Yeah having had a bit of insight into Army processes back in late 80's, nothing Ive ever experienced since has been so completely inefficient and wasteful beyond your wildest imaginings.
When its not your money who cares, or something like that.
I know intheory it has improved, but it could have improve an order or two of magnitude and would still be awful....
That can be read two very different ways. I mean you could conclude that the looser diagnosis threshold is causing autism or you could conclude that the looser threshold is ensuring that people who would otherwise suffer under undiagnosed autism get what treatment they find useful. The former suggests it is a problem, the later suggests it is a solution.
Autism is a spectrum. Some people with diagnosed autism can function pretty well, and some people need 24-hour assistance. Shouldn't the support structures recognise this?
I'm certainly not arguing that "the looser diagnosis threshold is causing autism", but it seems likely that it is causing an uptick in autism diagnosis, since clinicians appear to diagnose autism more frequently once the NDIS is introduced. It was introduced at different times in different regions which allowed some useful statistical analysis to be done.
I'm not a defence expert either, but it's an interesting question.
For the sake of argument, how should we budget defence spending? How do we figure out what the "right" amount of money is? Should we think of it as being like home insurance (you pay it, hoping you never need to use it); or more like home maintenance (you pay it and it makes your home a better place to live)?
Should we measure it only in terms of capability? e.g. should we be able to project sufficient force to (say) guarantee that we can keep or shipping lanes open and watch our coastlines and offshore islands? Some of these capabilities might only be tested once every few decades, so is that money "wasted" in the interim? I'm guessing it costs a bit to maintain a few army battalions to meet our treaty obligations, but they rarely get deployed.
Or perhaps the 3% is just a number to wave in the direction of the USA when Trump gets a bee in his bonnet.
And the question is how good are those diagnosises. Either they are good diagnosises or they aren't. Responding with cuts to NDIS suggests that the Tories think that are bad ones.
Yes they should.
There's a girl in my daughter's soccer team who is autistic and unmedicated. Looking at her, watching her play and interact with the rest of the team, you wouldn't know. But I know that this is only because of support structures enabled by the NDIS, that the family had to fight to get approved and funded (they asked me to write a letter as the team's manager, to help justify ongoing funding), and if that support were to go away, that girl would not nearly be as functional, she would not be a part of the soccer team, and that would be a loss for the girl, the family, and the team.
I fear that's the kind of stuff that will be first on the chopping block when they look to reduce NDIS funding.
I can only say that military spending should be commensurate to projected needs and worst-case scenarios. There are a lot of, for want of a better term, smart minds employed in defence that are constantly wargaming through all kinds of scenarios. I certainly don't know better than them, and in a worst case I would like to know that there is a military out there that is ready, well trained and well equipped to deal with that worst case. Yes, a lot of the stuff they buy and a lot of the training they do never gets used in anger. But when it's needed, it's better to have it than... not.
Military spending can't be pie in the sky. AUKUS is such an example. Reasonably the government should pivot away from it as soon as possible, to find an option that suits requirements in both timely delivery and adequate expenditure. The thing is, just how much money has been blown on the whole submarine saga since Abbott snubbed the Japanese and refused an open tender saying that it would mean we'd get North Korea to build our subs? How much money and international goodwill did the French sub saga cost Australia? How much pressure did the US exert to make Morrison tear up the French contract and pivot to AUKUS? Australia is nowhere nearer replacing the subs that are in dire need of replacement than it was ten years ago.
Lastly, drones and long-range missiles - the main focus of these additional $53bn - are primarily offensive capabilities, not defensive.
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Yes, I think this is the kind of thing that will be targeted for NDIS removal, but the question is what's next? I think there probably is a model of support that gives people with lower needs the help that is most useful to them, but I've yet to see what that is.
I have to say that just because someone with autism "can function pretty well" doesn't necessarily mean they don't need assistance. And I'm not talking about people who are receiving assistance that helps them to function. Masking is a thing, and some people spend a lot of time masking their autism, so that they seem OK, but that actually can take a massive toll on their mental health.
And it doesn't just apply to autism. Lots of other non-physical disabilities are hidden because of the stigma attached to them.
I don't know if helping people with these kinds of disabilities costs more or less than people with obvious physical disabilities. Most often, I expect less. Yes, the NDIS needs to allocate it's resources proportionate to the level of care needed, but a lot of times you hear "You don't look like you have a problem, so why do you need support?"
