In our area the previous Fed & State Governments paid whatever rent was asked by the landlords. Some 2 bedroom flats went for $1600/wk & that rent was paid even if the public servants weren't living in them for various reasons such as only visit for a week or two every two months or someone left & no new tennant moved in for a year. That made renting unaffordable for all private enterprise workers. Naturally enough our private enterprise is all but gone. It's only now since the more sensible Governments got in that we're seeing these insane rates go down. Fifo does exactly the same to many of the outback communities. A near total collapse is imminent & then we the taxpayers are again forced to pick up the tab. Just wait when this high erner fifos can't pay the mortgage on their mansions & the landlords in the communities because the pay is drying up. Theose public servants who get $500/wk rental assistance to live in their own houses are of course ok.

Dear Belly,

You're right - it's hard to predict the future
with any certainty. We'll have to wait and see
what develops. Hopefully, we'll have a government
in place that will see us through any crisis that
comes, as happened with the GFC recently.

see us through any crisis that
comes, as happened with the GFC recently.
Foxy,
Where will this new Government find a futures fund to buy us through another GFC like the previous Government ?

Dear Individual,

They could do what they've always done -
sell off the assets of this country,
let infrastructure go to rack and ruin,
privatise government services, making them
available only to those who can afford to pay,
and they could even try to stop distributing
the wealth and privilege only to the upper-echelons
of our communities so that the gap between the rich
and the poor would not continue to widen substantially.

Indi, the other way to look at negative gearing, especially if it is responsible for housing prices, is that withoutnit, so many other businesses, and ultimately, the economy, would have not flurished the way they did.

You see, many investors wait until the equity is high enough so they can buy another investment home. Now along with that purchase also comes the builders wages, the wages and business profits that go into furnishing it, the list goes on.

Home owner occupiers also use the equity to buy goods, cars, boast, holidays etc, so many of these new cars/boats/holidays wouldn't have been sold, resulting in less jobs created.

I dont think a healthy economy is one where prices stay the same for years/decades, or is it! Because that would also mean wages would not increase.

But, the underlying problem with removing incentive to invest (NG) is where will people who can't afford to buy, live.

I firmly believe that without NG we would be in much poorer shape, as our population would have still grown to what it is, yet housing numbers would have been far fewer than they are today, simply because investors would have invested elsewhere, by that I mean in another median.

Belly, true astute investors are not dills. They don't care how much they owe, they only care about equity/debt ratios and, they make sure that when the signs are there, that they bail, or at least consolidate so what's left has a buffer.

Not meaning to crow, but I saw the GFC coming, and at the time I had a couple of parcels in the Whitsundays, which I sold, then less than 8 months later that market crashed, mainly due to the decline in tourism. It is only just now showing strong signs of growth but to this day, relies heavily on discounted air fairs, something that is very vulnerable to energy costs.

Right now Bill Shorten is doing a speech on ABC 24 for the Adelaide election. I've only been watching some 3 minutes & this is in my opinion one of the most integrity devoid, callously hypocritical raves I have ever listened to.