Game Day 2022 Federal Election!

[NBates]

Man, the LNPs housing policy seems insane to me. Allowing people to draw 50k from their super for a house deposit? Imagine how much that will inflate the already overinflated housing prices. Are they just trying to see how big they can make the bubble before it pops?

Imagine those using super for a house that will lose value over time (most likely), working all your life to pay it off and having no super or a valued asset to sustain you in your retirement years.....

 

[NBates]

1. Build more public housing.
2. Release more land for housing and build infrastructure to it.
3. Stop giving investors unlimited tax breaks.

The problem is a lack of political will, courage and integrity. ......

Politicians created this mess for their own selfish ends, i.e. bribing voters out of the public purse. Only politicians can fix it.

1. Yes.
2. Not sure about this. Goes against what we need to do to combat climate change. Ensuring old industrial areas are suitable to convert should be done first.
3. YES YES YES YES YES - it's a disgrace. The rich get richer.....and add to this overseas investor issues

Pollies only interested in what will get them elected in the short term. Don't have the guts nor inclination to look to the future - "that's your problem son".....

 

[Freshwater]

Contrary to the popular narrative I think an awful lot of people did in fact vote against their own interests at the last election in 2019, knowing that negative gearing and capital gains tax relief was just exacerbating the gap between the affluent and the battlers. In the long term that will hurt us all. So there is support out there for reform, just that nobody is now game enough to tackle it.

It's my understanding that Shorten lost for other reasons, not because of his CGT and NG policies.

Sooner or later something will have to be done about it. The 7:30 Report had a feature on the housing crisis tonight. It covered a lot of territory but after interviewing some experts the summary came down to this ... it's hard but it's fixable. We need to do three things:

1. Build more public housing.
2. Release more land for housing and build infrastructure to it.
3. Stop giving investors unlimited tax breaks.

The problem is a lack of political will, courage and integrity. Both parties keep coming up with gimmicks that sound nice but have the opposite effect to what is required. They keep pushing the prices up even faster.

Tax reform doesn't have to be abrupt or need to pull the rug out from those who have made investment decisions based on existing tax laws. They can be flagged with a sunset clause and the changes introduced gradually over say 5-7 years. It still gives investors time to make a profit on their investment or get out of the market without losing money if the long term prospects no longer appeal to them. Housing prices won't have to take a sudden drop. They need to flatten out over that period while wage growth and CPI increases catch up a little.

The important thing is to start now. Just think how much better off we'd be now if they'd started it seven years ago instead of all those other dodgy schemes and first homeowner grants that they came up with.

Politicians created this mess for their own selfish ends, i.e. bribing voters out of the public purse. Only politicians can fix it.

Number 2. Release more land is the most important way to housing affordability. Artificially inflated land prices are what makes housing unaffordable. We generally can’t get the materials or labour any cheaper, houses are cheaper to build now that they were 50 years ago. I don’t care if you’re generally left or right, but this is the way. Both big parties won’t do it because it will devalue everyone’s home, and they reckon that’s electorally dangerous. Piss weak! But it’s a price I’d pay for my kids and grandkids to be able to afford a house. We are a massive country with so much land.

 

[footscray1973]

Number 2. Release more land is the most important way to housing affordability. Artificially inflated land prices are what makes housing unaffordable. We generally can’t get the materials or labour any cheaper, houses are cheaper to build now that they were 50 years ago. I don’t care if you’re generally left or right, but this is the way. Both big parties won’t do it because it will devalue everyone’s home, and they reckon that’s electorally dangerous. Piss weak! But it’s a price I’d pay for my kids and grandkids to be able to afford a house. We are a massive country with so much land.

What is the percentage of viable land for development vs agriculture? Are you advocating using more agricultural land for housing? In Ballarat, the new estates in Lucas (west of Ballarat CBD) and Delacombe and surrounds (south west of Ballarat CBD) are consuming what was previously farming land.

Do we surrender food bowl areas around the country to build more housing, and then import more food?