The correct way to manage this is to put the right people, with the right expertise in the right places to assess and determine what is needed. And then listen to them. Easier said than done, I know.
This headline infuriates me. The children may well have been born over there. Even if they were born in Australia, it's not their fault. They had ZERO choice in this.
The women were highly likely not given a choice, but had to follow their husband.
Yes, it's possible they were willing participants.
But, can't Australia be better than hate filled here.
Why are we (as a nation) acting like these people are the worst of the worst.
The women were highly likely not given a choice, but had to follow their husband.
Yes, it's possible they were willing participants.
But, can't Australia be better than hate filled here.
Why are we (as a nation) acting like these people are the worst of the worst.
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It's shitty journalism, designed to catch eyes and manufacture outrage. 'ISIS brides' both gets clicks and vilifies the subjects in one go.
The Guardian's headline is way more appropriate:
"Women and children from alleged IS-linked families about to return to Australia from Syria"
The Guardian's headline is way more appropriate:
"Women and children from alleged IS-linked families about to return to Australia from Syria"
On a wholly different note, I did not see this one coming:
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...d-rail-project-connecting-nsw-with-queensland
I will never not be in favour of rail projects, but Inland Rail was an absolute dog's breakfast done with little to no community consultation and making absolutely bonkers decisions. Ever since the original plan connecting Melbourne to Gladstone was abandoned in favour if running the line into Brisbane, and ever since the likes of Barnaby Joyce got tangentially involved with it, it went to shit.
I live in one of the SEQ communities that would have been adversely affected by Inland Rail. I'm sad that they couldn't get better people to conceive, design and implement it.
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...d-rail-project-connecting-nsw-with-queensland
I will never not be in favour of rail projects, but Inland Rail was an absolute dog's breakfast done with little to no community consultation and making absolutely bonkers decisions. Ever since the original plan connecting Melbourne to Gladstone was abandoned in favour if running the line into Brisbane, and ever since the likes of Barnaby Joyce got tangentially involved with it, it went to shit.
I live in one of the SEQ communities that would have been adversely affected by Inland Rail. I'm sad that they couldn't get better people to conceive, design and implement it.
It does look like we're heading for some CGT and Negative Gearing changes. I'll be interested to see what they actually are before passing judgement, but that's such a huge turnaround in 7 years. It killed the Labor campaign in 2019, but public sentiment has been gradually shifting ever since it became such a spotlight topic. I get the impression that it wasn't super visible prior to that, but the more that people looked into it the more they realised how much in the way of tax concessions was going the way of home owners and property investors. And now that millennials and Gen Zs are the largest voting block...
The thing is, the biggest hoarders of property are the big corporations, not the individuals (with some exceptions, isn't there a federal MP with over 100 negatively-geared properties?) and those are the ones the gov't should be aiming at. I have no issue with say no negative gearing and full CGT on all properties more than two IE you can have your PPOR and a single investment property, after that no benefits at all.
And they'd be nuts to tighten CGT on shares, investment there is a benefit for the economy not like hoarding houses.
As I said, I want to see what the actual changes are before passing judgement. But there's no doubting that home-ownership and property investing has been fawned over and promoted as the safest way to invest one's money for however long now. Should corporations that hoard property also be looked at? Absolutely, no disagreement on that front. For the time being I'll take what change I can get.
We don't have any property investments so that side of things won't affect us either way, but a fair few of our fellow retirees have a single investment property and if they get hit it'll be nasty for them, unless it's grandfathered. The sad thing is, for best benefit to the budget/generational equity there should be no grandfathering but that's effectively a retroactive tax that'll hit like a truck. I suspect we'll see grandfathering on existing houses.
Yeah, this is the hard part. People make rational choices based on the options available to them. Making changes to this, and to inheritance laws, will have long-term benefits but don't necessarily provide a short-term resolution. It might put some temporary downward pressure on housing prices as investors now shy away from purchasing established properties (the 2019 policy would have allowed negative gearing and the CGT discount on new builds, but we can't have returns being delayed now, can we), which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
We've been in the pre-stages of looking for a new family home for a couple of years now. The issue that we run into is that while our current home continues to go up ion value, the bigger ones (ie, the ones we're trying to find to accommodate a soon-to-be growing family) are also going up. And while they might be going up at the same rate, the dollar gap between them is getting much bigger at a much faster pace than our wages can keep up. I wouldn't care if our property crashed back down to the value it was 5 years ago, because everything else would come down as well and be eminently more affordable. And the house we're selling becomes more affordable to someone who might need it as well, not only affordable to someone who would 100% turn it back into a negatively geared rental.
