3 days ago
We're trading repairs for housing affordability
SINCE 2022, there have been regular flooding events occurring along the entire Australian east coast, from north Queensland through NSW to Victoria. They have resulted in tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
Houses damaged and destroyed in the Lismore floods of 2022 are still being repaired or rebuilt so that their owners can live in them once more. Flood events since then have occurred in Cairns, Ingham, Townsville, Brisbane, Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Taree, the Hunter Valley, the Sydney Basin and areas down the south coast into Victoria. That's all within just two and a half years. All areas hit by such disasters require renovation and rebuilding of people's homes.
In the most recent floods, authorities estimate 10,000 houses have been affected. Thousands of tradespeople are engaged in the repair and reconstruction of these homes. With so many tradespeople occupied in these rebuild programs as disasters keep coming, the workforce required to construct the large numbers of new houses to address the general housing shortage just doesn't exist. Trying to train substantial numbers of new tradespeople to address the scale of the shortage seems impossible.
It is reasonable to presume that more disasters, such as floods and fires, will provide plenty of ongoing reconstruction work and take large numbers of tradespeople away from new home builds. In two or three years, I expect they will still be repairing and rebuilding homes in Kempsey and Taree.
Substantially reducing immigration into Australia for a number of years to allow a catch-up in the workload is required. The problem with that, of course, is that to maintain our economy and standard of living, it is reliant on an ever-increasing level of migration into this country.
Many people would be surprised by how important it is to have a high level of immigration occurring on a constant basis. It's very much like an ongoing Ponzi scheme. If you stop, the whole system (economy and living standard) goes into decline.
Things are bad enough now, but I believe house prices are going to go up substantially, while availability will plateau, or at least not increase substantially.
THE Davidson Report found Newcastle council meetings were too long and overly political, from what I understand. So, at the first council meeting after the report, it felt like all the party politicians lined up to spend two hours attacking the lord mayor. One hour was devoted to recognising the University of Newcastle. It's not that hard to recognise; it's huge.
Perhaps a positive is that our elected party politicians are now all voting together, albeit on everything, to drive out any 'non-party' views. They seem united in backing the opposite of lord mayor Ross Kerridge to me. Wow, maybe party politics is dead in Newcastle.
HERE go the Boomers again, trying to kill off a proposed tax on super accounts over $3 million. They were successful in defeating changes to negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax concessions, so why not? This is a generation for whom university was free, jobs were plentiful, houses were cheap and for many, an era of two-income households. A lot of wealth was created.
They are also being supported by the taxpayer in retirement and have their hands out for whatever is on offer. This comes at a terrible cost to younger generations, who see the future as a continual struggle and unfairly carry the tax burden. We have real poverty in Australia, with children who go without, which limits their potential. We have homelessness growing, and people living with insecurity over food, housing and healthcare. It is not good enough and can only be addressed through fair and sweeping tax reform. The Labor government has six years to turn the growing inequality gap around and we must all pay where we can afford to do so. The vulgar displays of wealth in this country show a cohort who have not paid enough tax and don't seem to think they owe society, from which they have done very well, any recompense. The pressure on public hospitals, schools, social housing and welfare is not sustainable. End the bleating from those who can afford to pay.
TWO recent opinion pieces made some good points. One by Mark Kenny on party politics, and another on super changes by Jack Thrower. Thrower is an economist with the Australia Institute, which claims to be non-partisan. It was started by former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton and its director, Richard Denniss, is a former senior strategic advisor to Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, who taught at the Newcastle University and the Australian National University (ANU). Mark Kenny also writes for The Canberra Times, a left-centre paper. He is a professor at ANU and a former Fairfax and ABC employee. He is the director of the National Press Club. Their opinions are relevant, but thanks to the Herald, we can look at those opinions with more insight. Mind you, if you want a left-wing opinion, on just about anything, you can get it from the ANU.
Even if the City of Newcastle was considered high performing, clearly some common sense is missing in the hard rubbish collection section ("Flooding leads to fight over rubbish", Newcastle Herald 23/5) if poor residents affected by flooding are told to wait and take their rotting rubbish inside. How about organising a priority collection for them? I'm sure those not affected by flooding could wait another week. It's not rocket science.