We are a massive country - and only a small percentage of the land is viable for agriculture, so if we look elsewhere, where do we build housing - tropical rainforests, deserts, national parks, or somewhere else hundreds of kms remote from major cities or major regional towns?

 

[dogwatch]

1. Yes.
2. Not sure about this. Goes against what we need to do to combat climate change. Ensuring old industrial areas are suitable to convert should be done first.
3. YES YES YES YES YES - it's a disgrace. The rich get richer.....and add to this overseas investor issues

Pollies only interested in what will get them elected in the short term. Don't have the guts nor inclination to look to the future - "that's your problem son".....

Good comment on point 2. Part of the challenge will be to do it without greatly increasing urban sprawl. We could start by not basing our broader economic policy on large population growth through immigration. Both parties are guilty of that. It’s not sustainable in the long term.

We should do all we can to keep our population under 30 million.

 

[ScragCity]

Imagine those using super for a house that will lose value over time (most likely), working all your life to pay it off and having no super or a valued asset to sustain you in your retirement years.....

I don't think property will lose value over the long run though. Even if the current property market is in a bubble, it's a safe bet that property will be worth more in 10, 20, 30 years etc.
I think that having a combination of property and shares (super) is a good hedge for your retirement.

I just don't like the policy of allowing people to use super as a house deposit because it's going to cause property values to shoot up even higher in the short term and that isn't sustainable. It's not a solution to housing affordability; it will make it worse. First home buyers already have some good programs available to them. The FHSS scheme is a good way for first home buyers to save a deposit.

 

[Norm De Guerre]

Theres a good reason that state governments tightly control the release of developable land around the states. Its not so that it restricts and thus artificially pushes up house prices. Its because developers will push way out in front of existing and planned infrastructure to service it if given the chance. Visit any outer suburban housing development ( I do) plonked on what was once nearly worthless horse paddocks far from anything and you will understand this. A developers idea of infrastructure typically starts and end on the edges of the estate. Their idea of infrastructure doesn't include roads directly outside of or connecting to their development or thoughts of how to get residents to or how far it is to get to connectors or their places of work. What it may include are a bare minimum and token nod to parkland and maybe, just maybe if they're real lucky a big box shopping centre with Coles or Woolworths as an anchor tenant.

Basic services that most have come to expect like schools, medical treatment, sporting facilities, connectors to public transport, let alone rail or bus stations. Nope. They see that as an unnecessary expense and somebody else's problem as they commute from the inner suburbs and move onto the next cow paddock. Leaving the people stranded in a wastelands of negative geared investment rentals to moan about the lack of basic government services and amenity being provided to them. The only winners out of the rapacious gobbling up of land on suburban fringes are the former land owners, The corporate developers and the tradespeople who get to name their own prices.

The losers are the people forced to move to these places after being sold a glossy 2 minute CGI lie.

Relentless urban sprawl is not the answer to the housing issues that face this country. However, like the people who inhabit these developments they are the central plank of our economy as it stands.

 

[Libbaaaa]

Theres a good reason that state governments tightly control the release of developable land around the states. Its not so that it restricts and thus artificially pushes up house prices. Its because developers will push way out in front of existing and planned infrastructure to service it if given the chance. Visit any outer suburban housing development ( I do) plonked on what was once nearly worthless horse paddocks far from anything and you will understand this. A developers idea of infrastructure typically starts and end on the edges of the estate. Their idea of infrastructure doesn't include roads directly outside of or connecting to their development or thoughts of how to get residents to or how far it is to get to connectors or their places of work. What it may include are a bare minimum and token nod to parkland and maybe, just maybe if they're real lucky a big box shopping centre with Coles or Woolworths as an anchor tenant.