Yeah this is us too, an hour away from the CBD by train in north-west Sydney. Our house is a very modest four-bedroom on 400sqm, it'd be nice to have some more space but while our house has gone up in value 2.5x since we bought in 2013, to get anything larger and closer to the city would be significantly more expensive. So we're just staying put.
Absolutely! We're at 2x since 2021 in Perth for our place. And it was already inflated then. We're not really interested in mortgaging ourselves to the hilt because, you know, we have lives we want to live. So we're also just staying put for the time being, and gradually resigning ourselves to the fact that we may well have to move to the boondocks if space becomes an overwhelming factor.
Which is absurd, as we're both working professionals in secure employment on wages our parents could only ever have dreamed of.
A home being seen primarily as an investment, the perverse tax incentives around housing and the concomitant inflation is a problem in a lot of countries. I’m an ex-Sydneysider living in London and it’s the same here. Fixing it “punishes” those with houses, overwhelmingly older folk, not fixing it punishes everyone else, overwhelmingly the younger folk. It’s basically an intergenerational wealth transfer from the young to the old and also acts as a massive drag on people moving (say to get a better job). Yes, when property owning olds pop their clogs their kids will get the cash, but that concentrates property ownership in one set of families while others are locked out.
In the UK, where there is no compulsory voting and older folks with houses vote in large numbers, just talking about changing anything is electoral suicide.
In the UK, where there is no compulsory voting and older folks with houses vote in large numbers, just talking about changing anything is electoral suicide.
Another role of property ownership in old age is as a ticket to decent aged care. There is a great difference in quality of life between salubrious up-market aged care facilities, the grey minimum-effort middle and the hostile, even dangerous, bottom of the barrel. Getting into the first two might take all your money and selling your house because of the astronomical bond. So measures that reduce house prices may strike fear in the back of old heads.
As for the effects of prices inhibiting moving, I know I'm dragging this from the American context, but it resonated with me.
America Doesn’t Just Have a Housing Crisis. It Has a Moving Crisis.
I'm sorry it's paywalled. As you can gather, the article valorizes a culture of moving as having social benefits. Personally, I would benefit from moving out of regional NSW to somewhere with more opportunities but I regard the capital city's property prices with dismay.
I think you should only be able to grandfather in one property; it's not the people with one or two properties negatively geared that are the problem. If you're (generic 'you', not Bardon you) lucky enough to have a large property portfolio - tough shit, suck it up and re-invest elsewhere. Australian lower and middle classes don't owe you a tax rort. That kind of person is absolutely the problem in this country, and they're the ones making all the noise about it being a terrible change.
Yep exactly, that's why we ended up an hour away from the CBD in the first place: we wanted to have a mortgage that we'd still be able to pay without having to horribly cut down on everything if either my wife or I lost our jobs.
But it should be noted that there will be the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer from the Boomers to their children and grandchildren in the next decade or two.
It won’t be evenly distributed across the recipient generations but there are going to be many receiving big windfalls.
Not all of it, alot of the olds are relying on their houses to pay for old age care so a chunk of it will be shifted to care home providers.
Thanks to a series of policies introduced by the Coalition through the Howard and later governments. All with the stated objective of making life better for retirees and pensioners, who formed a significant fraction of their support. And which, surprise, surprise, disproportionately affected lower income families.
Yep. You're looking at close to $500k RAD for anything remotely decent these days. If your parent cant pay full RAD they will try to get you doing the slow drawdown of RAD to offset your daily fees. So much of that wealth will end up slowly siphoned into corporate coffers.
Not to defend the aged care industry too much, but at least it's providing a real and much needed service to society. It has to be funded somehow, and making property-wealthy retirees shoulder the burden is probably the least worst option.
For the past while I've had a word document with my thoughts on the housing situation. It's not full coverage, and I do not claim to be anything other than just a IT guy. I am not anyone special, I don't have any more dogs in this fight than my one mortgage that we are currently covering OK.
This is is.
These are my thoughts on the housing problem, in Australia.
(If I'm wrong somewhere, please don't just say I'm a dickhead, politely point out where I'm wrong and why.
This article was released AFTER I wrote the majority of this, and certainly after the concept was in mind. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/...e-greens-what-s-at-stake-20240917-p5kb4l.html
There is one fundamental problem with our housing market.
