Long time readers know of my immensely low pinion of John Alexander as tennis commentator. He was simply terrible, in as much as he offered no technical insight and often ascribe bad motives to the characters of the players, much like an armchair psychology buff. A typical line of John Alexander commentary would be that a player X missed a shot because he has a bad character. It drove me away from watching tennis on channel 7.
Anyway, it has been the big surprise of his time in politics that he backs building a high speed rail network in this country, and all for the right reasons. He is still continuing his push, and even getting called a crusader for it.
Crusading Turnbull government MP John Alexander, who has supported a debate about negative gearing, said vision and innovation needed to replace the "debilitating political argument" about housing.
A bipartisan committee chaired by Mr Alexander backed his vision for high-speed rail, recommending the government seek proposals for a link between the two major cities, and evaluate ways to raise private capital through value capture.
Under that model, previously trumpeted by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, major infrastructure is privately funded by the increase in land values that accompanies the creation of new or larger cities made possible by that infrastructure.
(edit)
"It would appear there's a perfect storm of opportunity to liberate [regional] cities through high-speed rail," Mr Alexander previously told Fairfax Media. "You will push up prices enormously around Goulburn; people will be delighted."
But he warned on Tuesday the report's ambitious goals were only achievable if all three levels of government co-operated and were "willing to forgo individual revenues to ultimately maximise total revenues".
Mr Turnbull and the new assistant minister to the treasurer, Michael Sukkar, have promised the government will say more about housing affordability this year, as Labor continues to push for negative gearing reform.It's kind of crazy that the only person in government making any bloody sense is John Alexander.
About That Housing Situation...
Turns out the record private sector debt is now sitting at about a trillion dollars, and the cracks are beginning to show. Don't be fooled by the price rises in Sydney and Melbourne, there's substantial pressure on the housing bubble right now.
Homeowners, consumers and property investors around Australia are making more calls to financial helplines as three warning signs back up the spike in demand: mortgage arrears are creeping up, lenders' bad debt provisions have increased and personal insolvencies are near an all-time high.
"It's steadily out of control -- I don't know of too many financial counselling services where demand doesn't exceed supply," said Fiona Guthrie, chief executive officer of Financial Counselling Australia, who says the biggest increase in calls is from people suffering mortgage stress. "There are more people who have got mortgages that they can't afford to pay."
(edit)
"There's so much household debt that a couple of rate hikes here would completely knock the wind out of the housing market, and a lot of people would be impacted by it," said Gareth Aird, economist at Commonwealth Bank.That's partly why he doesn't think the RBA will lift rates until 2018 at the earliest.
While most borrowers in Sydney have plenty of equity in their homes as prices keep rising, that's not the case elsewhere. In the mining state of Western Australia, which is struggling to cope with the end of an investment boom, more than 10 per cent of mortgage holders have little or no equity buffer, according to a Roy Morgan report last week. In South Australia and Queensland, 8 per cent and 7.2 per cent of borrowers respectively are in negative equity.
That may not matter if you're a homeowner with a secure job and comfortably servicing your mortgage. But Australia's labour market is far from solid, with the RBA citing it as one of the economy's biggest uncertainties. The jobless rate rose for the second straight month in December to 5.8 per cent, while underemployment -- the number of workers wanting more hours -- is near an all-time high. At the same time, wages growth is the lowest on record.
It's notably unaffordable, everybody's been so eager to get into it, there are signs of housing being over-bought everywhere. It's okay in the main but the fracture lines are running elsewhere. Hmmm...
The truth is that the RBA sort of glommed into this problem by keeping rates low for such a long time, and because nobody's ever had the negative signal for the market, there's a profound belief that it only goes in one direction, up. All the while they invited the other parts of the economy needed the low interest rates, but also, by under-measuring inflation they've given themselves even more reasons to keep the rates low. If the average household debt is 187% of income, you know it's not sustainable - but all the while they've not really addressed the irrational exuberance.
Politics being what is, its practitioners like to emphasise different parts of problems instead of talking about the private sector debt for what it is, and despite the more-than-abundant evidence that there's a property bubble in progress, the politicians have sought to characterise all this as a 'housing affordability' problem. Implicit in this shifting of focus is the idea that the problem isn't with the property bubble, it's with the people who can't afford to get in on the same RBA-funded gravy train investment. Even more pernicious in that shifty little manoeuvre is the idea that they want to keep the asset price gains, and to that end - all the politicians are property owners and investors, as well as the big wigs at the RBA - these people will do and say anything to talk down the bubble. A simple cui bono examination explains how the interest rates stay low in a bid to keep the asset prices inflated.
As somebody who dabbles in the equities market, I find the utter lack of caution for the bubble to be quite absurd. Markets by their very nature are meant to go upend down. The fact that the housing market in Australia hasn't fallen to historic norms in a very long time, can only mean there's long way to fall when the perfect storm will hit.
Housing never falls, right? We all love housing. In case you're wondering how this all shows up in our political rhetoric, have a look at this next one:
"I've Got Mine, You Can't Have Yours" Says Malcolm Turnbull
This is pretty ugly.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has unleashed a blistering attack on Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, slamming him as a "simpering sycophant" and a "parasite" who yearns for his own harbourside mansion.
The energetic end to Question Time came after Mr Shorten launched his own barbs at the Prime Minister, accusing him of attacking families, attacking standards of living, of being tough on pensioners and soft on banks.
"The Prime Minister is seriously the most out-of-touch personality to ever hold this great office of Prime Minister," Mr Shorten said.
Mr Turnbull's response, which led to the rare display of Coalition members thumping their desks, was brutal and an effort to counter attacks on his personal wealth just days after he revealed his $1.7 million donation to the Liberal Party.
Mr Turnbull said Mr Shorten was a "would-be tribune of the people" and accused him of rising to prominence by networking with prominent Melbourne businessmen like Richard Pratt.
"There was never a union leader in Melbourne that tucked his knees under more billionaire's tables than the Leader of the Opposition," he said.
"He lapped it up, yes, he lapped it up."
The Prime Minister accused Mr Shorten of "knocking back Dick Pratt's Cristal" and looking forward to living at the personal expense of taxpayers.
"This sycophant, blowing hard in the House of Representatives, sucking hard in the living rooms of Melbourne, what a hypocrite," Mr Turnbull said.
"They call themselves the Labor Party; well Mr Speaker, manual labour is a Mexican band as far as they are concerned. Most of them have never done a day's work in their lives."
If you are an egalitarian liberal as Malcolm Turnbull claims he is, how can he begrudge his fellow citizen for wanting a Harbourside Mansion when he has one himself? I mean, what's wrong with that aspiration if it's good enough for himself?
How can Bill Shorten be a parasite just because he has had career benefactors, when Malcolm Turnbull himself had a career benefactor in Kerry Packer? People need a break here and there. What is so morally objectionable about that reality?
It's really weird how the conservatives have a thing about harbourside mansions. Barnaby Joyce recently said people should move out of Sydney because not everybody can afford a harbour views. If you notice, its only the coalition talking about harbourside mansions. It's not as if the ALP's in Parliament screaming everybody needs a harbourside mansion.
You'd think these people never watched 'The Castle'.
No comments:
Post a Comment