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The Forum > Article Comments > Is industrial strife a sign of housing stress? > Comments

Is industrial strife a sign of housing stress? : Comments

By Ross Elliott, published 25/10/2011

If Labor could work out how to cut the cost of living it would be better than a wage increase, and it is possible to do.

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We seem to be brought up to believe that we can aspire to the $450,000 home right from the word GO. There were not many people that could afford to buy directly into the house of their choice 50 years ago.

One started by living in a very modest unit and worked up over a number of years. Some lived on a boat or in a caravan. It appears that sacrifice in the early years is not an option now even though our ever increasing population makes it more difficult to live near work and is my argument against this increased expansion that affects life style.

There is also much more demand on infrastructure and facilities which have to be provided by governments and they have to get the money from somewhere....It's all tied up up with "they" meaning the government via the taxpayer will provide. No one wants to be the tax payer.
Posted by snake, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 8:56:14 AM
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There is minimal industrial strife in Australia . The answer to housing stress is not that advocated by the land development industry , namely continual expansion of city boundaries to construct Mc Mansions .

That " answer " will increase the cost of transport for workers who live many kilometres from their work , particularly if they are encouraged to travel by ever larger vehicles and have to pay for parking , and if many media commentators disparage the use of public transport .

People will eventually have to accept that more are going to live in inner city apartments , if necessary high rise ones . The media should stop romanticising the Mc Mansion on the quarter acre block and driving the kids to footy . Let the kids walk , cycle or take public transport to footy .

Governments should allocate funds to public transport and extra public housing , rather than to freeways and paying for developer 's costs . Parents should be prepared to accompany kids to parks within walking distance of their homes , so that they can play and exercise . This will overcome the argument that kids need a backyard in which to play , when many of them rarely go into the backyard , preferring to play computer games .

No matter how horrifying it is for many to contemplate , petrol is soon going to run out and become ever more expensive until it does so . Alternative fuels and electric cars , though they may be of some limited use as a replacement for petrol driven cars , are not going to be a complete replacement .
Posted by jaylex, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 10:04:20 AM
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*People will eventually have to accept that more are going to live in inner city apartments , if necessary high rise ones .*

Ah Jaylex, that has indeed been the trend in large cities, creating
the perfect human zoo, with all its associated crime and delinquency
problems.

Is it the answer to our energy problems? I don't think so for
citizens of the human zoo are more dependant then ever on being
supplied by those trucks rolling in with food, toilet paper and
all the rest.

Before the cheap and abundant oil century, people lived quite
well by the so called village lifestyle. They worked locally,
grew a few vegies and a few fruit trees, ran a few chooks. The
kids cycled or walked to school.

Methinks that a similar lifestyle is far more sustainable and sounds
far more attractive, then you trying to force people to live in
human zoos
Posted by Yabby, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 11:05:03 AM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12790#220803

snake, get in your EVIL mobile pollution machine, go for a drive around some of the inner suburban areas of ANY Australian city, have a look at the suburbs that were subdivided between 1945 & 1975?

You will see "infrastructure" that was built at this time despite our birth rate being several times higher, despite a tsunami of migrants as well, how did any of our governments build all those roads, schools, hospitals, courts, police stations, libraries, bridges, TAFE colleges, universities, Snowy Mountain Schemes, Ord River, etc, etc, etc?

ANSWER, there were LESS Sir Humphrey Applebeys driving desks, pens, paperwork, in triplicate, in all existing departments, let alone the extra ministries we have now.

Once upon a time, in the land of OZ, far away & long ago, the cabinet was "lucky" 13, 12 ministers + the PM?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12790#220808

jaylex, why does it have to be "public housing"? why can't our hero couple aspire to owning their own "strata titled" unit? Why can't we have families, extended families living in their own block of "privately owned" units?