MICHAEL Hinchey is spot on ("The centre is where you must hold", Letters, 28/5). The near-defunct Coalition needs to stop pandering to the climate change deniers (an ever-diminishing minority) and state clearly and categorically that they accept the reality of anthropomorphic climate change. Until they do so, they'll remain an anachronistic irrelevant force in Australian politics.
Did 'Macadamus' predict the Coalition band getting back together? They won't pull a crowd, but they don't have to; the band just has to sit back and watch Albo turn into Milli Vanilli.
I WONDER if Steve Barnett ("Insurgents are survivors somehow", Letters, 27/5) knows he is talking about old Israeli propaganda, suddenly replaced by 'Hamas is using the food to buy weapons.' From who? The surrounding Israeli Army. Then it changed to 'They are using it to buy war materials'. What, rubble? Then it morphed into selling it to get money from Palestinians. Why, when they can just take the money? None of these things can happen if there is enough food in Gaza to begin with.
TO those who pen long, biased political dissertations, I say there's none so blind as those who do not want to see.
SINCE 2022, there have been regular flooding events occurring along the entire Australian east coast, from north Queensland through NSW to Victoria. They have resulted in tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
Houses damaged and destroyed in the Lismore floods of 2022 are still being repaired or rebuilt so that their owners can live in them once more. Flood events since then have occurred in Cairns, Ingham, Townsville, Brisbane, Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Taree, the Hunter Valley, the Sydney Basin and areas down the south coast into Victoria. That's all within just two and a half years. All areas hit by such disasters require renovation and rebuilding of people's homes.
In the most recent floods, authorities estimate 10,000 houses have been affected. Thousands of tradespeople are engaged in the repair and reconstruction of these homes. With so many tradespeople occupied in these rebuild programs as disasters keep coming, the workforce required to construct the large numbers of new houses to address the general housing shortage just doesn't exist. Trying to train substantial numbers of new tradespeople to address the scale of the shortage seems impossible.
It is reasonable to presume that more disasters, such as floods and fires, will provide plenty of ongoing reconstruction work and take large numbers of tradespeople away from new home builds. In two or three years, I expect they will still be repairing and rebuilding homes in Kempsey and Taree.
Substantially reducing immigration into Australia for a number of years to allow a catch-up in the workload is required. The problem with that, of course, is that to maintain our economy and standard of living, it is reliant on an ever-increasing level of migration into this country.
Many people would be surprised by how important it is to have a high level of immigration occurring on a constant basis. It's very much like an ongoing Ponzi scheme. If you stop, the whole system (economy and living standard) goes into decline.
Things are bad enough now, but I believe house prices are going to go up substantially, while availability will plateau, or at least not increase substantially.
THE Davidson Report found Newcastle council meetings were too long and overly political, from what I understand. So, at the first council meeting after the report, it felt like all the party politicians lined up to spend two hours attacking the lord mayor. One hour was devoted to recognising the University of Newcastle. It's not that hard to recognise; it's huge.
Perhaps a positive is that our elected party politicians are now all voting together, albeit on everything, to drive out any 'non-party' views. They seem united in backing the opposite of lord mayor Ross Kerridge to me. Wow, maybe party politics is dead in Newcastle.
HERE go the Boomers again, trying to kill off a proposed tax on super accounts over $3 million. They were successful in defeating changes to negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax concessions, so why not? This is a generation for whom university was free, jobs were plentiful, houses were cheap and for many, an era of two-income households. A lot of wealth was created.
They are also being supported by the taxpayer in retirement and have their hands out for whatever is on offer. This comes at a terrible cost to younger generations, who see the future as a continual struggle and unfairly carry the tax burden. We have real poverty in Australia, with children who go without, which limits their potential. We have homelessness growing, and people living with insecurity over food, housing and healthcare. It is not good enough and can only be addressed through fair and sweeping tax reform. The Labor government has six years to turn the growing inequality gap around and we must all pay where we can afford to do so. The vulgar displays of wealth in this country show a cohort who have not paid enough tax and don't seem to think they owe society, from which they have done very well, any recompense. The pressure on public hospitals, schools, social housing and welfare is not sustainable. End the bleating from those who can afford to pay.
