, an educated society and the capacity for self sufficiency. Rather than squabbling over the icing on the cake, we should be debating on how we claim back the cake from the ruling class voraciously devouring as much as they can lay their trotters on.
The entire debate about this human construct called the “economy” is giving it a deity like status that is underserved. The narrative has been captured by worrying claims put about which damage our psyche. We hear them ad nauseum. You know the pearlers like unsustainable public debt, structural rolling deficits, inadequate taxes to pay for services and all the other blah are just myths created to fulfil the neoliberal purpose. That purpose is to garner as much wealth as possible without regard for citizenry.
Start a debate about the vision for life in Australia for ALL citizens and get away from this petty quarrelling. Identify that the ruling political class are due for a swift kick in the gonads to remind them they are our agents. We put them in place and we can remove them from place. Change the debate to a desired quality of life for all citizens which is underpinned by full employment for all who want it, to enable access to food and shelter, to care for those unable to care for themselves and to provide a future for our children. Before you label me a Red and choke on your latte, consider that the God you worship called the economy doesn’t exist. It was dreamed up by humans as a means to explain how things work and has been misused in this country starting with Whitlam when he started talking about debt and deficits. As a sovereign country in the free world with vast economic resources, we can determine how we live. Get off your rumps and tell the politicians the game has changed. Let them know we don’t believe in their bullshit.
M. read that article again. They 1% dont want the bastardization to occur, look around it is Fait Accompli.
The future now is how do you all change mindset and get out of it, considering in the past the ability to grow on your own account was the answer.
Technology is now going to stifle, snuff that opportunity, for most.
And of all, the young need leadership, could Turnstile be a role model?
Fair enough , but see below 2b2f comments.
+100. Well said.
Australia is not a sovereign nation. It is still a burlap sack of colonies held by the remnants of the British empire and hence an American puppet state. Although, with any luck the victory of neo liberalism will see a resurgence of Socialist thinking. We could be an independent state with in our life time.
Yeah I hear what you are saying. but I was referring to the sovereign capacity of a currency issuing nation with floating exchange rate and the macroeconomic potential that flows from this reality.
I agree our socio-political .arrangements are more colonial than sovereign. Maybe that’s why our economic thinking is so stunted. We are free to choose our economic destiny and we don’t know it, ‘cos the burlap sack you mentioned is still neatly arranged over our peepers. We’ve grown accustomed to the yoke of colonialism and just can’t shrug it off.
Independence? Hahahaha.
British colonised politically, militarily and economically.
Yanks colonised/colonising militarily and economically.
Chinese colonised/colonising economically.
The colonisers are just getting more efficient. Australia will never be independent. Only tribal people are sovereign and they’ve had their land stolen and cheated from then.
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. (Albert Einstein)
The 4 points mentioned by Leith are all good and well intentioned, but as long as we have the same people in charge (the same people who got us into the mess we’re in), one can not expect to see things change. These guys care most about their interests and the interests of those that keep them in power. Having a backyard for our kids to play in is the least of their concern. Sorry for being pessimistic, but the reality is that there hasn’t been any forward thinking in this country for a long time. What makes anyone think things will now be different???? .
Madness knows no national boundaries:
As Swedish central bank fights deflation, housing bubble worries mount
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/swedish-central-bank-fights-deflation-100001034.html
Yep, Central Bank policy failure in action. Their central purpose is inflation management and they can’t do that which is why I think the CB’s are an irrelevance we can do without. They are a hangover and would be better wrapped into Treasury so that fiscal and monetary policy is properly coordinated.
That’s what I was kind of saying in my rant.
WW and 2b2f …….. the narrative needs to be changed away from fiddling at the margins to a real fundamental change in thinking about this thing could the economy. IMO we erroneously believe as a nation we are constrained by the contemporary narrative which is just mindless groupthink. Rather than wasting our thought process on fixing the unfixable, look at the fundamental model to reflect the macroeconomic possibilities and away from this constrained budget model of give and take which is more about wonky microeconomic theory than real world. Technology may alter the landscape but the fundamentals remain and Uber is an example. More will follow unless governments start doing their jobs and move with the times rather than repeating mistakes of the past. Change will come. If gubberments won’t do it then the people will and we can see this happening around us. It would be nice for change to be orderly, but I rather fear it may be violent.
