Australian Politics
Community upheaval as great Australian home ownership dream dies
Gottliebson rightly notes below that in Australia from here-on, it is going to be impossible from many young people to leave home. I and my contemporaries back in the '60s left home at age 16. Why? Because we could. Affordable rental accommodation was available -- even if only in a boarding house. That liberty is gone. The ever-growing power of ham-fisted governments has destroyed housing availability
For young people who do not have accommodating parents or available parents of any sort the only alternative is going to be shared accommodation, and that can be a difficult experience. So the aristocracy of the future is going to be those who have wise parents. If your parents worked and saved during their lifetime and were then able to buy and pay off a comfortable home, you too will be able to live in comfort and may inherit that home when they die.
But there will be many outside that aristocracy. There are always many people who become parents while poor who remain poor. They will have no advantage to offer their children. And even if you are lucky enough to get into social housing, your problems may not be over. Both the the quality of the housing and the quality of your neigbours will often be a problem. Welfare housing can be hell: Drugs, crime, violence, noise etc
So privilege in society will be more and more a function of your housing. If you have inherited comfortable and secure housing, you will be sitting pretty. If not you will face perennial difficulties. You may in some cases be capable enough to earn a high income and thus be able to break out of your inherited trap by buying a house of your own but that will be rare
The national concentration on issues like interest rates, inflation and the referendum is obscuring the fact that the Australian community of 2024 will be different to anything we have seen in the post WWII era.
Bankers tell me that in most cases couples on average incomes cannot obtain the finance to buy a capital city dwelling unless it is rundown or very small.
Renters aged in their late 40s find the finance door has been shut and they can no longer buy the most valuable asset they can have for retirement – a dwelling.
Accordingly, they must live with their family, rent and later get themselves into an aged care facility. The social ramifications of these fundamental changes are only just emerging.
Another fundamental change is also taking place. The affluent people in the community have cut back their spending partly because they fear a significant downturn and partly as almost a social contribution to help the Reserve Bank. Perhaps they know their children/grandchildren will need help.
In part the politicians of both major parties plus the regulator APRA have been key contributors to this state of affairs and so altering the environment will require them to change their policies.
In the case of home loans the “risk buffer” APRA requires banks to calculate over and above the interest rate being charged means that the interest rate calculations for loan eligibility are now around 10 per cent.
That means few people on average incomes can pass the test.
Meanwhile, partly as a result, we are set to experience a build for rent boom in our major cities, although in Sydney the bureaucracy mess which delays approvals and contributes to higher building costs will need to be first dismantled.
And to all that we can add higher power prices because of the renewables cost miscalculations.
In recent weeks I have been writing about the components of this social change on an individual event basis, but it is now time to stand back and look at what is happening overall.
We went through a period of unlimited bank credit to buy dwellings and a great many people purchased dwellings on loans that they now are having difficulty servicing.
After the banking royal commission and when rates were low, APRA set interest rate rules for home lending that are now making it impossible for ordinary Australians with good jobs to buy dwellings.
In normal times that would cause the dwellings to fall in price to bring those people back into the market. But a series of events including the crashes of building companies and difficulties in getting approvals has cut back supply and at the same time there has been a huge rise in migration.
Accordingly, dwelling prices have not fallen and indeed in recent times the prices have risen slightly. The banks want to lend more for housing but are not able to do so.
Unless the rules are changed bank profits are going to be tightened because their past great driver of profitability – home loans – particularly in Sydney – will be a low growth earner. Non bank lenders with higher funding costs will fill some of the gap.
But we will become much more of rental a society.
Accordingly, first overseas institutions and later our local institutions will build large complexes on a ‘build for rent’ basis so creating a very different Australian society to anything we have seen post war.
The process of course may be delayed if politicians make more mistakes by trying to artificially push down rents rather than foster greater supply. .
One of the great drivers of the Australian nation has been the belief that if a couple had reasonable jobs, they would be able to buy a house or an apartment. In turn that has been a major force in the aspirations of Australians. I fear that if it is removed then Australia will be a far less aspirational nation and that will reduce the productivity in smaller enterprises, large companies and of course the public service. That’s an assumption that will be legitimately debated.