Demand.
Pricing is determined by Supply AND Demand.
Supply might be a problem. But it’s hard to just ‘make more houses’. It’s a multi-year problem. You need more tradies, more land, more building materials. You can’t just magic that shit up.
Demand is more easily amenable to altering. And demand is driving up the price to unsustainable levels.
Demand is partly driven higher by large government support in various guises.
Things like first home owners grant, which is supposed to make houses more affordable to first home buyers, by giving them additional funds to purchase a house. But it just drives the price up by that amount. Because people have more money to spend. If people can spend more money, they will.
The LNP plan of allowing people to raid their superannuation (it's a retirement fund, not a bank account) of up to $50,000 (limited to 40% of total superfund available) to buy a house, is bad on so many levels it's just comically bad. It's James Bond super villain bad.
- It will just encourage price growth because more people have more money to throw at the purchase price.
- It will hugely lower people’s retirement funds, because they spent it all on a house.
- It also won't work, because most younger people, looking to buy a house don't have that much in Superannuation, so it won't even work.
- Because of the above, more people will rely more heavily on government funded pensions, making the federal government even more funds limited.
This plan will only make the house price situation worse. But LNP like it, because superannuation is an ALP plan, and so it has to be killed. Which is hard, because
a) the population like the general idea and
b) the superannuation industry is a $3 Trillion behemoth that doesn't want its money taken away.
Negative gearing.
(For non-Australians, this means you can take an income loss from the rental property and apply it against your regular taxable income, lowering your tax payable). In effect, tax payers help pay the mortgage. Any change (read, reduction) to negative gearing will not be popular with a large number of voters that have 2nd or 3rd of 10th houses they rent out. This has enormous impact on how desirable housing is as an investment. But only if you're wealthy enough to afford multiple mortgages.
Capital Gains tax discount.
For the family home that you live in, any capital gains are tax free. So, if you buy a house for $250,000 and 10 years later sell it for $750,000 you effectively had an annual income of $50,000/year. Tax free. That is a damn good return, for a thing you needed to buy in the first place. Of course, you then need to go buy another house that has probably appreciated just as much.
Capital gains tax discount should remain at 100% for owner occupied housing. This encourages people to own the home they live in. This should be encouraged by the various levels of government. Just don’t go to crazy as the USA did in 2004 – 2007 on the subject.
For investment properties, the Capital Gains Tax discount is 50%. So, in the above example, when you sell the property, you earn $500,000 and pay capital gains tax on only $250,000 of it. Again, a massive tax benefit to the (already) wealthy.
All the above drive demand for property. Demand helps drive the price higher.
And the benefits can be so huge that even renting the property out is pointless. It's just hassle you have to deal with, for what? If you rent it out to high, you lose some the negative gearing benefit as you get taxable income from the rental. But have the hassle of maintaining the property, and dealing with tenants. It’s easier to buy the property, keep it empty and pocket the capital gains.
Adding supply won't significantly affect the price. Because price is barely governed by people looking to buy a house to live in, but by those looking for an investment. If that investment is less attractive, the price will drop.
As much as I'd like to say he's wrong, Xi Jinping is right "Houses are for living in, not investment".
We have to change things, so that ordinary Australians can actually afford a house.
Xi Jinping is wrong though, in the way to go about fixing it.
The Chinese solution was to just kill the housing industry. So they did and now it's dead.
They killed a problem a decade in the making, overnight. And they will be paying for it until the end of the 21st century (because of other simultaneous problems).
The Australian housing problem has been decades in the making. Negative gearing has been around since 1936. The 50% discount capital gains tax was done in 1999. If we can fix it in 10 years, that would be a good. I don't think it's impossible.
First, we have to get all major political parties to agree that house prices are a problem, and that part of the source of the problem is federal government tax incentives. Without this agreement, any reform is nearly impossible. We also need them to agree not to fuck the agreement over for short term political goals (hey, I can dream).
We can't just abolish negative gearing or the capital gains tax overnight. That will just cause a massive dislocation in the housing market. This is something that will screw Australia over for decades.
My suggestions are over a long period of time. And they basically all revolve around getting the government out of distorting the market.
0. Don't let the LNP do the superannuation for housing thing. It's so stupid.
1. Reduce the investment property negative gearing benefit 10% a year, over a decade. This gives everyone affected time to consider what to do. Do they jump out of the market this year and sell, or maybe next year? Maybe they increase the rental price, because of the loss of some of the negative gearing benefit.