To avoid violent change we need to be demanding more from the politicians. They are predominately followers and not leaders. We need to piss off the queer logic of groups like the OECD and IMF who are merely organs of neoliberalism. Society is in a poor state when articles such as UE sets one sector of society against the other, which is nothing more than instituting principles of class envy. We can be better than this. The constrained thought process where there are winners and losers is small thinking reflective of the narrow views demonstrated by treasury and the RBA. They remain firmly frozen in groupthink without an original idea amongst one of them.
Sorry guys, posted outside of the string….it’s that technology thingy again!
Yes, set up a false fight between generations from which the parasitic finance industry can make a profit.
Eg, include houses in assets test. Logical conclusion, sell the house, buy an annuity .
Net result is what is gained by decrease in pension cost is negated by ownership of house going to the bankers. No nett saving in the long term, and whatever saving there is, is reduced by the bankers’ fees.
Really, the haters are just shills for the banksters.
Well put anon. It’s simply can kicking the problem.
You might be supprised to here the IMF et al are starting to come around, one has to remember its a two tier world in such institutions. You have the researchers and the admin, admin happens to be the ideologically captured bit, that is changing as we speak.
I read that the IMF are having a rethink somewhere recently Skippy. I wait with hopeful anticipation, but their recent rhetoric regarding Greece/Eurozone leaves me sceptical.
The deficit doves are cooing …………….
Malcolm remember how long it was till after the repression until fundamental changes occurred.
And what do Aussies get? People like Matthew Guy.
M good to see your thoughts working.
I’ll give you a tip on Uber. Uber are a disruptive business model. I think they started 5 years ago, with a 200k grant and are now valued at 50 billion.
They obviously give more people access to needed services in an economy, (taxis are just a portion of their network) but as disruptive, those who previously held the keys to the commerce, lobbied the politicians when Uber appeared. The politicians started to make it hard for Uber.
Uber set up a well funded and focused team to dig up dirt on anyone who criticized the company, especially journalists and politicians. Problem solved.
Moral, if you wish to throw stones be careful where you live.
But >>>> those who contract to Uber dont receive much income and Uber runs its accounts from offshore. Vision of the future anyone?
Agree somewhat WW, but I see the Uber thingy as evidence that governments are losing touch. It was hardly a surprise that this would happen in Oz and yet they are aghast that taxi drivers are taking the law into their own hands to protect their plate investments. I see more Uber drivers have been fined than illegal foreign investors in the last month so that kind of underpins where I’m coming from.
“He justifies his unwillingness to negotiate as logical, not uncooperative. “If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation,” he says. “And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.” “I think of them as robber barons,” says Barry Korengold, president of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association. “They started off by operating illegally, without following any of the regulations and unfairly competing. And that’s how they became big—they had enough money to ignore all the rules.” (Kalanick has been quick to point out via Twitter that Uber drivers in New York City who work at least 40 hours a week can make more than $90,000 in a year; by way of comparison, the median cabdriver’s salary is $38,000.)
You can still rev him up immediately just by asking about Uber’s “surge pricing” model, which refers to the practice of charging customers higher prices at peak times. It got a lot of attention during a snowstorm in New York in December of 2013, when rates were massively increased, up to eight times, attracting a flood of negative press and customer feedback. Kalanick declines to back down amid the criticism. “You want supply to always be full, and you use price to basically either bring more supply on or get more supply off, or get more demand in the system or get some demand out,” he lectures like a professor. “It’s classic Econ 101.”
Despite his generally unyielding attitude, Kalanick will admit that impressions do matter. “What we maybe should’ve realized sooner was that we are running a political campaign and the candidate is Uber,” he says. However, even as he explains this, he can’t help but slide away from his measured, politic tone and back toward absolutism: “And this political race is happening in every major city in the world. And because this isn’t about a democracy, this is about a product, you can’t win 51 to 49. You have to win 98 to 2.”
It was this line of thinking, combined with the flak the company was attracting, that led Kalanick to David Plouffe, the high-profile mastermind behind the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. In August, Kalanick hired Plouffe to lead Uber’s efforts in public policy and communications. Plouffe sees Uber’s scrutiny as a by-product of its inevitable march toward dominance. “I don’t subscribe to the idea that the company has an image problem,” says Plouffe. “I actually think when you are a disrupter you are going to have a lot of people throwing arrows.”