Leaving that aside, clearly, we need more rental stock, and we will also need to make a decision as to whether we want to reserve home ownership to the affluent. And if that happens then don’t be surprised by further rises in the sort of community upheavals we are now starting to see particularly among males. (of course, the reason for those upheavals extends beyond housing issues).
But the group of people that I really feel sorry for are individuals and they can be couples but are often single females who suddenly discover that banks are not allowed to lend to them because they are too old to take out a 30-year loan.
And that leads us to a pillar that may be required to change if we want to restore a situation where people with reasonable jobs can buy a house. We established our superannuation movement in an era where people could buy dwellings. In my view the superannuation movement must now be adjusted to help members buy dwellings because superannuation has always been a secondary aid in retirement. The first essential is a dwelling. In future commentaries I will look at ways that this might be done.
Last month the retail network explained to me that their affluent customers had money but were holding back spending. That has now been confirmed in the banking figures --- the affluent are increasing their savings rate. They maybe be back in the market either late this year or in 2024.
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Sofronoff's revelations about the crooked Drumgold nearly got censored
It is worth considering why Andrew Barr, the chief minister of the ACT, is so cross with Walter Sofronoff.
Is it because Sofronoff breached protocol by providing his report on the Brittany Higgins-Bruce Lehrmann rape trial to journalists on an embargoed basis?
Or could it have something to do with the fact that this former judge made it impossible for Barr’s government to censor a report outlining serious misconduct at the heart of the ACT justice system?
Before receiving this report, Barr had made no secret of the fact that he was considering withholding certain sections from the public.
He issued a statement to this effect that was published in this newspaper on July 29. It said that subject to the contents of the report, and any legal implications, he intended to table all or part of the report this month.
The key words were “or part”.
There is no way of knowing whether this is what prompted Sofronoff to provide selected journalists with his full report on an embargoed basis.
Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice, who have written extensively on this affair, have not revealed where they received their advance copy of the report, but they have insisted they did not breach an embargo.
It is worth considering what might have happened but for Sofronoff, Albrechtsen and Rice.
If Barr’s plan had gone ahead, and those parts of the report with legal implications had been redacted, that would almost certainly have affected those sections that focus on Shane Drumgold, the outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions.
The nation might have been kept in the dark about the full extent of what Sofronoff described as Drumgold’s malpractice and grossly unethical conduct during the Higgins-Lehrmann trial.
It is understandable that Barr might feel aggrieved. He was considering censoring Sofronoff’s report and Sofronoff, Albrechtsen and Rice made that impossible.
But Barr was wrong to accuse Sofronoff, an immensely experienced former judge, of breaking the law by giving the report to the media.
Barr made that accusation at an emotional press conference on August 7 during which he departed from the measured approach of his formal joint statement with Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury.
When asked if Sofronoff’s actions amounted to a breach of the Inquiries Act, Barr said he was seeking advice on whether there had been a breach and if further action was required.
That’s when he should have stopped talking. Instead, he added: “A reasonably straight reading of section 17 of the Act would clearly indicate that it is. The question of whether there are any mitigating circumstances remains to be seen.”
This assessment is hard to reconcile with the plain words of the statute. It also seems odd when compared to what Barr said in his formal statement with Rattenbury.
The formal statement recognises that the Inquiries Act might need to be changed in order to ensure the release of future reports must be approved by the government.
Just consider that for a moment. If the statute needs to be changed to achieve that purpose, that means the current wording of the statute does not achieve that purpose.
And that means Sofronoff is off the hook.
This is what Barr and Rattenbury said in their formal statement: “The government will also consider changes to the Inquiries Act to strengthen provisions relating to the obligation of nondisclosure of information in section 17 prior to the formal release of an inquiry report.
“The intent of any changes will be to provide the ACT government and the Canberra community with assurance that the unapproved release that occurred on this occasion will not occur for any inquiry that may be commissioned in the future,” their statement said.
The problem for Barr is that section 17 was clearly designed to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of information “acquired by” boards of inquiry, such as documents obtained under subpoena.
It was not designed to impose penalties for the unauthorised disclosure of an inquiry’s report.
There is no mention in section 17 of reports produced by a board of inquiry.
If the Inquiries Act was intended to impose penalties for the unauthorised disclosure of reports it would not have done so in section 17 which seeks to prevent disclosure of documents and other information received by an inquiry.