Basic services that most have come to expect like schools, medical treatment, sporting facilities, connectors to public transport, let alone rail or bus stations. Nope. They see that as an unnecessary expense and somebody else's problem as they commute from the inner suburbs and move onto the next cow paddock. Leaving the people stranded in a wastelands of negative geared investment rentals to moan about the lack of basic government services and amenity being provided to them. The only winners out of the rapacious gobbling up of land on suburban fringes are the former land owners, The corporate developers and the tradespeople who get to name their own prices.

The losers are the people forced to move to these places after being sold a glossy 2 minute CGI lie.

Relentless urban sprawl is not the answer to the housing issues that face this country. However, like the people who inhabit these developments they are the central plank of our economy as it stands.

Tarneit and Wyndham Vale are a perfect example of this. Also going a little further back Point Cook, they have only now start to retrospectively try fix roads etc...

 

[ScragCity]

Relentless urban sprawl is not the answer to the housing issues that face this country.

Do you have any ideas about what might actually be a viable solution? Should we be going vertical? More apartment buildings?

Or do we find the solution on the demand side of things?

 

[Freshwater]

What is the percentage of viable land for development vs agriculture? Are you advocating using more agricultural land for housing? In Ballarat, the new estates in Lucas (west of Ballarat CBD) and Delacombe and surrounds (south west of Ballarat CBD) are consuming what was previously farming land.

Do we surrender food bowl areas around the country to build more housing, and then import more food?

We are a massive country - and only a small percentage of the land is viable for agriculture, so if we look elsewhere, where do we build housing - tropical rainforests, deserts, national parks, or somewhere else hundreds of kms remote from major cities or major regional towns?

Even if everyone got a quarter acre, and really everyone deserves at least this much, it wouldn’t make a blip on the massive land mass we live on. We are a massive country.

 

[LittleG]

Only solution for housing is to follow the model the rest of the world uses. That is to build vertically in regional centres around the major cities. Then link these centres by fast rail. Make the apartments in the buildings affordable, with direct access to services (also built vertically).

We have for too long wanted to have big houses on ever shrinking blocks. Why not stack the houses, which will reduce costs and land usage.

 

[Norm De Guerre]

Do you have any ideas about what might actually be a viable solution? Should we be going vertical? More apartment buildings?

Or do we find the solution on the demand side of things?

I don't think there is any single or easy solution to a problem that has been generations in the making.

As I see it. Some of the solution comes from government's of all levels actually investing in public housing for low and middle income people. The winding back the tax incentives as applied to negative gearing. Densification with height limits of the inner ring suburbs. Especially along existing tram and train networks of these areas. Curbing immigration where its mostly for economic growths sake. As well as decentralisation of employment nodes to regional areas.

Actually implementing some of these steps especially around densification as being bit problematic given the costs involved in acquiring suitable land and the inherent self interest and NYMBYism that abounds in our society. As for immigration, I dont think thats its fully understood how dependent leveraging it into economic growth we have become. The building and services industries and the countless people they employ are absolutely dependant on it. We'd also need a massive change in our collective mindset, one that isnt so intrinsically tied to a handful of major cities and the coastal infrastructure that has been established around them. If there is to be any worthwhile change.

Given how captured the political parties of this country are to the vested interests of developers. What we will in all likelihood see is more of the same. Endless suburban sprawl in Melbourne and Sydney as they devolve into mega cities with increasingly large outer suburban wastelands of neglect and disadvantage. All the while everybody will hoping that it doesn't all go pop!

Unscrambling the egg of this issue is going to take a great deal of political and cultural vision. Something that has mostly with a couple of exceptions been in short supply in this country. This is exemplified by the most stupefying dull, unimaginative and vision free election campaign in living memory. One that has showered most of its attention on the same increasingly small proportion of the population to the exclusion of almost everybody else as it always does.

 

[footscray1973]

Even if everyone got a quarter acre, and really everyone deserves at least this much, it wouldn’t make a blip on the massive land mass we live on. We are a massive country.

