Crispin Hull

The Property Council of Australia was at it again this week: hopping on the mantra of housing affordability to push for policy changes which would advantage their members.

The council’s policy changes are mainly about diverting money from other things into housing, mainly by cutting taxes and increasing government spending on housing, thereby reducing spending on health and education and so on, and by allowing people to dip into superannuation for housing, thereby putting a strain on public pensions later.

The council also wants a reduction in what it calls planning red tape.

(The full policy list can be seen at: www.propertyoz.com.au/nsw.)
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 25 November 2006 housing affordability”

The Property Council of Australia was at it again this week: hopping on the mantra of housing affordability to push for policy changes which would advantage their members.

The council’s policy changes are mainly about diverting money from other things into housing, mainly by cutting taxes and increasing government spending on housing, thereby reducing spending on health and education and so on, and by allowing people to dip into superannuation for housing, thereby putting a strain on public pensions later.

The council also wants a reduction in what it calls planning red tape.

(The full policy list can be seen at: www.propertyoz.com.au/nsw.)

Its policy stand is similar to that of several other major lobby groups: the Housing Industry Association, the Master Builders’ Association and the Real Estate Institute of Australia.
Continue reading “Forusm for Saturday 23 November 2006 housing affordability”

The public might well think that the High Court has abolished the states; that the constitutional world has be turned upside down and that the Federal Government can do whatever it likes.

That was the gist of nearly all the commentary on the High Court’s decision this week on the Government’s industrial relations law.

Settle down, folks. Settle down.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 18 November 2006 ir”

The chief business of the American people is business,” Republican President Calvin Coolidge said in the 1920s.

The US has often even made business out of war. Before the US belatedly entered the fray in World War I, it lent huge amounts of money to Britain in what should have been a joint enterprise to save the world from tyranny.

After the war, the US demanded repayment.

“They hired the money, didn’t they,” Coolidge said.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 11 November 2006 awb”

Politicians cannot help themselves. I say this advisedly because they could help themselves very easily by opening up a little. But, oh no, everything has to be a big secret. We know best, they say, and it is not in the public interest for the public to have information about how we arrived at our decisions, even though the public paid for it through their taxes.

This week former NSW Ombudsman Irene Moss handed down the Report of the National Audit of Free Speech. It cited hundreds of examples of needless government secrecy – needless in the sense that the only reason one could fathom for keeping it secret is that it would embarrass a government minister.

The audit was commissioned by the major media organisations as part of their Right to Know campaign.
Continue reading “Forum for 10 November 2007 FOI”

The housing market seems locked into some vicious circles at present. And there seems little chance that market forces can correct it while governments have so much control.

The predictions are pretty grim. Another one came in this week from economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel. It follows predictions from the Housing Industry Association and figures on what is happening now from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

They point in the same direction. Not enough dwellings – especially houses – are being built to meet demand, even with the slight surge in approvals reported this week.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 4 November 2006 housing”

A Canadian study shows the accident rate goes up by about 8 per cent on the day after daylight saving is introduced.

It is not an argument against daylight saving, because the study shows the rate falls by the same amount when daylight saving ends. It is more an argument about sleep deprivation and driving.

Anyway, people are probably more sleep-deprived all round in southern mainland Australia in October, as it gets light at impossibly early hours.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 28 October 2006 daylight madness”

The ABC’s 50-page “Introduction to the Editorial Policies 2007” may well be a rod for its own back, but sometimes it is a back that needs a rod taken to it.

ABC managing director Mark Scott delivered the document this week, ruffling a lot of feathers within the ABC and among print commentators and Labor and Green politicians.

Most commentary has been about the bias question (more on that anon). But perhaps a more significant change will come if Scott succeeds in his pledge to revamp the ABC’s complaints procedure.

The ABC, and broadcasters generally in Australia, have been too arrogant for too long.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 21 October 2006 abc editorial guidelines”

The Howard Government has developed the Hawke-Keating tricks of taking advantage of incumbency into an art form. However, its latest effort — in electoral law — might well backfire, just as one of Labor’s did.

As soon as it got its hands on a Senate majority, the Howard Government moved with indecent haste to push through its electoral changes which it has mendaciously called “Electoral Integrity” Acts. They became law earlier this year.

This week former Electoral Commissioner Colin Hughes and academic Brian Costar launched their book, Limiting Democracy, (UNSW Press and Australian Policy Online), in which they show how the changes reverse the direction of a century of democratic improvement in Australia.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 14 October 2006 elections”

Years ago Pryor did a wonderful cartoon of the Reverend Ian Paisley with a black, cavernous mouth out of which bats were flying.

Years later, the bats are still flying. Despite the IRA’s shown renunciation of violence, he wants more. He wants full retribution and reparation. He wants the IRA to repay all stolen money and turn in every perpetrator of every act of violence and theft to the police.

Northern Ireland is one of many countries formerly traumatised by internal conflict now emerging into peace. True, it had fewer victims, but its experience has similarities with that of South Africa, the Balkans, Rwanda, East Timor and Cambodia.

Invariably, some people – mainly victims — want to treat the acts of violence in the same way as crimes are treated in civil society whereas others – mainly perpetrators — want them to be treated as acts of soldiers in war.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 7 October 2006 retribution”