I appreciate your point Hasbeen however we all live in a differant circumstance. After cylones, fires, losing home and business, it gets a little hard to constantly start again and again and again.

As a Migrant I'd lived in 53 housing arrangements before I was thirteen, before I came to Australia. As you can imagine I am virtually self educated, have been dealing with part-time under-paid employemnt most of my life. Now as I reach my later years... my health is not as youthful as it was, neither is my attitude. I have spent many years trying to be the best citizen I can be. Independent and progressive. This last move however cost skin. It has been a shock. I do not feel I can take more risk without some better resources. I have no desire to live in the middle of a Tourist environment as you suggested, just to say yet again... I work part-time. I certainly have no desire to LIVE-IN a hotel/motel work place.

Afforable Safe Housing is key. Base to building on life-quality and imagining what that means when you are not economically mobile.

I don't know your circumstance Hasbeen, and I hope your comment doesn't mean that the lack of Housing availability is Good for Australia. Buying a block of land each year is not the kind of production I wish to be part of. Just one home would ethically speaking be more then enough.

http://www.miacat.com/

Miacat I have lived in quite a few places that I chose because of a financial advantage, rather than a desire to live or work there. This is life. We can't expect to be provided with what we want, where ever we want, just because we would like it.

I for example, would not chose to try to work part time, & live in one of the more expensive cities in the country.

When living on resorts I bought land because I did not want the worry of renting a house. However I wanted to be on the inflation elevator, with home owners, rather than leave my money in the bank. I was buying land that I might build on later. When I decided not to build, it meant I could buy a home, if only a cheep one, without too much debt.

So I'm sorry to say, those who missed the boat, often have only their own life choices to blame. I spent many years doing exactly what I wanted to do, & enjoyed every minute of it. This is exactly why I found myself into my 30s, with not very much to show for all the years. I had to bite the bullet, & start to catch up with the race, for a while. It was 20 years before I could go back to playing games of choice.

I hope you find your goal, but think you may have to pursue it in some place where the costs are a little lower.

Saltpetre, what a joker you are! I thought you were talking tongue-in-cheek. Then I kept reading, and I think you might be serious. Seriously!
Land is valued now, not by what a pimp might use it for, but what society wants it used for - commercial, industrial, residential or rural. The best land sells for more, because it offers greater opportunity, amenity or productivity to the buyer.
The whole idea of a land rent scheme is for businesses to retain more of their profits. Land rent would replace initiative-killing company taxes, sales taxes (GST), and income taxes. That's how to make an economy productive!
As for the residential sector, the value of land is well known already. Those occupying expensive land would pay more than people occupying less desirable (cheaper) land. Now that's fair!

Good for you Hasbeen. You didn't answer the question. Are you happy with the way land and housing prices have esculated?

Are you happy that Australia is coping with a housing shortage and that for many, owning their own home is out of reach. That the rental market is unstable unless you are prepared to pay 3/4 or more of your wage on rent?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/housing-shortage-threatens-living-standards-economic-prosperity-report/story-fn59niix-1226227537771

You appear to look after yourself very well. I bet you have a stable family background, a proper opportunity for education and what some people call a more "normal" cultural sort of life-style when it comes to being able to make the "choices" you say you have made.

http://www.acoss.org.au/policy/housing_homelessness/

The point is that many people from diverse backgrounds are and have been locked out of mainstream even though they too have worked all their lives.

Wir können keine Beratung für Menschen, die wir nicht wissen, bis wir sie besser zu verstehen sein. Dann haben wir jeweils eine Auswahl treffen zu Fuß oder zu nicht mehr gehen ... an der Seite von ihnen. Das ist unsere Entscheidung.

Are you proud of the fact that there are so many homeless, so many living in undesirable conditions or are you just such an optimist that none of the "fair-go" values in life really count when push comes to shove?

Diejenigen von uns, mit fragmentierten Migrationshintergrund oft verbringen die meiste Zeit mit dem Nachholbedarf. Zuerst haben wir, um die Sprache zu lernen Englisch haben, dann müssen wir herausfinden, eine Ausbildung oder den Handel, nach, dass wir vielleicht eine Chance für Haus und Familie zu planen - wenn alles klappt.

http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/DP85.pdf

Klingt einfach, nicht wahr ... We all have different stories, Klingt einfach, nicht wahr, Hasbeen.

http://www.miacat.com/

I have had many arguments on this topic Miacat, when I say I believe that kids today have it much tougher than I did.

My father would mention that he had a depression, followed by war, which made their lives hard, & getting assets difficult. I agree with him, but reckon it's tougher for my kids.

Dad & I were paying something like 7.5% income tax in the 60s, on the average wage, & only 4.75& interest on a home loan. Finance companies charged 8% which was considered usury. The rapidly increasing number of "underprivileged" who need help has greatly increased the tax rate for todays kids, & using high interest rates to manage the economy is about as stupid an id as is possible to imagine.

However home ownership was still not too difficult to achieve into the 80s, so I don't have much sympathy for people who were earning reasonable incomes then, & did not use the opportunity, if they whinge today. Most of us make our own choices, & can expect to live with those choices. I do agree that the rip off money grab by many state governments has made land too dear. Add the greenie resistance to green site development, & the younger ones have a problem.

I don't have much sympathy for most homeless people, as so many have no one to blame but themselves. My wife is a counselor with a welfare/employment agency. She deals with the long term unemployed. She has awards for getting the highest percentage of her "clients" back into work, & life. Quite a few of these have been "homeless". She also gets a great deal of abuse from yobbos who not only don't want help, but object to anyone who interferes with their useless bludging lives.

I'll give you the details if you like.

Hasbeen, would you have been able to afford to own land, if a punitive annual rent/land tax had been in operation. I also worked in tourist facilities and earned a nice income during summer holidays, none of which had to be out-laid for food or accommodation.
Instead of land, I put a down payment on a fixer upper; then another. Well,it gave me somewhere to live. I was a fair if self taught carpenter and the profit earned helped defray my tuition fees.
Had a land tax been imposed; that option would have been closed off to me, along with any self funded tertiary education options. Moreover, I likely would have been obliged to join the ranks of permanent renters?
For those on work start, renting is almost impossible! Of some 2,000 Sydney.Melbourne accommodation options available, even with rent assistance etc, a study found only 40 or 2%, were found to be affordable. [Housing affordability measured by it not consuming more than 30% of rent assisted income.]
I'm all for people getting off their butts and moving to where the work is; and applaud govt initiated payments, that help achieve that for the more industrious; but object to rents as high as $2,000.00 a week; as rent outlays in many of the mining towns or Darwin?
Or indeed, a single bed-sitter in Sydney costing more than the fortnightly income of a single pensioner!
The proposed land tax would simply exacerbate the affordability factor, particularly in our already overcrowded, gridlocked capital cities! I would instead, repeal welfare for the rich negative gearing and let the chips and cries of outrage from the seriously better off, and the seriously over populated real estate industry, fall where they may.
Just this one reform would raise/claw back in excess of 5 billion annually? Possibly more than would be the net return of the proposed land tax? I can't see repealed negative gearing impacting very much on the most vulnerable; given only around 2% of currently available housing, [church and charity owned property,] being affordable for the less well off or disadvantaged. Rhrosty.