Doesn't answer my question though. Where are you giving everyone a quarter acre? Let's stick to Vic for argument's sake - are you giving everyone in Victoria a quarter acre in food bowls on the fringes of greater Melbourne which still produce agriculture, or further out somewhere like Bungaree which is the potato capital of Victoria? Are you making greater Melbourne even bigger, meaning more services (or less if in newer estates) - how will you fund public transport, hospitals, ambulances, police stations, schools for these greater urban sprawls? Or if you go regional, same issue, as most regional towns are chronically under-serviced already, by all three levels of govt.

We are a massive land mass - but where will you put everyone? Are you destroying food bowls, or natural heritage areas, putting more strain on regional towns, or locating these mythical quarter acres somewhere else - Hattah Kulkyne Desert perhaps, Gippsland old growth forests, Great Ocean Road?

Most of the country is not a feasible option for mass urban development, regardless of its size.

 

[footscray1973]

Only solution for housing is to follow the model the rest of the world uses. That is to build vertically in regional centres around the major cities. Then link these centres by fast rail. Make the apartments in the buildings affordable, with direct access to services (also built vertically).

We have for too long wanted to have big houses on ever shrinking blocks. Why not stack the houses, which will reduce costs and land usage.

You are assuming any of the three levels of govt we have would be capable of providing services like fast rail. I don't disagree with vertical growth, but our govts have shown less and less capability to provide services to growth areas. Sometimes they do it after the fact, sometimes never at all.

I would love nothing more than a govt of any stripe to commit to a massive infrastructure spend on fast rail, as the long term benefits would outweigh the initial costs, even though most people would only see the outlay as astronomical and irresponsible, and fail to consider the long term. I have no faith in any govt in my lifetime committing to such a project, and am equally sure that many will pay lip service to it, as they have done for decades when it comes to major public transport enhancements. (I'll believe the underground rail loop when the first train actually runs on it. As a Victorian/Australian voter, I have been burnt for decades believing govts give a stuff about improving public transport, as they are beholden to their fossil fuel/transport company "donors".)

Sorry LittleG, bit of a rant there, aimed singularly at the inaction of our elected representatives at all levels and on all sides.

 

[LittleG]

AEC announced that they may not open all electoral offices on polling day due to staff shortages.

Leichhardt is a marginal seat and a must hold for the LNP. Perhaps penalising people on government payments who choose to work that day, is NOT a good policy?!?!?
Instead encouraging people to work as many hours as they can get is a better option.

 

[Freshwater]

Doesn't answer my question though. Where are you giving everyone a quarter acre? Let's stick to Vic for argument's sake - are you giving everyone in Victoria a quarter acre in food bowls on the fringes of greater Melbourne which still produce agriculture, or further out somewhere like Bungaree which is the potato capital of Victoria? Are you making greater Melbourne even bigger, meaning more services (or less if in newer estates) - how will you fund public transport, hospitals, ambulances, police stations, schools for these greater urban sprawls? Or if you go regional, same issue, as most regional towns are chronically under-serviced already, by all three levels of govt.

We are a massive land mass - but where will you put everyone? Are you destroying food bowls, or natural heritage areas, putting more strain on regional towns, or locating these mythical quarter acres somewhere else - Hattah Kulkyne Desert perhaps, Gippsland old growth forests, Great Ocean Road?

Most of the country is not a feasible option for mass urban development, regardless of its size.

There are definitely fertile crop growing areas. But there is millions upon millions of acres of marginal land. When I drive out the back of Geelong and Werribee(not market garden area) for example some of this land is can’t even take cattle let alone crops.
If population is peoples problem then let’s have that debate, this isn’t this debate, but I’m just saying we can house our kids and grandkids on their own land. We have a two party system generally. Developers donate to both parties and own them to a degree.
We have been pretty poor at rail infrastructure and trams also too for the last 80 years. We set up a rail infrastructure which we essentially still use when our population was a quarter of what it is now, 100 years ago.
This is so possible, but instead our kids have had to live in ‘smart block’ postage stamp size properties in soulless type suburbs. No room for chooks or fruit trees or backyard cricket or bbq’s etc. Some say they want this, but most would love more space. There is only lack of vision stopping us.