Why can't we DEcentralise, tree change, sea change? the government could do this too, by moving bureacrookracy to the bush? With an NBN nationwide, why can't the south east QLD, Translink call centre be in Hughenden? Why can't the Cannberra Centrlink HQ be moved to Alice Springs, Longreach or Burnie?

i wonder how many "inner city, urban professionals" are in favour of actually living in/on an "organic farm" with wind turbines, in woop woop?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12790#220822

Yabby, as i live & breath, here i am agreeing with you, but you left out 2 vital ingredients in the inner city ZOO, long term unemployment caused by exporting jobs & mental illness manufactured by the PC, Thought Police playing head fu#*, mind games with the general public.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc5E6pvDv2Y&feature=channel_video_title create unemployment & poverty

http://www.mailstar.net/xTrots.html why they did it?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236# PC, mind games

http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/ more PC.
Posted by Formersnag, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 12:16:11 PM
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So true Ross, & so wrong. Even worse, most of this garbage is driven by the thousands of totally unnecessary town planners, & the cost 10s of thousands of their support staff, having to be recouped some how by these dreadful state & local government drones.

Formersnag you're singing my song. If we had a single planner worth their pay we would have moved all government out of city centers long ago.

Yes the property council would hate it, but think of the savings.

No requirement for upgraded road or public transport systems into the centre.

No huge cost to upgrade the inner city infrastructure to handle even greater numbers. It is so much cheaper to install greenfield infrastructure, compared to rebuilding in a developed city, but our planners can't see it.

Dramatically reduced traveling time, cost & fuel consumption.

A life style worth living, rather than be a rat in a trap.

One has to wonder if any public servant can ever get anything right.

Hang on, do any of them even want to get anything right, that might be dangerous to one's career, mightn't it?
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 1:09:07 PM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12790#220844

Hasbeen, i have been asking myself that question for 3 decades now, how can they get it so wrong? surely it is not possible for any human to be stupid enough to make these obvious mistakes? many of them are allegedly high IQ, university educated, "inner city, urban professionals", how?

BTW, i also think the author was correct in mentioning the "carbon tax", these union leaders know how much this abomination is really going to cost their workers & are quite rightly trying to "compensate" them for the TRUE cost.
Posted by Formersnag, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 1:52:47 PM
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And what will the Carbon Tax cost you.
Posted by 579, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 2:25:10 PM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12790#220852

579, thank you for making my point so perfectly, we dont know how much it will cost yet, because it goes up each year, more importantly 3 years out, 1 year after the next election is due it changes from tax to ETS, "no cost limit". $56 billion to wall street for carbon dioxide derivatives trading.

What was it they said about Howard being tricky, mean & deceitful for taking a GST to an election?

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2001/s383819.htm a label used by labour, labouriously on Howard.

not all of the sheeple have a short memory.
Posted by Formersnag, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 4:46:30 PM
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The author's penultimate paragraph sums up what needs to be done.

If only the unions and the party faithful would wake up to the fact that their Labor Parties have abandoned the old Labor values and replaced them with the destructive progressive ideology of Lefties who reside in inner-capital-city suburbs
Posted by Raycom, Wednesday, 26 October 2011 11:06:12 AM
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Methinks Formersnag & Hasbeen have both whacked the proverbial nail on the noggin. We could try sending 4000 Town Planners to Burma in exchange for 8000 refugees, but the High Court would probably find that an impermissible impost on Malaysia.

It passes understanding why Australia seems fixated on growing megacities ... there’s so much work that could be moved to small towns. I’m not fond of the NBN as designed, but better access to the internet in regional areas will certainly facilitate moving much business outside the Big Smoke. Land is NOT scarce on this continent, and the infrastructure required to live less densely is cheap as chips when compared to the cost of building a six-lane freeway, or expanding an existing one.

Freestanding houses on a quarter-acre block are ALWAYS preferred to a couple rooms in a tenement. Knock off the stamp duty, red tape, and inflated land prices owing to scarcity, and a nice house-and-land package for a family of four could come in at 50% of what it costs to buy a run-down terrace house in a dismal Sydney suburb. Given that Australia is 200,000 houses short of demand, is it really necessary to charge 10% GST on NEW housing?

And wouldn’t it be nice to have neighbourhoods again? Local schools, with only a couple hundred students in ‘em? Our population would be shrinking but for immigration; we needn’t worry about paving over the bush — there’s more than enough room for sustainable development and a comfortable lifestyle. Problem is ... the votes are in the capital cities. They’ll pay $10,000,000 for a new park, but not $100 for a hospital in the country. The US is luckier; most people live in small towns, so resources are more evenly distributed.