2. Reduce the capital gains tax discount over a similar time period. So, 5% a year. However, if you have multiple investment properties you get to decide which is affected the least, and which is affected the most. You get to rank them, 1 through x. If you have 10, then the 10th ranked property only gets a 5% CGT discount in the first year, and zero the year after that. The 9th ranked would get 10%, then 5% discount and then zero. If you have more than 10, then you get zero CGT discount.
This does mean that corporations that own huge numbers of houses are disincentivised to do so.
3. Reduce the first home owners grant by 10% a year, over a decade. Or maybe an even shallower slope on this reduction. This will probably be the hardest sell to the general population, because it looks like free money for those trying to buy a house. Or maybe just $2,000/year.
These two, decade long plans would affect the house prices in Australia over the entire decade. At no point in time can anyone say "This is going to send me bankrupt". Clearly given signals over a long period of time is the only viable solution.
PRICES MUST FALL IN RELATION TO INCOME. This is the central problem that no one wants to admit or accept.
This is the hard part. Getting current home owners to accept that continual price increases cannot continue. And if they do, eventually a price collapse will occur and it will go badly. Much better to orchestrate a gentle stagnation, over a decade, than a general collapse that will decimate huge numbers of people.
It would mean a decade or two of stagnant house price growth. This is the point. To allow prices to gradually fall in relation to incomes, to allow average people to be able to afford to buy a house to live in. Eventually. There are no two ways around this.
This is is.
These are my thoughts on the housing problem, in Australia.
(If I'm wrong somewhere, please don't just say I'm a dickhead, politely point out where I'm wrong and why.
This article was released AFTER I wrote the majority of this, and certainly after the concept was in mind. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/...e-greens-what-s-at-stake-20240917-p5kb4l.html
There is one fundamental problem with our housing market.
Demand.
Pricing is determined by Supply AND Demand.
Supply might be a problem. But it’s hard to just ‘make more houses’. It’s a multi-year problem. You need more tradies, more land, more building materials. You can’t just magic that shit up.
Demand is more easily amenable to altering. And demand is driving up the price to unsustainable levels.
Demand is partly driven higher by large government support in various guises.
Things like first home owners grant, which is supposed to make houses more affordable to first home buyers, by giving them additional funds to purchase a house. But it just drives the price up by that amount. Because people have more money to spend. If people can spend more money, they will.
The LNP plan of allowing people to raid their superannuation (it's a retirement fund, not a bank account) of up to $50,000 (limited to 40% of total superfund available) to buy a house, is bad on so many levels it's just comically bad. It's James Bond super villain bad.
- It will just encourage price growth because more people have more money to throw at the purchase price.
- It will hugely lower people’s retirement funds, because they spent it all on a house.
- It also won't work, because most younger people, looking to buy a house don't have that much in Superannuation, so it won't even work.
- Because of the above, more people will rely more heavily on government funded pensions, making the federal government even more funds limited.
This plan will only make the house price situation worse. But LNP like it, because superannuation is an ALP plan, and so it has to be killed. Which is hard, because
a) the population like the general idea and
b) the superannuation industry is a $3 Trillion behemoth that doesn't want its money taken away.
Negative gearing.
(For non-Australians, this means you can take an income loss from the rental property and apply it against your regular taxable income, lowering your tax payable). In effect, tax payers help pay the mortgage. Any change (read, reduction) to negative gearing will not be popular with a large number of voters that have 2nd or 3rd of 10th houses they rent out. This has enormous impact on how desirable housing is as an investment. But only if you're wealthy enough to afford multiple mortgages.
Capital Gains tax discount.
For the family home that you live in, any capital gains are tax free. So, if you buy a house for $250,000 and 10 years later sell it for $750,000 you effectively had an annual income of $50,000/year. Tax free. That is a damn good return, for a thing you needed to buy in the first place. Of course, you then need to go buy another house that has probably appreciated just as much.
Capital gains tax discount should remain at 100% for owner occupied housing. This encourages people to own the home they live in. This should be encouraged by the various levels of government. Just don’t go to crazy as the USA did in 2004 – 2007 on the subject.
For investment properties, the Capital Gains Tax discount is 50%. So, in the above example, when you sell the property, you earn $500,000 and pay capital gains tax on only $250,000 of it. Again, a massive tax benefit to the (already) wealthy.
