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Trump role in Melbourne CBD office market's suburb-sized hole

Trump role in Melbourne CBD office market's suburb-sized hole

News.com.au17-07-2025
Melbourne's CBD has a suburb-sized hole in its office market as workers refusing to return and Donald Trump's tarrifs further delay it's already difficult recovery from the pandemic.
Commercial real estate firm JLL research shows the city recorded its second straight quarterly improvement in increasing office space take up in the past quarter, with 11,900sq m more space filled at the end of June than at the end of March.
They've estimated rising demand chewed through 50,000sq m of vacant office buildings across the first half of 2025, dragging the CBD's total office vacancy rate back below more than a million square metres, where it peaked late last year.
Annabel McFarlane, Head of Strategic Research at JLL calculated that without any major changes to the available supply of office space, about 385,870sq m of it, an area bigger than the Botanic Gardens, still needed to be filled in order to recover to its 10-year average vacancy rate of 11.2 per cent.
Currently, about 18.2 per cent of the city's office space, or 983,830sq m is empty — bigger than some suburbs, including Ripponlea and Gardenvale, and close to the size of Cremorne and Deepdene.
'However, we are already seeing the best assets and locations start to fill up,' Ms McFarlane said.
'Melbourne's CBD prime net effective rental growth returned to positive in the second quarter of 2025 and secondary net effective rents have stabilised.'
If the city continued to fill another 50,000sq m of office space every six months, it would take most of four years to get back to its pre-pandemic self.
However, JLL joint head of leasing advisory Nick Drake said it was likely to be faster than this, with rising population driving increased demand for space in the CBD — as well as a trend of head offices for major firms heading to the city from the suburbs this year, including Coles, home builder Simonds and logistics firm Toll Group.
'Melbourne's demand factors are stronger than a lot of the rest of the country, and it's affordable compared to other cities,' Mr Drake said.
'There will also be some buildings that will be converted to other uses. And there's some sites that have just been shelved for now as development is hard to stack up, so we won't see a lot more coming up for the rest of the decade.'
He added that there could also be significant boosts to leasing activity as fallout from US President Donald Trump's tariff policies settles in the coming months, with the confidence boost that stability would bring potentially enough to fill another MCG or two of CBD office space.
With the past quarter's office uptake softer than the first three months of the year, Mr Drake noted many businesses were looking but not committing to leases amid the fallout of Trump's announcements.
Another major change of direction could come if more businesses set return to office mandates, with a growing share of CBD-based firms now requiring their staff to attend the building at least three days a week.
Melbourne became the most locked-down city in the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, and its office workers have been among the slowest in the nation to return to their buildings.
That lack of staff returning has led to a number of large operators downsizing office spaces in the city's centre, and to it having the highest vacancy rate in the nation.
By contrast to the Victorian capitals more than 18 per cent vacancy rate in June, less than 10 per cent of Brisbane's office space is currently seeking a tenant.
And while Melbourne's June quarter office space absorption covered 11,900sq m, the figure in Sydney was 23,500.
Further positives in the JLL market analysis included a 1.4 per cent increase in rents over the past three months.
There is also rising strength in the city's most popular destinations, with the east end of Collins St, also known as the Paris end of the popular strip, now becoming difficult for firms to find any space in.
Demand is also up at the west end of Collins, and improving in Docklands, but relatively flat around most other parts of the CBD.
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How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?
How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?

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time2 hours ago

  • ABC News

How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?

