Mr Bartlett

Thank you for your article. Also, thank you for your responses. You are one of the few politicians who ever reply to posters on OLO.

This is not a read herring. It is real. For the past three months I have been working for a community mental health NGO. The biggest issue is housing and accommodation. The number of people who cannot afford housing is unbelieveable. The numbers of homeless people with mental illness is overwhelming - frightening - and disgusting. Federal and State Governments should be taken to task - as should the Democrats.

A mental health consumer pays $150.00 per week to sleep on a lounge. Food is not included. He gets $200.00 per week for his
Disability benefit.

No wonder he ends up homeless every other week.

I will be interested in your reply to this post.

The above posters are so lucky that they do not have a protracted mental illness and nowhere to live.

Cheers
Kay

You raise a number of very good points Kay.
The fact is that there are thousands of people around our country sleeping rough or couch to couch each night whose income simply cannot cover reliable rent and food, let alone any extras for health problems, transport or clothes for job hunting, etc.

This situation is both a cause and symptom of mental illness - it won't be fixed by modfying negative gearing (apart from possibly freeing up some funds that could be better spent on HACC or other programs).

However, it is also a reminder of why extra public investment in secure appropriate housing is worth it. People with mental health issues live in our community, mostly with little problem. However, if they have problems falling behind on rent, lose their job or have a bad patch, they can very quickly slip into homelessness if there is not proper support. Once you're listed as a rent defaulter, it can make it very hard to rent a place again, even in public housing sometimes.

The issue does bleed across into some shortcomings in our mental health system (and attitiudes), but your chances of overcoming or living effectively with a mental illness are increased dramatically if you find affordable, secure and appropriate housing.

All another reason why it's about a lot more than just let the market ride, and also why it needs a holistic national approach to the problems.

Andrew Bartlett's self serving rationalisation does nothing but expose the Democrats as a party of PROPAGANDA.

Don Chip would be ashamed that the party charged with 'keeping-the-bastards-honest' is so intellectually and morally corrupt that it believes the Australian populace are willing to accept this propaganda.

Australian's KNOW:

* At least 90% of migrants will go to Sydney and SEQ no matter what ill conceived and costly government regulations AB will espouse.

* I want to live in Castlecrag and it should be MY fundamental human right to do so. I can't and neither can planeloads of migrants expect to live in environmentally, infrastucturally unsound new suburbs in Sydney or those in SEQ.

* More must be done than just making all states provide land and houses. You must stop development in SYDSEQ to enable the other states to be able to attract new migrants. It suits the senator from Qld to import HIS own votes enmasse. Eternally grateful new Democrat voters. He knows they all go to SYDSEQ. Hence, prima facie his article is contrived propaganda.

* House prices go up is because of negative gearing. Negative Gearing makes housing an INVESTMENT commodity. AB's article says housing must be the 'most fundamental of human rights', then insists Negative gearing is fine. Why? The two are totally incompatible. So does AB have a 'cake-and-eat-it-too' vested interest here?

In summary the article is clumsy and unrealistic propaganda that should easily be spotted by average Australians. Australians who will now realise the Democrats are intellectually and morally corrupt.

We urgently need 'Research' at a national level. Allover SYDSEQ', in communities like Castlecrag, people have EARNED the right to quiet enjoyment and maintain that right through nationally relative high prices.

There is plenty of room for cheap housing in Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Darwin. Its time migrants were forced into those cities by limiting housing supply in SYDSEQ. And property developers and their political puppets be damned if they can't adapt to our will.

Housing affordability is all about economics. Economics demand growth to remain sustainable, but continuous growth is unsustainable, it relies on resource and consumption growth, which is finite. A point's reached when the balance between economic growth, sustainable supply, consumption growth, infrastructure limits and environmental devastation, reach their peak point. As with oil, its all down hill then.

“A national housing strategy should have environmental sustainability built into it as a matter of course, but if people can't afford to even get into secure and appropriate housing in the first place, then it's a bigger problem.”

Andrew, to have sustainable housing, requires all housing to have longevity and be environmental and energy sustainable. Without those factors, nothing is sustainable, just consumed and unsustainable replaced. But your interests lie in centralised economic control, not sustainable life.

Housing affordability will again come about once we remove the current system of unsustainable economic growth and environmental destruction, and build houses that work within the environment, not against it.

Whilst we continue to build smaller and smaller boxes, for more and more money and place more strain on already collapsing infrastructure. There'll be no answers, just elite attempts to hoodwink us with semantic rubbish and self-righteous dogma. Yet the facts show the elite have placed us on a downhill spiral, with no answers other than drastic change.

Builidng more houses won't help, until we get the direction and sustaibnabe method of our operating our society in order.

In todays Age Tim Colebatch argues that demand for housing is directly related to the numbers of investors in the housing market. He says that recent taxation changes will make investment in rental property less attractive in the longer term.
Refer http://www.theage.com.au/news/tim-colebatch/safe-as-houses-no-more/2006/08/28/1156617272592.html

Wow Mercurius, I count two posts amongst the thirteen preceding yours in which population was mentioned as one possible causal factor! Methinks you rather grossly overstate the situation with;

“It's a little disappointing to see, yet again, the chorus of comments from those who believe the silver-bullet solution Australia's problems is population control.”

You accuse people who care about never-ending pop growth of having a simplistic viewpoint. Well, your questions clearly show that it is you who has the extraordinarily simplistic impression of their viewpoint.

--
Foundation,

“Population growth has nothing to do with the problem.”

Now who do you think you are kidding?

And you ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself for dishing out the disgusting and extremely unintelligent diatribe that anyone questioning high immigration must be “xenoph….”.

“oops” is right mate.