TWO recent opinion pieces made some good points. One by Mark Kenny on party politics, and another on super changes by Jack Thrower. Thrower is an economist with the Australia Institute, which claims to be non-partisan. It was started by former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton and its director, Richard Denniss, is a former senior strategic advisor to Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, who taught at the Newcastle University and the Australian National University (ANU). Mark Kenny also writes for The Canberra Times, a left-centre paper. He is a professor at ANU and a former Fairfax and ABC employee. He is the director of the National Press Club. Their opinions are relevant, but thanks to the Herald, we can look at those opinions with more insight. Mind you, if you want a left-wing opinion, on just about anything, you can get it from the ANU.
Even if the City of Newcastle was considered high performing, clearly some common sense is missing in the hard rubbish collection section ("Flooding leads to fight over rubbish", Newcastle Herald 23/5) if poor residents affected by flooding are told to wait and take their rotting rubbish inside. How about organising a priority collection for them? I'm sure those not affected by flooding could wait another week. It's not rocket science.
MICHAEL Hinchey is spot on ("The centre is where you must hold", Letters, 28/5). The near-defunct Coalition needs to stop pandering to the climate change deniers (an ever-diminishing minority) and state clearly and categorically that they accept the reality of anthropomorphic climate change. Until they do so, they'll remain an anachronistic irrelevant force in Australian politics.
Did 'Macadamus' predict the Coalition band getting back together? They won't pull a crowd, but they don't have to; the band just has to sit back and watch Albo turn into Milli Vanilli.
I WONDER if Steve Barnett ("Insurgents are survivors somehow", Letters, 27/5) knows he is talking about old Israeli propaganda, suddenly replaced by 'Hamas is using the food to buy weapons.' From who? The surrounding Israeli Army. Then it changed to 'They are using it to buy war materials'. What, rubble? Then it morphed into selling it to get money from Palestinians. Why, when they can just take the money? None of these things can happen if there is enough food in Gaza to begin with.
TO those who pen long, biased political dissertations, I say there's none so blind as those who do not want to see.
SINCE 2022, there have been regular flooding events occurring along the entire Australian east coast, from north Queensland through NSW to Victoria. They have resulted in tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
Houses damaged and destroyed in the Lismore floods of 2022 are still being repaired or rebuilt so that their owners can live in them once more. Flood events since then have occurred in Cairns, Ingham, Townsville, Brisbane, Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Taree, the Hunter Valley, the Sydney Basin and areas down the south coast into Victoria. That's all within just two and a half years. All areas hit by such disasters require renovation and rebuilding of people's homes.
In the most recent floods, authorities estimate 10,000 houses have been affected. Thousands of tradespeople are engaged in the repair and reconstruction of these homes. With so many tradespeople occupied in these rebuild programs as disasters keep coming, the workforce required to construct the large numbers of new houses to address the general housing shortage just doesn't exist. Trying to train substantial numbers of new tradespeople to address the scale of the shortage seems impossible.
It is reasonable to presume that more disasters, such as floods and fires, will provide plenty of ongoing reconstruction work and take large numbers of tradespeople away from new home builds. In two or three years, I expect they will still be repairing and rebuilding homes in Kempsey and Taree.
Substantially reducing immigration into Australia for a number of years to allow a catch-up in the workload is required. The problem with that, of course, is that to maintain our economy and standard of living, it is reliant on an ever-increasing level of migration into this country.
Many people would be surprised by how important it is to have a high level of immigration occurring on a constant basis. It's very much like an ongoing Ponzi scheme. If you stop, the whole system (economy and living standard) goes into decline.
Things are bad enough now, but I believe house prices are going to go up substantially, while availability will plateau, or at least not increase substantially.
THE Davidson Report found Newcastle council meetings were too long and overly political, from what I understand. So, at the first council meeting after the report, it felt like all the party politicians lined up to spend two hours attacking the lord mayor. One hour was devoted to recognising the University of Newcastle. It's not that hard to recognise; it's huge.
Perhaps a positive is that our elected party politicians are now all voting together, albeit on everything, to drive out any 'non-party' views. They seem united in backing the opposite of lord mayor Ross Kerridge to me. Wow, maybe party politics is dead in Newcastle.
