Ironically, young Australians are most in favour of the economic growth via immigration and low birth rates model....the wealthy don't even have to try anymore, lol

When I was young I had to make a lot of sacrifices before I could get on the first rung of the property ladder. However, we didn't have the distraction of all the electronic gadgets that people demand and pay for now, the overseas holidays, clothes, entertainment, new cars etc.

We shared accomodation, rode to work on bicycles, no overseas holidays and we made everyday savings and walked everywhere. No telephone bills, no first home buyers supplement, first baby bonus, no car payments, no expensive entertainment.

Sure times were different with different priorities, but a shared house with 4 others helped me save. A training in the war years taught me how to be very careful with money and I still buy all my clothes second hand. I was paid 25 shillings a week during my two years national Service for the first 12 months. That alone teaches you the value of money. I never bought anything unless I saved the cash to buy it. (apart from a mortgage) Unfortunately, present society is not taught the magic of time and compound interest. It is very much a NOW society and instant gratification.

When we did get our first home it was a two bedroom weatherboard place with an outside toilet, but it was a start with no furniture and we sat on the floor on cushions before buying some second hand stuff. It wasn't easy. It never is.

One factor is we have NO homeless refugees but thousands of homeless Australians.

The Government via the charities house them they drive the prices up the number of available houses down.

The only winners are the landlords, refugees and the charities.

If it is good enough for the UN to give them a tent then so should we or at least make them work for what they get.

...The simple solution to the housing crisis and subsequent homelessness, a crisis of over costing on both ownership and rental fronts caused exclusively by speculation, is Government sponsored reduced-price rental occupancy. This effectively divorces families from the otherwise unbearable burden of market manipulation. Forcing wage and fixed income earners to compete with speculators in a drifting market, is inconceivably mad.

...A system of rental subsidies based on need; currently and successfully in operation for low income recipients on pensions in this country, needs urgent expansion, and would (IMO), be more egalitarian in nature than current wasteful maternity leave schemes built on political expediency.

Incentivising property investors aggravates the housing situation for the poor as it depends on and promotes our current competitive economic model in which there are always winners and losers. It depends on perpetual economic growth of a system which we know to be unsustainable. While it may provide funding for more affordable housing in the short term, “investors” want profit, and at some stage will also want their capital back with interest.

In any proposal for more affordable housing we should ensure that the urban poor are embedded and their short and long term situation is enhanced rather than undermined by the proposal.

The current response to the urban poor is to “welfarise” them, providing “charity” out of the “noblesse oblige” perspective which makes the propertied feel justified but the poor feel like crap.

A more appropriate response would be recognition of urban landrights for the unemployed (and responsibilities related to that land right). This could create sustainable work in housing, food gardening and community development initiatives.

To develop this opportunity would not require a landrights campaign as we could start from here and now with what many unemployed on the dole already have – public housing. To recognise the secure land access they already have as essentially a landright would simply require the acceptance of the related responsibilities and recognition of the performance of those responsibilities to the land. The primary responsibility would be to use the land sustainably for the reasons such a right exists – establishment & maintenance of secure shelter, food growing and community development.

Social inclusion through building/maintenance of public housing, sustainable community food gardening and community development initiatives would change NIMBY attitudes to public housing. Vegetable gardening in your neighbourhood would cultivate exuberant vitality and energy – vim - turning NIMBY into VIMBY! (vegetables in my backyard)

Support for public housing would lead to an increase in supply, taking the heat out of the housing market for all – a trickle up benefit for a change!

For proposed Centrelink reform proposal see -
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Change-Centrelink-Activity-Test/111159512287661?id=111159512287661&sk=info

Philip S Would you support this?

Give refugees & the unemployed the CHOICE of 15hr/wk building public housing & food gardens for their keep.

With globalisation, employment and UNemployment will be distributed more evenly around the world and, until the population of our own region is much more evenly distributed & the standard of living is better balanced, people will continue to be pushed & pulled to Australia.

I don't believe there is anything civilised that can be done to stop increasing numbers of people wanting to come here. If I was facing a lifetime of danger or poverty I would gladly risk my life for a chance to be here.

Our desperation to protect our borders shows just how convinced many Australians are that our way of life is threatened by the cost of such inflows. Whatever the benefit that immigration may bring, they fear massive job and housing pressures & a blowout in welfare.

In our desperation, even work for the dole has been proposed as a deterrent to asylum seekers and as an offset to costs of dealing with them. Of course this disregards how counter-productive and costly work for the dole has already proven to be.

Instead I would like to propose that the poor, including refugees and unemployed, should be welcomed to choose (or reject) voluntary community work.

With TAFE Outreach support, one of their choices should be to help build suburban public housing, involving choices from bookwork to labouring. The building should start from a community room providing facilities and interim accommodation.

A food garden should supplement Centerlink's payments.

In essence, the current arrangements to satisfy mutual obligations where over 55's can choose 15hrs/wk work for approved community organisations should be an option for all.

Because this would not involve coercion & would provide food, housing security and social integration, it would be much more effective & attractive than the work for the dole proposals gaining in support. It would not only provide valuable work but would lay the foundations for the sustainable development which we all need to support.

Please see -
http://ntw.net46.net/NTWmodel/NTWModeloverview.htm