All the above drive demand for property. Demand helps drive the price higher.
And the benefits can be so huge that even renting the property out is pointless. It's just hassle you have to deal with, for what? If you rent it out to high, you lose some the negative gearing benefit as you get taxable income from the rental. But have the hassle of maintaining the property, and dealing with tenants. It’s easier to buy the property, keep it empty and pocket the capital gains.
Adding supply won't significantly affect the price. Because price is barely governed by people looking to buy a house to live in, but by those looking for an investment. If that investment is less attractive, the price will drop.
As much as I'd like to say he's wrong, Xi Jinping is right "Houses are for living in, not investment".
We have to change things, so that ordinary Australians can actually afford a house.
Xi Jinping is wrong though, in the way to go about fixing it.
The Chinese solution was to just kill the housing industry. So they did and now it's dead.
They killed a problem a decade in the making, overnight. And they will be paying for it until the end of the 21st century (because of other simultaneous problems).
The Australian housing problem has been decades in the making. Negative gearing has been around since 1936. The 50% discount capital gains tax was done in 1999. If we can fix it in 10 years, that would be a good. I don't think it's impossible.
First, we have to get all major political parties to agree that house prices are a problem, and that part of the source of the problem is federal government tax incentives. Without this agreement, any reform is nearly impossible. We also need them to agree not to fuck the agreement over for short term political goals (hey, I can dream).
We can't just abolish negative gearing or the capital gains tax overnight. That will just cause a massive dislocation in the housing market. This is something that will screw Australia over for decades.
My suggestions are over a long period of time. And they basically all revolve around getting the government out of distorting the market.
0. Don't let the LNP do the superannuation for housing thing. It's so stupid.
1. Reduce the investment property negative gearing benefit 10% a year, over a decade. This gives everyone affected time to consider what to do. Do they jump out of the market this year and sell, or maybe next year? Maybe they increase the rental price, because of the loss of some of the negative gearing benefit.
2. Reduce the capital gains tax discount over a similar time period. So, 5% a year. However, if you have multiple investment properties you get to decide which is affected the least, and which is affected the most. You get to rank them, 1 through x. If you have 10, then the 10th ranked property only gets a 5% CGT discount in the first year, and zero the year after that. The 9th ranked would get 10%, then 5% discount and then zero. If you have more than 10, then you get zero CGT discount.
This does mean that corporations that own huge numbers of houses are disincentivised to do so.
3. Reduce the first home owners grant by 10% a year, over a decade. Or maybe an even shallower slope on this reduction. This will probably be the hardest sell to the general population, because it looks like free money for those trying to buy a house. Or maybe just $2,000/year.
These two, decade long plans would affect the house prices in Australia over the entire decade. At no point in time can anyone say "This is going to send me bankrupt". Clearly given signals over a long period of time is the only viable solution.
PRICES MUST FALL IN RELATION TO INCOME. This is the central problem that no one wants to admit or accept.
This is the hard part. Getting current home owners to accept that continual price increases cannot continue. And if they do, eventually a price collapse will occur and it will go badly. Much better to orchestrate a gentle stagnation, over a decade, than a general collapse that will decimate huge numbers of people.
It would mean a decade or two of stagnant house price growth. This is the point. To allow prices to gradually fall in relation to incomes, to allow average people to be able to afford to buy a house to live in. Eventually. There are no two ways around this.
You make a lot of valid points.
One problem I see with falling house prices is the banks. If house prices fall, a lot of people will find themselves paying off mortgages that are higher than what their property is nominally worth (i.e. what it would sell for in the current market). The banks will not want to deal with that 'risk' (I am putting 'risk' in quotes because banks are very cavalier about what they accept as risks and what they don't). They will call in a lot of loans.
I think they will have to be made to deal with it. Vis-á-vis massive and increasing bank profits, not least enabled by the housing market, I think there needs to be very stringent regulation for these scenarios, that the banks can't worm out of.
I do not know how that will work politically.
One problem I see with falling house prices is the banks. If house prices fall, a lot of people will find themselves paying off mortgages that are higher than what their property is nominally worth (i.e. what it would sell for in the current market). The banks will not want to deal with that 'risk' (I am putting 'risk' in quotes because banks are very cavalier about what they accept as risks and what they don't). They will call in a lot of loans.