HERE go the Boomers again, trying to kill off a proposed tax on super accounts over $3 million. They were successful in defeating changes to negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax concessions, so why not? This is a generation for whom university was free, jobs were plentiful, houses were cheap and for many, an era of two-income households. A lot of wealth was created.
They are also being supported by the taxpayer in retirement and have their hands out for whatever is on offer. This comes at a terrible cost to younger generations, who see the future as a continual struggle and unfairly carry the tax burden. We have real poverty in Australia, with children who go without, which limits their potential. We have homelessness growing, and people living with insecurity over food, housing and healthcare. It is not good enough and can only be addressed through fair and sweeping tax reform. The Labor government has six years to turn the growing inequality gap around and we must all pay where we can afford to do so. The vulgar displays of wealth in this country show a cohort who have not paid enough tax and don't seem to think they owe society, from which they have done very well, any recompense. The pressure on public hospitals, schools, social housing and welfare is not sustainable. End the bleating from those who can afford to pay.
TWO recent opinion pieces made some good points. One by Mark Kenny on party politics, and another on super changes by Jack Thrower. Thrower is an economist with the Australia Institute, which claims to be non-partisan. It was started by former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton and its director, Richard Denniss, is a former senior strategic advisor to Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, who taught at the Newcastle University and the Australian National University (ANU). Mark Kenny also writes for The Canberra Times, a left-centre paper. He is a professor at ANU and a former Fairfax and ABC employee. He is the director of the National Press Club. Their opinions are relevant, but thanks to the Herald, we can look at those opinions with more insight. Mind you, if you want a left-wing opinion, on just about anything, you can get it from the ANU.
Even if the City of Newcastle was considered high performing, clearly some common sense is missing in the hard rubbish collection section ("Flooding leads to fight over rubbish", Newcastle Herald 23/5) if poor residents affected by flooding are told to wait and take their rotting rubbish inside. How about organising a priority collection for them? I'm sure those not affected by flooding could wait another week. It's not rocket science.
MICHAEL Hinchey is spot on ("The centre is where you must hold", Letters, 28/5). The near-defunct Coalition needs to stop pandering to the climate change deniers (an ever-diminishing minority) and state clearly and categorically that they accept the reality of anthropomorphic climate change. Until they do so, they'll remain an anachronistic irrelevant force in Australian politics.
Did 'Macadamus' predict the Coalition band getting back together? They won't pull a crowd, but they don't have to; the band just has to sit back and watch Albo turn into Milli Vanilli.
I WONDER if Steve Barnett ("Insurgents are survivors somehow", Letters, 27/5) knows he is talking about old Israeli propaganda, suddenly replaced by 'Hamas is using the food to buy weapons.' From who? The surrounding Israeli Army. Then it changed to 'They are using it to buy war materials'. What, rubble? Then it morphed into selling it to get money from Palestinians. Why, when they can just take the money? None of these things can happen if there is enough food in Gaza to begin with.
TO those who pen long, biased political dissertations, I say there's none so blind as those who do not want to see.
SINCE 2022, there have been regular flooding events occurring along the entire Australian east coast, from north Queensland through NSW to Victoria. They have resulted in tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
Houses damaged and destroyed in the Lismore floods of 2022 are still being repaired or rebuilt so that their owners can live in them once more. Flood events since then have occurred in Cairns, Ingham, Townsville, Brisbane, Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Taree, the Hunter Valley, the Sydney Basin and areas down the south coast into Victoria. That's all within just two and a half years. All areas hit by such disasters require renovation and rebuilding of people's homes.
In the most recent floods, authorities estimate 10,000 houses have been affected. Thousands of tradespeople are engaged in the repair and reconstruction of these homes. With so many tradespeople occupied in these rebuild programs as disasters keep coming, the workforce required to construct the large numbers of new houses to address the general housing shortage just doesn't exist. Trying to train substantial numbers of new tradespeople to address the scale of the shortage seems impossible.
