Housing affordability includes a grab-bag of concerns: less money to spend on goods and services other than housing; falling home ownership rates; worsening access to jobs; increasing wealth inequality between and among generations; and increasing risks of a housing-led economic downturn.
Responding to these concerns requires careful analysis of the underlying drivers and of the potential impact of policy changes. (more…)
Governments have raised expectations among voters anxious to see action on housing. There is no shortage of proposed policy solutions. But how do we sort the good from the bad? Many policy ideas sound good, but won’t do much in practice. Some will make housing affordability worse, drag on economic growth, or subtract from budget balances that are already in trouble. There are reforms that would make a big difference, but none is politically easy. If governments want to be seen as serious on housing affordability, they’re going to have to make some tough choices. (more…)
The housing affordability debate is being wrongly understood as just a supply problem. The real cause of house price inflation is excess liquidity and debt, combined with overly generous tax incentives. (more…)
When childcare issues have hit the news lately, it’s either been about the Federal Government’s new $1.6 billion package to help make childcare more affordable, or about massive fraud cases where rogue Family Day Care operators have pocketed millions of tax payer dollars. (more…)
April 2017 is the 46 anniversary of the pingpong diplomacy – an event that changed the future of China. It also changed the direction of Australian politics, leading to the ALP Federal election victory in November 1972. But as I explain in the link to this posting, the change in Canberra could well have not occurred but for a chance telephone call from myself to a small manufacturing firm in Nagoya. (more…)
Australia lacks any enumerated and resourced plan for expanding affordable housing. Recent growth opportunities in this industry have largely been small-scale, fragmented and ad hoc. As a result, providers have been highly constrained in their ability to predict and plan for growth. This has disrupted capacity-building and undermined capacity-retention.
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The National Wind Farm Commissioner, Andrew Dyer, delivered his first annual report on March 31, covering the first 14 months of the agency’s operation since being set up by the Abbott government, with the support of conservative cross-bench senators. The agency has an annual budget of around $650, 000 a year, while Dyer is paid $205,000 for his part-time role.
The Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian and Crikey covered the release with short news stories. The Australian, and I think the other Murdoch dailies, ignored it. (more…)
“Sick doctors will delay seeking help because of fear of stigmatisation and a threat to their professional status and livelihood through premature and unjustified reporting by treating doctors who themselves are made to feel insecure by the legislation. The distress and harm resulting from an inappropriate mandatory notification cannot be underestimated.” (more…)
In the summer of 1936, over just four weeks, it all went wrong – for democracy and for Spain, even for the British royals. Politicians failed, and Hitler was emboldened to plan a new European war, and more.
When some army generals sought to overthrow Spain’s elected government Francisco Franco quickly emerged as their leader; Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supported him with men and matériel; pusillanimous politicians in Britain and the United States, even in France, turned a blind eye – and the Spanish Civil War was on. Edward VIII took a scandalous holiday cruise with Mrs Simpson, Berlin staged the greatest sporting event of modern times, the alternative Peoples’ Olympiad never came to be, and Barcelona was transformed into a unique workers’ paradise. All this in four weeks. It was an incongruous, at times brilliant, juxtaposition of events. (more…)
A groundbreaking collaboration between Walpiri Elders, cultural historians, technologists and a clinical psychologist aims to tackle youth suicide using traditional knowledge and mobile technology. (more…)
Adjusting the intake in response to shifts in employment makes long-term sense.
It is increasingly evident how pernicious the privatisation myth is. Two recent examples have underlined it: the failings in Australia’s privatised energy grid and the usurious pricing in airport car parks. Both examples demonstrated that it is folly to expect a public benefit to inevitably emerge from private profit seeking. (more…)
The decisive defeat of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as ‘Ahok’) in Jakarta’s litmus-test gubernatorial election is a triumph for hardline Islamist mob agitators. It comes after years of pressure from the Muslim right and may flag a shift in Indonesian politics that will not help Indonesia’s fraying reputation for religious pluralism and tolerance. (more…)
The article from David Scott and Peter Seal (‘Medical specialists – maintaining a high standard and duty of care‘) is not an unexpected response from the organisation they represent – the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. However one is minded of those words of Adam Smith who said of ‘craft ‘ groups “ People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” (more…)
In recent times, several articles have appeared in the print and electronic media about the alleged ‘high fees’ and ‘poor accountability’ of medical specialists. A few weeks ago on his ‘Pearls and Irritations’ blog, John Menadue posted one such piece titled ‘Medical specialists – high fees and poor accountability’. The Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA) believes that some of John Menadue’s strongly asserted claims merit a measured response, and wishes to address some misconceptions that have arisen. There are almost 5000 specialist anaesthetists in Australia, and they comprise approximately 4.5% of the nation’s medical workforce. The ASA has been supporting, representing and educating anaesthetists in this country since 1934.
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In this article in the Boston Globe of April 16, JEFFREY D SACHS speaks of the risks that the US and the world are running. He speaks of the US ‘wanton addiction to war’. John Menadue.