Such a penalty would be found in the provision that deals with the question of what happens to completed reports.
That provision, section 14, says reports must be submitted to the chief minister. It does not say they must only be submitted to the chief minister.
That might explain why Barr’s careful joint statement with Rattenbury flagged the need for legislative change.
Sofronoff did not break the law when he provided embargoed copies of his report to the media. He broke protocol and angered the chief minister of the ACT.
But that seems a small price to pay compared to what was at stake. Barr had made it clear he was considering redacting this report, even before he received it.
That meant there was a real risk that the full extent of Drumgold’s misconduct might have remained hidden.
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Jacinta Price says ‘Australians don’t need to be welcomed to their own country’
Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman, Jacinta Price, has called for an end to welcome to country acknowledgments before every sporting event and public gathering because the practice is “wrong” and dividing the nation.
The attack comes after former prime minister Tony Abbott last week conceded he was “getting a little bit sick” of welcome to country, arguing the nation “belongs to all of us, not just to some of us.”
Senator Price, a Warlpiri-Celtic woman who grew up in Alice Springs and the leading campaign spokeswoman against Anthony Albanese’s constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament, said “Australians don’t need to be welcomed to their own country”.
“There is no problem with acknowledging our history, but rolling out these performances before every sporting event or public gathering is definitely divisive,” Senator Price told The Australian.
“It’s not welcoming, it’s telling non-Indigenous Australians ‘this isn’t your country’ and that’s wrong. We are all Australians and we share this great land.”
Peter Dutton last week said he thought that welcome to country was a “respectful way to acknowledge the Indigenous heritage of our country” but argued the practice was overdone and often used as an exercise in virtue signalling.
“I do get the point that when you go to a function and there’s an MC who I think appropriately can do recognition, you then get the next five or 10 speakers who each do their own acknowledgment to country, and frankly, I think it detracts from the significance of the statement that’s being made,” he told 2GB. “I think there are a lot of corporates that just do it because they think it’s what people want to hear.”
An acknowledgment of country is made every sitting day alongside the Lord’s Prayer in both the Senate and House of Representatives – a practice that was introduced in 2010.
A number of Coalition MPs on Sunday supported the substance of Senator Price’s comments, with Nationals Leader David Littleproud saying that welcome to country had “just gone over the top.”
“I think unfortunately what’s happened – it’s not just sporting events – you can go to a meeting and everyone makes an acknowledgment,” Mr Littleproud said. “I think it’s gone overboard. It’s gone too far. Is it necessary? I think it’s a reasonable question to ask.”
MP Keith Pitt said the welcome to country was supposed to be “culturally significant.”
“If that’s the case they should be treated as such, not thrown around on T-shirts, email signatures, video conferences and aircraft arrivals,” he said. “I think sensible management would be widely welcomed.”
South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic said the idea a “welcome” should be “constantly extended for Australians to be in their own country is tiresome and divisive”.
“Endless acknowledgments of country performed by white middle class professionals before meetings do little more than brick in their credentials in front of an imaginary court of wokeness approval,” he said.
“These clashes against Western values only subside when courage culture triumphs over cancel culture and the use of these gestures ceases.”
LNP senator Gerard Rennick said the welcome to country should be reserved for special occasions, arguing it was now an example of “virtue signalling that’s gone mad”.
“It’s overkill,” he said. “You feel like they are shoving it down your throat.”
In a piece for The Australian last November, Senator Price said welcome to country had become “a standard ritual practice before events, meetings and social gatherings” but argued she had received “more than my fill of being symbolically recognised”.
“It would be far more dignifying if we were recognised and respected as individuals in our own right who are not simply defined by our racial heritage but by the content of our character,” she said.
When he was prime minister, Scott Morrison adopted the practice of giving Australia’s veterans equal billing with Indigenous elders “past, present and emerging” when speaking at formal events and ceremonies.
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Albo’s fake truth-telling about "Voice"
As this magazine has pointed out, and not always tongue-in-cheek, wait long enough and today’s vehemently denounced conspiracy theory is tomorrow’s undisputed truth. This process reached epic proportions throughout and following the Covid years. Reading back-copies of The Spectator Australia from 2020 to 2022 is like an out-of-body experience as you stumble from one article to another that more or less accurately predicts what is now, belatedly, admitted to be the truth.