Sam Hawley: How easy is it to trick the Australian Tax Office? Well, for fraudsters it's not hard at all and plenty have done it costing taxpayers billions of dollars that have never been recovered. Today, Angus Grigg on his Four Corners investigation into the biggest GST scam in history and how the ATO dropped the ball. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Angus, you've been hard at work looking into what's going on at the Australian Tax Office. And you've really been having a deep look into this huge GST scam. Now, this unfolded in no other than Mildura in north-west Victoria. So, take me there and tell me about local resident Sarah. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Mildura is a really beautiful town, an irrigation town on the Murray in North West Victoria. And this GST scam really took off in Mildura. And it really was circulating within a sort of population that you might say is low socioeconomic groups, people on welfare, people with addiction issues. 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And so she logged into her myGov account and first of all, claimed $15,000 and then did it a second time and got another $15,000. 'Sarah': I don't even really still understand how it went through. I was a single parent and then all of a sudden I'm a hairdresser that's getting this return put into my account with no other payments from clients or anything like that to balance it was needed. Like no proof. Angus Grigg: Now, bear in mind, the money went into the same account as her welfare payments and the money went within about 10 days without any verification, without any checks, without anyone from the tax office ringing and saying, what did you spend this money on? Do you have hairdressing qualifications? Have you hired premises? You know, she just absolutely couldn't believe how easy it was. 'Sarah': Yeah, I just couldn't believe it that it was just sitting there on my everyday access debit bank card. 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But in doing that, they really opened the door up to fraud. Sam Hawley: Right. Sure. So the tax office wants to streamline things. But in the meantime, people like Sarah are all of a sudden dabbling in fraud. And as we've mentioned, she's not the only one. There's a lot of other people doing a very similar thing. Tell me about Linden Phillips. What was he up to? Angus Grigg: Linden Phillips, once again from Mildura, for us, he was like patient zero. It looks like he was the really one of the very, very early people in this scam. So what happens is that Linden Phillips gets out of jail in August 2021. And he already has a company registered. And so he reactivates his GST registration through his ABN and his MyGov account. And then within a couple of weeks of getting out of jail, he does what I'd sort of call a test run. And he claims $13,000 in GST refunds from the tax office. Once again, no documents, no receipts, no verification required. 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They write him some letters. He ignores them all. And the really damning thing here is the tax office does nothing for four months. And in that four month period, this scam absolutely explodes. So what we did is we went back and we deconstructed, if you like, the tax office's narrative. And the narrative was that this fraud took off on social media. The tax office noticed it. They cracked down really hard, really quickly, and they brought it under control. Now we sort about testing that idea. Sam Hawley: So the ATO says it did this great job. It cracked down on this fraud. But what actually happened? Because you actually had a look at that and discovered, in fact, the ATO didn't do much at all. Angus Grigg: No, exactly. So Linden Phillips does finally get caught, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the ATO. It all comes down to the smarts of a local detective in Mildura named Vanessa Power. Now, she is attending Phillips's house on a drugs and gun charge, and she searches his premises, his house, and she confiscates a phone. And using the sort of smarts that the ATO should be employing, she sees that on his phone there appears to be a pretty elaborate GST scam. And in fact, it looks as though that Linden Phillips had helped 60 other people perpetrate this scam. Linden Phillips is arrested. And then a few weeks later, the ATO finally launch what they call Operation Protego, which is to crack down on this GST scam. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. And at that point, of course, Sarah, who we spoke about earlier, she was also arrested back in December 2022. But the thing is, the money, it's sort of gone, right? 'Sarah': I can't pay it back. It's not even an option at the moment. Or it probably never will be. Sam Hawley: Is there any way the tax office can actually get these funds back? Angus Grigg: Well, this is the point, right? 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Sam Hawley: Angus, despite everything that you have said, which is frankly really concerning, the ATO itself thinks it's doing a pretty good job, right? Because Chris Jordan, who was the tax commissioner up until 2024, he's been putting a rather positive spin on the ATO's work. Angus Grigg: Yeah. This is the really extraordinary thing. Despite all these scandals, the ATO tells us they are doing a great job. Just before Chris Jordan stepped down as tax commissioner, he did a victory lap, if you like, at the National Press Club, and he pointed out all the great, terrific things that the ATO has done. Chris Jordan, Tax Commissioner, 2013-24: We've successfully charted a massive program of transformation. We've cut red tape and we've modernised our administration of the tax system as part of the digital revolution to make tax just happen.

Labor to introduce Bill to cap PBS-listed scripts at $25, PM dodges questions on super tax
Labor to introduce Bill to cap PBS-listed scripts at $25, PM dodges questions on super tax

News.com.au

time6 hours ago

  • News.com.au

Labor to introduce Bill to cap PBS-listed scripts at $25, PM dodges questions on super tax

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CFMEU stain on our society must be removed
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Sydney Morning Herald

time9 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

CFMEU stain on our society must be removed

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