There's a lot in what you say Robert and I agree with most of your conclusions. This is the end result of the fire sale of income earning assets and what happens when the proceeds are exhausted.

What we need is honest to God, real tax reform, rather than the clayton's tax reform that has been the most recent substitutes. Real tax reform would replace the growing complexity and additional fees and charges for a large minority?

With an unavoidable expenditure tax, and taken from all profits collected in this country; the tradeoff would be the jettisoning of the ubiquitous and cascading GST.

I also believe there needs to be a capital gains tax levied against all undeveloped land banks.

Development within one year of acquisition the only means of avoiding it?

Negative gearing should only apply to brand new never lived in housing. Moreover the practice of taxing the front end of development must end, given the only result is the suppression of same, not to mention the consequential and untenable price hikes it causes!

We always get the same old same old, that government must live within its means.

Were any of these pretenders serious or had the nation's best interest at heart, they would just vote themselve out of existence and then use the 70 billions plus per we would save by that one act of clarity, to fix the backlog of stuff needing to be done!

An annual extra 70 billions, would create a brand new very rapid rail along the entire eastern seaboard in just a few years. and then expand other city based links to make the best possible use of them.

And indeed, guarantee a substantial working profit from both, and an end to the gridlock that is our current highways; and indeed end, the huge economic loss (billions) caused by the absolute lack of future vision and the essential decentralisation it would have rolled out decades ago!

A single central competent government making these decisions decades ago in the national interest, would have seen just that!
Rhrosty.