Well, let me make this point about David Cameron. His approach is like that of a marriage partner going for a divorce as the opening prelude to a closer union!

Is it just conservatives, or are all pollies that "clever"?

Negative gearing? If house prices tumble so will your replacement when it's time to move on! So will your mortgage payments, rates and insurance charges, stamp duties and what have you!

And if the emperor's new clothes, equity could be lost, don't use it!

And all we need is for that to happen is a clearly overheated market to suffer from the inevitable bubble burst!

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for Malcolm Turnbull's turnaround position, on preserving unearned privilege for indolent fat cats, who have "earned" their wealth using other folks money. And then add insult to injury with sharp practise tax avoidance!

We just need long overdue genuine tax reform, not the fiddling at the edges by pollywaffle pollies.

Some will say someone on the top tax rate of 48 cents in the dollar has automatic right to avail himself and his family to the public health service etc.

What if his clever tax avoidance strategies (high end super, family trusts) have reduced his liability to just 15 cents (or less) in the dollar? And therefore, makes a case for long overdue means testing of taxpayer funded facilities, all of them!

Moreover, genuine tax reform would negate the need by anyone to avoid paying their fair tax share!

Here I'm talking about an unavoidable expenditure tax, that taxes everyone equally and according to their means. No ifs, buts or maybes!

Given it does just that, massively lower the currently inequitably shared load to the point, where avoidance just costs more than simply paying your fair share!

Say as little as five cents collected from every dollar of expenditure?

Everything we see is just aimed at winning the next election, and control of the Senate, with everything else, including the manifestly mismanaged national interest, made to serve that purpose!?
Rhrosty.

While positive, it's insufficient to get rid of this or that politician - we should get rid of the whole system whereby politicians can tell us how to live.

Rhosty says:

"Negative gearing? If house prices tumble so will your replacement when it's time to move on! So will your mortgage payments, rates and insurance charges, stamp duties and what have you!"

Not so. If you've currently got a $600,000 mortgage on a house you bought for, say, $800,00 a year or so ago, you will still have that mortgage and high repayments on that mortgage, even when the market value of the house drops to, say, $400,000 because of Labor's messing with negative gearing.

And when you "move on" or, worse, are forced to move on, you'll wear the capital loss on that first house, even though your next house might be cheaper. The impact is likely to be greatest for those nearing retirement who still have a mortgage to service.

Negative gearing may well cause a drop in house prices and therefore help new players into the market, but it will be at the expense of all those who already have a mortgage and are buying houses at prices set when the market was high.

There's some rewriting of history going on at present in relation to Keating's failed flirtation with negative gearing from 1985-87. The pundits now argue that there was nothing wrong with Keating's changes, that if there was a problem it would have shown up everywhere, not just in Sydney and Perth (as it did).

The reason Keating dropped the idea was because of the political backlash in Sydney and Perth: lots of Labor seats on the line in cities undersupplied with rental accommodation and where rising rental costs were causing grief.

"The pundits now argue that there was nothing wrong with Keating's changes, that if there was a problem it would have shown up everywhere, not just in Sydney and Perth (as it did)"

It is usual for Sydney or Melbourne to lead and developers in Perth at the time were probably playing catch-up.

There is no one market but all would have reacted over time to Keating's knee-jerk on negative gearing. Certainly in Queensland there was a lot of serious talk among developers of putting work off and many did delay or shelve plans. Check the lapsed and delayed development applications with the Brisbane City Council for instance.

Keating's class war to appeal to the jealous leftists had a dampening effect on housing construction for years after and despite Keating's policy reversal. Development is already high risk. Politicians interfering in the housing market always leads to tears.

It is a strange world isn't it, where both sides of politics do not want to fund age pensions or aged care, but are at the same time doing everything possible to increase risks and decrease returns for people putting their dollars into shelter. To top it off the government takes a large bite out of money going into superannuation before it has earned anything.

What is the federal Government's (both sides) record in housing policy and specifically in developing and managing housing? Just think Aboriginal Housing and weep for the exasperated taxpayer. There reports over years from the governments own audit office (ANAO) with evidence of lack of accountability, wastage and fraud.

Billions of tax dollars taken compulsorily from Aussie workers and businesses for Aboriginal Housing and for all of the many years of planning, development and management, what exactly is there to show for it? The answer is SFA but some filthy, disgusting shambles and allegedly in the wrong locations to boot.

Here is Bobble-Head Shorten, the man who flees from shirt-fronting the CFMEU and union bosses that are running Labor, asking everyone to forget his and Labor's past mistakes and to trust him with the residential property market!

Rhrosty, I'm no fan of David Cameron, but your criticism of his approach is not valid. He doesn't want closer union with Europe. Nor do most of the British people. And with good reason: for far too long, Europe has been imposing unnecessary rules on Britain, and Britain has been paying a lot for membership.

And as I've said many times before, your "unavoidable expenditure tax" would be economically catastrophic, and also quite easy to avoid.

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Calwest, not even a complete immediate abolition of negative gearing would cause house prices to drop by 25%, let alone 50%. Shorten's plan to restrict new NG to new houses may not even cause a drop in value at all (particularly if house prices continue to rise the way they have been recently). If there is a fall it will be a small one.

Yes cal. an 800,000 mortgage remains the same regardless of market movements, given you were not overleveraged? One assumes you will be able to meet liabilities out of current earnings waiting for market recovery.

When I was young a home was just a place of refuge, not an investment you could use as values swelled, for some investment or other, and the last resort when a failing business failed.

If you want to risk the family home on some business venture, make sure that the book return is the return? Remember the two most common reason for failure are mismanagement and under capitalization!

Anyhow, you just don't need to risk the house when there's money around at 3% for a good freehold businesses?

Avoid franchises that force you to cough up far more than the actual return warrants.

Spend some time on the premises accessing the foot traffic and do your homework; as you need certain minimum population numbers for various businesses, and do due diligence.

There are schemes that allow someone with a really good salary to put all of it into the mortgage; and use the credit card for everything else, and use some of your drawdown to pay off the credit card, if it allows you 55 days?

The banks rarely advise of these schemes; given. you can if properly advised, payout the mortgage in just five years, with some sacrifice and postponed gratification?

As for mortgages, that are eating too much of the household budget? Think about liberating your current equity to try and get a better deal( refinance for lower interest and affordable repayments) on the remaining capital liability.

Failing that, sell the house and downsize to something you can afford? Remember rent money is dead money that leads nowhere.

You can also manage with the old car, if you get it repaired?
And you can still see the cricket or the footy on a smaller screen, chill the food in the old fridge etc, while you set aside expensive self gratification in favour of debt reduction.
Rhrosty.