“There is one foreign policy goal that matters above all the others and that is to keep the United States out of a new war, whether in Syria, North Korea or elsewhere. In recent days President Trump has struck Syria with Tomahawk missiles, bombed Afghanistan with the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, and has sent an armada towards nuclear-armed North Korea. We could easily find ourselves in a rapidly escalating war, one that could pit the United States directly against nuclear-armed countries of China, North Korea and Russia. …
America has developed a level of wealth, productivity and technological knowhow utterly unimaginable in the past. Yet we put everything at risk through our wanton addiction to war.”
Jeffrey D Sachs is University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
This article by Middle East expert, ROBERT FISK, was first published in The Independent on 12 April 2017.
Fisk comments ‘Gas, cruise missiles, barrel bombs, Hitler and the American media. Mix them all up and I suppose you get Trump’s new policy in the Middle East.’ (more…)
It can be disconcerting to hear our family history told by a sympathetic but unaligned outsider. We may recognise the partisanship that coloured some of our past judgments and be led to reconsider them. (more…)
Australia’s future submarine project has already been a factor in Australia’s political pulse, in both the fever of pre-elections and in the now omnipresent prime-ministerial instability between these all-too-frequent elections. South Australia’s Xenophon factor has become powerful, and appointments like the new Defence Industry Minister from South Australia are probably an attempt to mitigate that factor. (more…)
This is not an easy time to be a believing/practising Catholic. Indeed, many good people have given up on the Church because of the horrendous revelations of widespread sexual abuse of children by priests and religious and by the possibly even more despicable covering-up by those who should have known better and who should have had a primary concern for the victims rather than for “the good name of the Church”. (more…)
In a recent ABC interview with Richard Glover and her co-author Monsignor Tony Doherty about their recently published book Attachments, Ailsa Piper presents us with the challenge to “become aware of the thing that comes at you”. Two chance encounters over this fourth week of Lent have given me pause to reflect that to live a life of unpredictability is to become immersed deeply in the Paschal Mystery, and that the paradoxes inherent in that Mystery can be daily experiences. (more…)
The relationship between the United States and China is now the most decisive bilateral relationship in the world. It works on two levels, one public and one private.
If all [of the above] fail to work perhaps a review of what Pierre Trudeau and his government did in 1984 when they took on a system not dissimilar to ours –uncontrolled fee for service- and legislated that doctors could charge what they liked BUT unless they adhered to the fee negotiated between the Provincial Government and the profession (on an annual basis) the doctor lost all access to a Medicare reimbursement. This system still works today in Canada and few doctors opt out of it. Now there is a thought- and a significant game changer.
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Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times on March 16, 2017, writes about a ‘discussion’ between Jesus and Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Ryan claims that Catholicism has shaped his political views. Is Nicholas Kristof’s account a parable or a parody. John Menadue. (more…)
A National Tragedy
Australia’s National Broadband Network is heavily dependent on a soon-to-be-obsolete technology (FTTN) that most of the world has rejected. The FTTN-based network was sold to the Australian public based on an underestimate of Australia’s broadband needs (Tucker, 2014), and continues to be justified using incorrect estimates of the cost differentials between FTTN and FTTP.
The FTTN network performs poorly compared to FTTP networks used elsewhere in the world. What is worse is that the NBN does not have a clear and affordable upgrade path. FTTN is of limited value to some users, such as high-end users and small businesses, who require affordable access to higher speeds than FTTN can deliver.
In the meantime, the rest of the world is moving to FTTP and gigabit cities are thriving. Leaders in broadband delivery around the world are already planning for upgrades in their FTTP technology to even higher speeds.
This situation is nothing short of a national tragedy and a classic example of failed infrastructure policy that will have long-term ramifications for Australia’s digital economy.
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The 4 April attack on Khan Sheikhun using CW (chemical warfare) weapons was almost certainly the work of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. This is the only explanation which ticks off all the boxes—means, motive and opportunity. The hastily assembled US retaliatory attack on the Syrian air base at Shayrat near Homs, however, might not have been particularly effective in addressing the problem of residual nerve agents in the hands of the Syrian regime. (more…)
For 13 billion years, since the Big Bang until now, death has been part of life. We know that, and as Christians we believe that death is the prelude to new life. We call it the Paschal Mystery. But what do these words, Paschal Mystery, mean, asks Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner? (more…)
North Korea perceives it is isolated in a world that is hostile to its existence. However loathsome the regime may be and however badly it misallocates resources to bolster the ruling elite, the reason for acquiring nuclear weapons is entirely rational: they are a vital means for North Korea to protect itself. (more…)
It is time we, the people, asserted our sovereignty, took control of our foreign policies and reviewed the presence of U.S. bases and troops in Australia. It is time we started promoting genuine peace and security, human rights, a sustainable environment and our independence. (more…)
What Sally McManus’s is saying is correct, I agree with her conclusions about what has happened to workers over the last 30 years and what is becoming intolerable now in 2017. Across Australia in 2017, little or no wage growth, increased working hours, increases in casual jobs, a decrease in full time meaningful work, rising increases in household debt and rising inequalities in income and wealth is the bleak future facing Australian workers and their families. In the public sector, outsourcing and privatisation have meant an erosion of working conditions and rates of pay for workers. What can be done to rectify this alarming trend? (more…)