Economist Peter Abelson has dropped a bomb on Sydney’s madly expensive land market, asserting the usual demand and supply equations have little influence on prices while major positive benefits are available from ending Stamp Duty and using land tax. His views only came to light after journalist Adam Creighton used FOI to prise his report […]
In 2015 Dr. Cameron Murray released an influential paper investigating the nexus between relationship networks and land rezonings in Queensland. Fairfax journalist Michael Pascoe stated the paper ‘should have brought down state and local governments, sparked a royal commission and radically changed the Australian housing industry’. Murray has built on this game theory approach in […]
Dear supporters, The work of Prosper Australia is being discussed more often by government and independent economists. More economic journalists are now referring to the good sense of introducing a range of better land taxation measures. Meetings with the Victorian Treasury and the State Revenue Office are becoming commonplace. Our work has been referenced by […]
These two interesting quotes assist to make the Georgist case that land prices and taxes are both problematical:- (1) Richard Cobden: “Cheated, Robbed and Bamboozled” “I warn ministers, and I warn landlords and the aristocracy of this country, against forcing on the attention of the middle and industrial classes, the subject of taxation ….. If you […]
by Dr Gavin Putland WORKERS (i) pay rent, (ii) help their employers to pay rent, and (iii) raise some of the next generation of rent-payers. LAND SPECULATORS (i) receive economic rent for the gifts of nature, (ii) take the credit for providing them, and (iii) lobby governments for an ever-increasing supply of rent-payers. BANKS (i) […]
Melbourne City Council is wringing its hands again over developer land vagrancy – prime sites deliberately held vacant or with disused, dangerous buildings to assist developer lobbying of government for rezoning or advantageous building permits. The issue last hit the news when a wall collapsed at the old CUB site in Swanston Street in 2013 […]
Prosper President Catherine Cashmore is quoted in The Age with Land Bankers raise ire of the well-heeled. “Morally it’s not a good thing to do,” she said. “But let’s not blame the investors.” She pointed the finger at government policy: “The nation has been breastfed on the notion that the way to fund their retirement […]
In March last year, the NSW Supreme Court set aside the NSW Office of State Revenue’s assessment for land tax in 2009-13 on certain lands at Terranora in the Tweed Valley held by Metricon. The developer bought the $60m aggregation to subdivide for residential use. It side-stepped a land tax liability of around $1.2m per […]
The federal Treasurer Scott Morrison used parliament yesterday to fire an extraordinary broadside at Australia’s banking cartel. Conservative governments rarely indulge in the public thrashing of such major supporters of the status quo. Morrison and the Turnbull government are absolutely furious with the big 4 banks and Macquarie for their brazen pursuit of self-interest at […]
The NSW government is reneging on the small, high quality reform of funding emergency services with a land charge instead of the very bad levy on fire insurance. Blue-rinse dragons of Mosman saw red – they will be paying $500 a year on median land values of $1.84 million while scumbag Fairfield holders with a […]