All that being said, I doubt industrial strife is the result of housing stress per se. Customs agents, smelter employees and aircraft engineers aren’t struggling to pay the mortgage. Unions see a good opportunity to make hay while the sun of a compliant government shines: Labor needs their donations and organisation.
Posted by donkeygod, Wednesday, 26 October 2011 6:14:41 PM
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Negative gearing privileges for owner/occupants would make it easier to escape the rent trap and own a home. A re-constituting of the Reserve Bank to the likeness of the original Commonwealth Bank to provide low/no interest loans for what used to be called essential services, water, electricity, communication etc, to be repaid via rates over the life of the service instead of up front, would make a massive reduction in cost of living pressures. Commercial interest rates on lifes essentials is very wicked
Posted by LookUpAgain, Wednesday, 26 October 2011 6:56:21 PM
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The average price of homes in Australia today is $435,000 (seven times the annual workers wage of $65,000) and yet in 1977 the average price was $31,000 (twice the average annual workers wage of $15,000). They were relatively cheaper in the 1950-1970 era. It is hoped that the next government will get intelligent and reverse that trend and bring decency back to the working community.
The top tax now is 45%, in 1977 it was approximately 65% and in 1950-1970 it was 66.6%. A low top tax is actually detrimental to the economy, when the tax is low, CEO’s and others increase their salaries, causing higher prices and with the Governments increasing the salaries of their heads of the various departments, the cost of services increase along with the costs of food, clothing, housing and transport. The consecutive Governments have encouraged the export of our resources to the extent that the reciprocal imports are destroying our own manufacturing industries.

The strikes of airline staff, SES, and railway staff and others is totally caused by the low top tax which has allowed CEO's etc to take unjustified excessive salaries, and caused costs for families far in access of decency. There will be no exit from this stupidity until we get parties who demand that all members sign that they will honour and obey the party's constitution, and that would have to before the party changed their constitution from its decency, and we get intelligent people with integrity into our government - for a change.
Posted by merv09, Thursday, 27 October 2011 8:57:48 AM
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Interesting stats, merv09. Is the average house price actually nearly half a million dollars now? It's certainly cheaper where I live, but then most of my neighbours don't earn $65K/yr either. Either way, house prices at seven times annual salary ... that's quite a lot. Add on interest payments over 25-30 years, and you probably need 15 years worth of earnings to pay off your mortgage. That's over the top, yes.

I still don't think that's the root cause of industrial action, though. Anyone will take a pay raise if they can get it. Increases a few percent above inflation won't make any difference. And, in any case, the people who are striking are making 2 and 3 times your average wage. If housing stress were driving rebellion, you'd think people making LESS would be on the picket lines, not those on top. Unions don't need economic justification to throw their weight around, and the people on strike these days don't live within cooee of Struggle Street.

Don't see the connection with CEO salaries either. People feel hard done-by when they're paid less than peers in similar work — we sneer at the top end of town, but compare ourselves to perceived equals. It's a distraction: raise the top income tax bracket to 80%, you still don't collect anywhere near enough to make a difference to the national budget, and us peons aren't any better off. Leave the top tax bracket at 45%, but cut the number of civil servants by 10% -- now THAT would save real money. Canberra could save another 10% just by eliminating frivolities like advertising, expert panels, and comcars. They'll do just that ... when forced to. Oh, look! Here comes GFC MkII.
Posted by donkeygod, Thursday, 27 October 2011 11:58:21 AM
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Traditional multiple of average earning to average house price has been in the 3x category.
Currently it is many times that (Perth median house price = $524,055, national average around $450,000; Aust average income = approx $57,500 - I know, sorry I could only find median for houses and average for wages) at about 7-8x. That makes Australian housing SEVERELY unaffordable.
And we are not talking about McMansions here - we are talking about the AVERAGE house.
Demographia's recent studies make it pretty clear that Australia's tight restrictions on land are mostly to blame for this. About 90% of the increased cost of housing is the increased costs of the land - not the building.
It would be easy to reduce wage pressure by removing the restrictions on land for development but the current governments are locking into a mindset that considers 'sprawl' to be equivalent to killing babies. The savings that are believed to arise from greater density are questionable and are outweighed by the costs - most of which are being paid off by households over 25 years with interest on top!
Posted by J S Mill, Thursday, 27 October 2011 5:26:59 PM
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