I think they will have to be made to deal with it. Vis-á-vis massive and increasing bank profits, not least enabled by the housing market, I think there needs to be very stringent regulation for these scenarios, that the banks can't worm out of.
I do not know how that will work politically.
Additionally, we see so many people who do mortgage themselves to the hilt then are <shocked Picachu face> when the RBA lifts rates and a 0.25% increase puts them in danger of losing their home.
Anyone who borrows the absolute max and who doesn't factor in at least a few rate hikes over the lifetime of their mortgage is setting themselves up for failure. If the rate hikes don't happen then woohoo, you pay off your mortgage early.
My thoughts were to actively try and prevent any significant price drop, by causing any significant immediate change.
Yes, price stagnation. But not a price drop.
And some people who badly over borrowed on an expectation of continual price growth, well they won't get that.
I don't see why a bank would call a mortgage just because the owners are currently under water. But, as I said, I don't know much. That is just a guaranteed way to piss off, well, everyone. Especially the Politicians, because it would make them look bad as well.
Yes, price stagnation. But not a price drop.
And some people who badly over borrowed on an expectation of continual price growth, well they won't get that.
I don't see why a bank would call a mortgage just because the owners are currently under water. But, as I said, I don't know much. That is just a guaranteed way to piss off, well, everyone. Especially the Politicians, because it would make them look bad as well.
If nothing else, that would just be a good way for the bank to lose however much they are underwater by. After all, at that point there is no reason not to default on the loan. Though, honestly, I doubt that the banks still own the loans. After all, when you can turn them into an annuity there is no need to keep the risk.
Australia doesn't have non recourse loans.
We're on the hook for the loan amount, you can't just drop the key off and walk away.
And a fixed rate mortgage, your on the hook for the whole lot, principal and calculated interest.
That's a reasonable counterpoint, to be clear. The industry is still very predatory for/on those who don't understand stuff very well, and don't have family to actively help protect their best interests. It's also the case that since the industry became for profit, the return on money given to operators by government has declined sharply. Profits are prioritised over service delivery all day every day at the home where mum is, and its one of the better ones, compared to some others Ive visited. I think for profit centres should be held to much higher standards than they currently are. Mum asks to be moved quite often, but we've very little confidence on where she might land, after exiting the frying pan...
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I just fucking cannot with these Coalition dipshits. From a story in The Guardian about the budget tonight:
Jesus christ, young people can't enter the housing market because the housing market is fucked BECAUSE of all the tax breaks that have allowed (primarily older) investors to buy up a shit ton of housing and price young people out of being able to own their own home! And of course, they just cannot resist calling anything that would make things fairer a "tax". God they're a pack of arseholes.
(Bold mine.)
Jesus christ, young people can't enter the housing market because the housing market is fucked BECAUSE of all the tax breaks that have allowed (primarily older) investors to buy up a shit ton of housing and price young people out of being able to own their own home! And of course, they just cannot resist calling anything that would make things fairer a "tax". God they're a pack of arseholes.
Jane Hume basically blames Labor for the by-election loss in Farrer.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-11/jane-hume-farrer-byelection-loss-labor-lack-balls/106583906
The cognitive dissonance in this one is off the charts.
First off on the rumours that PHON might become part of the Coalition:
Then this one:
Well yes, you couldn't get rid of your first female leader quickly enough, and that's what you got.
So you're saying one person from the Liberal party has held this seat for 25 years and delivered nothing but worse standards of living to their electorate? I don't blame people there for wanting change. (I do blame them for voting in a fascist)
Can't go without a bit of Labor blaming:
Lastly:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-11/jane-hume-farrer-byelection-loss-labor-lack-balls/106583906
The cognitive dissonance in this one is off the charts.
First off on the rumours that PHON might become part of the Coalition:
No it's not. There's nothing impossible about saying "no". You declaring this question "impossible to answer" just means to want to keep your options open without having to backflip on something you said. Which means you're definitely considering the possibility and are not opposed to it.
Then this one:
Well yes, you couldn't get rid of your first female leader quickly enough, and that's what you got.
So you're saying one person from the Liberal party has held this seat for 25 years and delivered nothing but worse standards of living to their electorate? I don't blame people there for wanting change. (I do blame them for voting in a fascist)
Can't go without a bit of Labor blaming:
Sounds to me like you were just hoping that Labor might split the vote that otherwise went to PHON, and thus hand you a win. Toughies.
Lastly:
How on earth is any of that "different"?
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