The most recent target that Kalanick has had in his crosshairs is rival ride-sharing app Lyft, which attaches giant pink mustaches to the grilles of its cars. Kalanick readily admits to trying to tamper with a recent fund-raising round that Lyft was doing.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy
Skippy… So let me get this straight… if I’m starting a chemical company and I undercut the competition by illegally dumping waste into the river and as such gain more market share, which I then use to leverage both the political and the social spheres, but justify it by lower consumer price and the serly bird gets the worm drivers make wee bit of cash…. I’m a f$cken genius entrepreneur… pats self on the back…
PS. Check to see if drivers have 3 jobs and trying to pay off the car they financed by Uber or other vendor… years latter… sigh….
Good article Leith,
“Finally, artificial constraints on fringe land supply must be abolished,”
Yes I agree, here in Sydney we could easily supply another 1 million freestanding dwellings (with backyards for the dogs to crap, and the kids to play on) in the Ku Ring Gai chase national park on the trendy North side of Sydney with a motor way across the Hawkesbury river to the Central Coast along west head (proposed in the 1940s! and now a desperately needed secondary route joining these 2 main population centres).
How many people commute every day now from the CC, at least 100k isn’t it ?
What’s not to like?
Decentralise Australia.
We need underground cities in the desert.
H&H: I think you need to look more closely at projected demographics for Australia from the ABS (with all the usual caveats re statistics and forecasts of course.)
Virtually all of the population growth is in the over 60’s.
This demographic will move to apartments as it grows, freeing up single dwellings for families.
I agree with you that the lump sum stamp duty is a huge impediment to the mobility of people, and other factors are that family homes are capital gains tax free, rental income from renting your old family home is taxable but the rent you pay on the apartment you move into is not deductible against the rental income from the old family home.
One of the greatest challenges that governments face apart from the helath demands is freeing up mobility of the older generation to make the move into apartments.
In my view any oversupply in units will be quite transitory as the post war baby boomer bulge makes the move to apartments over the next 20 years.
Some of those moves may be after the death of one partner and in that case easy to manage and cheaper dog boxes near facilities may well be quite attractive.
Can I suggest that you look at the demographic projections asn look at apartment construction in the context of the aging population?
I doubt the elderly will moving to the new apartments being builds. The strata levy is insanely expensive, and the rooms/corridors if often too narrow for a motorized wheelchair. The ‘retirement apartments’ built specially for the elderly is still a niche market.
In Sydney suburbs units are typically priced at about 80% of the price of houses in the surrounding area. If you own your own house at retirement, you can afford to buy a unit within 5km and supplement your retirement lifestyle in most suburbs.
Only a very small percentage end up in a motorised wheelchair. Stairs are a much bigger issue in most people’s minds and that and size of houses and work to maintain yards are both big motivators for downsizing.
The older boomers are on the verge of reaching seventy- if your scenario was going to happen it would have started already. I suppose it could have already started but I dont see any sign of it yet.
At the outside if it hasn’t happened within the next decade the notion of people living in apartments as a way station between family home and nursing home isn’t going to eventuate.
Being a younger boomer in Sydney I can tell you that the rate of move among about 100 friends and aquaintances is about 50% by age 70. I would suggest that the trend has been in evidence in Sydney for 40 years or more, from a very low base and now far more prevalent. Much less prevalent (to almost non-existent) in regional areas.
Coming soon to Australian apartments – http://www.fastcoexist.com/3027322/think-your-apartment-is-small-check-out-these-super-tiny-hong-kong-houses
A bleak future for billions, it’s so F$%king scary
UberPlumbing,,,are you ready for that.
Matthew Guy approved the building of 50,000 residents like that. Oh, and the developers donated to the Liberal Party.
“Stamp duties must be replaced by a broad-based land tax”: Agree, so long as most of this tax received will not be taken up in “compensatory-charges” to the existing aged-pension looters. The significant problem we face is Government “compensatory charges” to aged-pensioners whose very comfortable lives are dependent on a decreasing amount of full-time tax payers extending their comfort.
60% of aged pensioners are living below the poverty line.