"Daggett, nothing dishonest about export focus in WA. I remind you that we also have some of Australia’s most efficient and innovative farming industries.10% of Australia’s population producing 45% or so of exports."

"Australia is nearly the size of the US, with around 7% of the population, so has land to waste, including farmland. If land is limiting home ownership, why should converting farmland to housing land be a problem?" (Yabby)

You're forgetting one small issue about your "efficient and innovative" farming industry, Yabby. The state government is now buying agricultural lands for conservation. You should know that - being a farmer and all?

'At least 1.63 million hectares (9%) of once productive land in the agricultural regions has become salt affected . . . and is likely to rise to about 2.9 million ha. (16%) of the cleared area by 2010' (Salinity, 1995:4).

'[Only] 40 percent of the rangelands [are] in good condition . . . 34 percent in fair condition [and] 26 percent in poor condition' (Wilcox and Cunningham, 1994:100).

No doubt those figures above have now increased since 94/95.

And this:

"At a national level, Western Australia has 8 of 12 Australian biodiversity hotspots.

At a global level, the South West is recognised as one of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots.

WA currently has 362 threatened plants, 199 threatened animals and 69 threatened ecological communities.

Recovery plans have been developed for less than one-third of threatened species and ecological communities.

There is ongoing loss and degradation of biodiversity in WA.Knowledge about many species and ecosystems and some threats to biodiversity remains inadequate. (State of the Environment EPA 2007)

"10% of Australia’s population producing 45% or so of exports." (Yabby)

Ah yes the resource boom. It's not just speculators tying up land in WA. Kwinana, the cancer capital of Australia, is set to double the expansion of its industrial area. Wagerup, Yarloop, Kalgoorlie etc - pumping it out by the truck loads and pushing people off their properties and tying up residential lands.

But you can dream on Yabby!

Daggett,

Having gone a away for a few days I see nothing here has changed much.

To begin with - yes of course Australia's optimum population is dependent on its water supply (as opposed to its land mass) that needn't be argued.

Further regarding the housing & population question:
.
I still consider that (as I said on p.34)
"For the inflationary significance of increased population (relative-to-supply) rental vacancies & rents are your best indicator."
For the reasons previously outlined.

Regarding that which you referred to as "the speculative component"

You might recall The Age article enttlied:
"House prices 'world highest' "

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/house-prices-world-highest/2005/11/30/1133311106610.html

which began by saying that:
"AUSTRALIA has by far the most overvalued houses in the Western world, with prices 52 per cent higher than justified by rental values, the OECD says."

the OECD are referring to the prices (not just the increase) & are conservatively indicating the level of speculative excess - being the degree to which the price of the asset exceeds its fundamental value.

With regard to re-development & subdividing. Your comment is entirely valid although there is a significant distinction between developers & 'passive' investors. The developers (for better or worse) build/produce/add to supply & are 'creative' in the economic sense of the term – they are fewer in number & for them the considerations involved, though related are different.

I don’t really know but I suspect that to some degree you (like many people) may be trying to rationally make-sense of what is (in the long-term) an irrational aspect of investment markets.

On an entirely different matter, when you said:

“What is the use of engaging in a dialogue with someone who habitually fails to address my arguments?”

You raise a valid point & with goodwill, for what its worth I recommend that you (either gradually or abruptly) cease to do so for your own good.

To that end you may notice that my next post will be relatively brief & have less to do with the subject & more to do with the illusion of dialogue.

Mr Smith

Yabby,

When I said:

“there is some irony in the fact that you continually refer to “savings” in this context when the housing bubble is largely responsible for a near tripling of household debt. Savings & debt are hardly synonymous.”

My main point was that:

“Savings & debt are hardly synonymous” -

Saving & $660bn worth of debt even less so.
Most of the money spent & ‘invested’ was borrowed not saved.

Borrowing & saving are opposites. Antonyms not synonyms.

Your pretending to address that post by avoiding the point & going on to repeat the same notion about saving incentives perfectly exemplifies the (aforementioned) technique of using someone else’s post as prop for pure repetition rather than a pretext for response.

Mr Smith

"Savings & debt are hardly synonymous.”

Smithy, you simply missed my point about their relationship.
If I have 100k, it makes perfect sense to borrow 300k to
protect it long term. I have a very simple way of finding
these things out. When people I know buy a house, they
generally also explain their reasoning. Everyone says
the same thing. Leaving money sitting in the bank is a dead
loss, it devalues over time. So people think of ways
to avoid doing it and protect their savings and build up
their nest egg with a plan.

Given Australia's low savings rate, this makes perfect
sense! Now if you want to believe that the housing
booms is all down to those evil speculators, then
so be it. I'm saying that a whole mass of people doing
well financially and acting together, can move markets.

If you want to ignore every day human behaviour in all
of this, thats fine by me.

I am surprised to have noticed a small amount of progress, although only on a point which is subsidiary to this whole discussion.

Yabby, thanks for finally providing a small amount of additional information about your politics. I find myself in agreement with you on moral questions, but they don't count for much if one can't find a secure roof over one's head or have decent secure stable well-paid jobs or if the planet's ecology is facing destruction.

Your overall politics would appear to me to be a little to the left of George Bush's. Your earlier opposition to the privatisation of Telstra would have probably placed you, at that time, a little to the left of George Bush Senior.

---

Most interesting post by dickie from WA, I thought.

Having so many threatened species and so much agricultural land under threat and not enough water in the south west corner (without resort to fossil-fuel-dependant desalination or even more costly transport from elsewhere) would seem to me to be strong indicators of WA being overpopulated.

With so much environmental destruction going on, it would not seem to me that the 'free market' system is working at all well over there.

There wouldn't happen to be any other knowledge of the state of WA's environment that you would be keeping to yourself, would there?

Daggett, I remind you that its you dragging this thread away from housing, to
politics and now the environment, after telling me to stick to housing. Whatever.

My politics was actually being a Clinton fan and now for Obama. I have always
been anti Bush, just to set the record straight.

Yes there are threatened species here. Those wild cats, wild dogs and foxes have done huge damage.

But there is also much good stuff happening.

http://www.australianwildlife.org/aboutAWC.asp

Dickie, our local prophet of gloom, is free to leave some of her legacy to them.
I plan to.

Huge improvements in agriculture have been going on in the last years, due
to conservation tillage, which is happening in a big way in WA. Now the
rest of Australia is learning from us. That means cutting out erosion, rising
C soil levels, increased organic matter etc.

As for salt, I remind you that it naturally came from the ocean. The solution
is to drain it back to the ocean.

We have no shortage of agricultural land. In fact we are replanting large
areas to trees, as it’s the most profitable thing to do with it. Even the Dickies
of this world need toilet paper to wipe their butts.