It is reasonable to presume that more disasters, such as floods and fires, will provide plenty of ongoing reconstruction work and take large numbers of tradespeople away from new home builds. In two or three years, I expect they will still be repairing and rebuilding homes in Kempsey and Taree.
Substantially reducing immigration into Australia for a number of years to allow a catch-up in the workload is required. The problem with that, of course, is that to maintain our economy and standard of living, it is reliant on an ever-increasing level of migration into this country.
Many people would be surprised by how important it is to have a high level of immigration occurring on a constant basis. It's very much like an ongoing Ponzi scheme. If you stop, the whole system (economy and living standard) goes into decline.
Things are bad enough now, but I believe house prices are going to go up substantially, while availability will plateau, or at least not increase substantially.
THE Davidson Report found Newcastle council meetings were too long and overly political, from what I understand. So, at the first council meeting after the report, it felt like all the party politicians lined up to spend two hours attacking the lord mayor. One hour was devoted to recognising the University of Newcastle. It's not that hard to recognise; it's huge.
Perhaps a positive is that our elected party politicians are now all voting together, albeit on everything, to drive out any 'non-party' views. They seem united in backing the opposite of lord mayor Ross Kerridge to me. Wow, maybe party politics is dead in Newcastle.
HERE go the Boomers again, trying to kill off a proposed tax on super accounts over $3 million. They were successful in defeating changes to negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax concessions, so why not? This is a generation for whom university was free, jobs were plentiful, houses were cheap and for many, an era of two-income households. A lot of wealth was created.
They are also being supported by the taxpayer in retirement and have their hands out for whatever is on offer. This comes at a terrible cost to younger generations, who see the future as a continual struggle and unfairly carry the tax burden. We have real poverty in Australia, with children who go without, which limits their potential. We have homelessness growing, and people living with insecurity over food, housing and healthcare. It is not good enough and can only be addressed through fair and sweeping tax reform. The Labor government has six years to turn the growing inequality gap around and we must all pay where we can afford to do so. The vulgar displays of wealth in this country show a cohort who have not paid enough tax and don't seem to think they owe society, from which they have done very well, any recompense. The pressure on public hospitals, schools, social housing and welfare is not sustainable. End the bleating from those who can afford to pay.
TWO recent opinion pieces made some good points. One by Mark Kenny on party politics, and another on super changes by Jack Thrower. Thrower is an economist with the Australia Institute, which claims to be non-partisan. It was started by former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton and its director, Richard Denniss, is a former senior strategic advisor to Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, who taught at the Newcastle University and the Australian National University (ANU). Mark Kenny also writes for The Canberra Times, a left-centre paper. He is a professor at ANU and a former Fairfax and ABC employee. He is the director of the National Press Club. Their opinions are relevant, but thanks to the Herald, we can look at those opinions with more insight. Mind you, if you want a left-wing opinion, on just about anything, you can get it from the ANU.
Even if the City of Newcastle was considered high performing, clearly some common sense is missing in the hard rubbish collection section ("Flooding leads to fight over rubbish", Newcastle Herald 23/5) if poor residents affected by flooding are told to wait and take their rotting rubbish inside. How about organising a priority collection for them? I'm sure those not affected by flooding could wait another week. It's not rocket science.
MICHAEL Hinchey is spot on ("The centre is where you must hold", Letters, 28/5). The near-defunct Coalition needs to stop pandering to the climate change deniers (an ever-diminishing minority) and state clearly and categorically that they accept the reality of anthropomorphic climate change. Until they do so, they'll remain an anachronistic irrelevant force in Australian politics.
Did 'Macadamus' predict the Coalition band getting back together? They won't pull a crowd, but they don't have to; the band just has to sit back and watch Albo turn into Milli Vanilli.
I WONDER if Steve Barnett ("Insurgents are survivors somehow", Letters, 27/5) knows he is talking about old Israeli propaganda, suddenly replaced by 'Hamas is using the food to buy weapons.' From who? The surrounding Israeli Army. Then it changed to 'They are using it to buy war materials'. What, rubble? Then it morphed into selling it to get money from Palestinians. Why, when they can just take the money? None of these things can happen if there is enough food in Gaza to begin with.
TO those who pen long, biased political dissertations, I say there's none so blind as those who do not want to see.
