Dear Tanya,

Well done and thank you for drawing attention to a critical issue of social policy which has a direct impact on the economy, and even more importantly, our lives and how well we can live them.

Apparently Tanya has been elected to beseech the ‘McMansion’ dwellers and chasers who were insulted following the ALP’s defeat at the last federal election to return home. ALP postmortems which followed the defeat of Mr Latham sought to portray those who didn’t vote for Mr Latham as shallow, insular surburbanites whose only interest was home ownership and terrorists. McMansions became the word du jour as the peasants received a lashing from ALP luminaries and certain members of the commentariat. Here we are a few years down the track and home ownership is viewed as a virtue by the ALP.

Tell me Tanya, will the ALP policy which deals with home ownership mention the word McMansion or is that word only to be trotted out in case of defeat?

You can tell when a politician and an endangered animal have been on the road; you’ll always see skid marks leading up to where the animal stood.

What a string of motherhood statements.

The root problem is negative gearing, and the productivity commission admits it. Fixing it would require about 8 years to work out and implement policies to replace it.

State Labor has not helped. Its release of land has been atraditional, it has ignored decentralisation, it has focused on forcing people into strata developments and has been unsure whether to follow demand-constricting or demand-enhancing policies.

Sage kinda has a point. Australia seems to subscribe to an American style dream that everyone should own a home, and if they don't there must be something wrong with them.

Australia has one of the lowest per capital levels of public housing in all OPEC or first world countries. Even the US has more government owned housing than Australia.

The other myth is that public owned housing costs taxpayers. The opposite it true. The NSW Department of Housing does not cost money; it is a revenue raiser. People pay rent to the Government owned land, the maintenance is minimal and on a central generic maintenance system, some pay full rent as they remain tenants.

Since Eimma came into office, the profit will go down as DOH is increasingly the domain of "emergency only" housing. On this minimal model, sure, the "privilege" is reduced to the real needy, but there is less revenue to keep the system moving to buy more stock.

In Sydney, for example, because the Governments refuse to buy housing stock, there is an urgent housing shortage for the "emergency list", particularly around Saint Vincent's Hospital.

The crisis and pressure goes up, and the NSW DOH is forced into inventing new schemes to pay private land owners hefty subsidies to keep emergency people housed, somehow. This is a very expensive leakage in the system since there has been shrinkage in stock.

You would think that when the actual real estate prices are on such a low growth level in Sydney, and have been for some time, that now is the time to buy more housing stock. They don't. They look at "first home buyers" as "relieving the pressure" way out west.

There are plenty of apartments for sale in the inner city, but the rental availability is low therefore the rents go up. The Government subsidies likewise, also go up.

Why can't we cut through the myths that this costs taxpayers? Buying and owning more properties is an investment for the Government.

It is certainly cheaper than rental subsidies.

So this kind of drivel is what the ALP regards as mastering a brief?

It continues the tradition of Bob Carr who routinely complained about Sydney being full but couldn't stop himself basking in the Olympic glow and advertising the place to the whole f$%#@& planet.

These moron's idea of decentralisation is to produce a new satellite city/suburb 2 hours from the GPO that does nothing to solve infrastructure problems and exacerbates congestion.

This problem is a direct consequence of a unitary model of state government that has been wedged into a federation of similar unitary states. And this continues to concentrate wealth from the entire state into the metropolitan area long after the serious diseconomies of scale have set in.

The only solution is devolution into new regional states leaving the existing city state intact. The only successful decentralisation events in our history have come with self government. Without it there is no future other than that of an ever bigger, costlier and uglier place to watch your kids turn to smack.

Wake up to yourself Sydney, you are a sick joke.

You have a point Persius. The urban sprawl in Sydney is a disaster.

I agree with Clover Moore Independent Lord Mayor of Sydney on this issue as well as the Greens. We need VFTs or those French Very Fast Trains from Sydney to Newcastle, and Sydney to Golbourn. That means fast movement of people in and out of the Sydney basin.

The basin is full and if they filling in the "iron lungs" or Green Belts, which are supposed to keep the air clean for the west, then we are going to be a sick dirty city that can barely breath.

The high immigration doesn't help either.

We still need Government housing around our hospitals as there is a crisis for the sick and needy. They do pay for themselves, and I need to repeat this.

Tanya is one person in the ALP that does listen to the locals, and, well, Bob Carr has gone.

Co operation between State and Federal Governments in planning is essential. Too much rivalry and finger pointing, yes, Tanya is spot on about that.