Foolishly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested a ‘conspiracy theory’ in parliament this week pertaining to his precious Voice. Or more particularly, pertaining to the stunning revelations by host Peta Credlin on Sky News Australia that rather than being a benign-looking one-page document covered in pretty patterns and signatures, the much-vaunted ‘symbolic’ Uluru Statement from the Heart actually runs to some 26 pages of detailed planning for a major restructure of this nation’s polity to bring about a self-governing Aboriginal nation. Moreover, this has to all intents and purposes been hidden from the public’s gaze until recently revealed under a freedom of information request. Why is this additional detail important? Because the Prime Minister has on some 30-plus occasions committed to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart ‘in full’. Therefore the public should have been shown the Uluru Statement ‘in full’.
Instead, the PM sought to belittle Ms Credlin’s revelations as conspiracy theory.
‘Nothing exposes the falseness of the arguments being put by the No campaign than this conspiracy theory….’ Mr Albanese said, before going for the gag. ‘I mean, what role did Marcia Langton play in the faking of the moon landing? There’s a whole lot of projection going on here, Mr Speaker, more projection than a film festival.’ And again: ‘That is a conspiracy in search of a theory… like the QAnon theories, we have all sorts of conspiracy stuff out there, but this is a ripper.’
Meanwhile, over at Sky News itself, host Chris Kenny, rather than congratulating his colleague Ms Credlin on a newsworthy story, opted to join in the prime ministerial denials. ‘I need to correct this furphy that the Uluru Statement is actually 26 pages long… it is simply not true,’ insisted an irate Mr Kenny, a zealous advocate for the Yes campaign. A furphy, of course, is Aussie slang for a ‘false rumour’, or ‘scuttlebutt’.
Within 24 hours Ms Credlin substantiated her claims. The full Uluru Statement from the Heart is 26 pages long and can be found as ‘Document 14’ on the NIAA website, she said, citing Megan Davis, one of the statement’s architects, who repeatedly insisted in public that the statement isn’t just one page but is ‘lengthy… around 18 to 20 pages’, as well as the government’s FOI lawyers who confirmed that Document 14 is the full Uluru Statement from the Heart. Presumably at the insistence of Labor heavies, certain individuals are now frantically back-tracking.
Has the Yes campaign been caught faking its own moon landing, at the behest of the Prime Minister? Have those being accused of peddling a ‘conspiracy theory’ in fact simply exposed a hidden truth?
The idea that the extra 25 pages are simply irrelevant bureaucratic note-taking is a nonsense, given that for months No campaigners have been demanding detail on many issues surrounding the functioning and purpose of the Voice and the literal relationship between ‘voice’, ‘treaty’, ‘makaratta’, ‘truth-telling’ (see Kel Richards revelatory piece in this week’s issue) and so on. Repeatedly the answer to these questions has been, ‘no one knows, we’ll work that out later’. Yet the answers to those questions are in black and white in Document 14, detailing the mechanisms and intentions of the framers of the Uluru Statement, of which the Voice is the all-important first step and legal mechanism to achieving everything else. Such as:
‘A constitutionally entrenched Voice to Parliament was… considered as a way by which the right to self-determination could be achieved.’
‘There was a concern that the proposed body would have insufficient power if its constitutional function was “advisory” only….’
‘Any Voice to Parliament should be designed so that it could support and promote a treaty-making process.’
‘A treaty could include a proper say in decision-making, the establishment of a truth commission, reparations, a financial settlement (such as seeking a percentage of GDP), the resolution of land, water and resources issues, recognition of authority and customary law, and determination, autonomy and self-government.’
‘The true history of colonisation must be told: the genocides, the massacres, the wars and the ongoing injustices and discrimination… [and] how First Nations Peoples have contributed to protecting and building this country.’
‘Treaty would be the vehicle to achieve self-determination, autonomy and self-government.’
‘…creation of a “Black Parliament”.’
On p. 26, ‘Road Map 3’ sees the Voice literally turn into a self-governing First Nation within its own borders. So is the Voice actually the precursor to a massive transfer of sovereignty, wealth and power?
Naah. That’s just a conspiracy theory
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/albos-fake-truth-telling
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a 
Sahara Ray is undoubtedly a good-looking woman. Since she is Australian-born there is even a possibility that we may be distantly related
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