 

[D Mitchell]

Only solution for housing is to follow the model the rest of the world uses. That is to build vertically in regional centres around the major cities. Then link these centres by fast rail. Make the apartments in the buildings affordable, with direct access to services (also built vertically).

We have for too long wanted to have big houses on ever shrinking blocks. Why not stack the houses, which will reduce costs and land usage.

Un-Australian, LittleG. The logical extension of your solution is to remove the whole 25 mil of us to live in high rises in Tasmania.

 

[D Mitchell]

..... Ensuring old industrial areas are suitable to convert should be done first.
.....

Take a walk through Collingwood, Richmond, Fitzroy, Brunswick. Those old factories are now blocks of flats. All those terraced houses that used to house working class and immigrant families of 6, 7, 8 now house a couple of dinks at best. It's well under way.

 

[Libbaaaa]

Love any discussion around fast rail come election time. They can't even make Geelong-Melbourne be less than 50 minutes, that should be a max 30 min trip.

 

[Oliver G]

Huh? We beat Adelaide twice in 2010. I went to game over here, was cold and rainy

Anyway politics pisses me off, stuff 'em and I hope Scomo loses his seat!

Yeah sorry that should be Sydney.

 

[Virgin Dog]

Only solution for housing is to follow the model the rest of the world uses. That is to build vertically in regional centres around the major cities. Then link these centres by fast rail. Make the apartments in the buildings affordable, with direct access to services (also built vertically).

We have for too long wanted to have big houses on ever shrinking blocks. Why not stack the houses, which will reduce costs and land usage.

Never understood this fixation on house + land packages that people seem to have. You get all the negatives of apartment living with none of the positives. Buying H+L in these new development areas mean no space, you're right on top of your neighbours, no parking, no access to facilities, and terrible access to public transport, and you pay more than you would for a reasonable apartment.

 

[D Mitchell]

You are a 30 year old. You extract $50,000.00 from your accumulated $70,000 super. You buy a $500,000.00 in Point Cook and get your foot on the property ladder. In the meantime, your interest repayments are at least the equivalent of rent so your outgoings go towards preserving your capital, even if the value of your Point Cook property stagnates, even if it declines, better spending your income on something that will return you something than donating it to a landlord. In 35 years time, that $50,000.00 would have become, say, $200,000 of your then $2 mil Super and you'll now be living in your $1.5 mil Greensborough place. If you are a young person and facing years paying rent, there's a bit to like in the scheme. Paul Keating wasn't just a pretty face, was he.

 

[NBates]

Take a walk through Collingwood, Richmond, Fitzroy, Brunswick. Those old factories are now blocks of flats. All those terraced houses that used to house working class and immigrant families of 6, 7, 8 now house a couple of dinks at best. It's well under way.

Not around Western Oval it's not . Well, it is a little bit. Barkly St is about to undergo a BIG conversion. The old shops along will be 'low rise' apartments.

What I'm talking about really is the huge land amounts around here. The old Uncle Toby's across the road has been sitting idle for years and there are plenty of other sites around in the West.

But I guess we're just a bit behind the Richmond, Northcote/Brunswick areas and it will happen eventually. It's just a shame they seem to take up what could be nice green space around the river and not utilise these industrial sites. And I hate the loss of our 1 level houses and space to double storey units - just diminishes the village feel and green space further.

 

[darklake]

God I hope to hell Albo becomes our next PM. He is a fairly uninspiring politician, but, a decent human being. It's actually been embarrassing and quite depressing having Smirko and his corrupt rabble in charge of this country.

 

[ScragCity]

God I hope to hell Albo becomes our next PM. He is a fairly uninspiring politician, but, a decent human being. It's actually been embarrassing and quite depressing having Smirko and his corrupt rabble in charge of this country.

If Albo wins I'm gonna go streaking around my neighbourhood. I can't wait for JC to be treasurer.