By Kerry Robinson, General Manager, Blacktown City Council. This is the second of a two-part series adapted from presentations to the Planning Institute of Australia mid-winter breakfast on the 30 minute city; see part 1 by Professor Susan Thompson, City Futures Research Centre. Blacktown City is 20-22 km across and home to 348,000 people, 111,000 jobs […]
Entries Tagged as 'Housing'
The 30 Minute City (part 2): challenges and opportunities in Western Sydney
August 29th, 2016 · 1 Comment · Cities, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Transport, Wellbeing
Tags:Planning·Social housing
Housing’s back
July 12th, 2016 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing
One week on and the election has produced a government – which, for a while there, didn’t look like a sure thing. However, the more remarkable result of the election campaign was this: one of the major parties campaigned on reforming tax settings to reduce house price speculation and, having grasped what was long supposed to […]
Tags:Tax
Might Labor’s negative gearing policy yet save the housing market?
May 26th, 2016 · 1 Comment · Affordability, Construction, Government, Housing, Housing supply
Originally published at The Conversation. The Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) has unleashed the hounds on Labor’s proposed reforms to negative gearing. The REIA’s campaign, Negative Gearing Affects Everyone, follows the lead of the Property Council, which describes the Australian housing market as a “house of cards”, with the REIA stressing how “fragile” the […]
Tags:Tax
The Australian housing market is a house of cards
May 6th, 2016 · 2 Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing
When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that his government would change nothing about Australia’s tax settings on negative gearing and capital gains, one of the Sunday papers ran the headline ‘Safe as Houses‘. Hardly. The Australian housing market is a house of cards – and that’s the view of the property lobby itself, as depicted […]
Tags:Tax
Projections, targets, forecasts and models: how do Sydney’s metro strategies try to anticipate our future housing needs?
March 8th, 2016 · No Comments · Government, Housing, Housing supply
Please upgrade your browser By Laura Crommelin, Laurence Troy and Ray Bunker As the planning boffins out there will know, Sydney has been the subject of three metropolitan strategies in the past decade – 2005’s City of Cities, 2010’s Plan for 2036 and 2014’s Plan for a Growing Sydney. In a recent working paper, City […]
Tags:Planning
Tax reform for affordable housing: Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax proposals
February 18th, 2016 · No Comments · Affordability, Construction, Housing
By proposing to restrict negative gearing to new-built housing and reduce the tax discount for capital gains, Federal Labor has presented a real policy platform for more affordable housing. The high cost of housing in Australia – to buy, and to rent – is largely a product of our current tax settings, which favour highly-geared […]
Tags:Tax
Housing is overpriced because it is undertaxed
January 14th, 2016 · No Comments · Affordability, Housing
The Australia Institute is in the media this week with a proposal to tax capital gains on high-end owner-occupied housing. They’ve backed the call with modelling that shows the current exemption of owner-occupied housing (all owner-occupied housing, not just the high-end stuff) benefits high-income households the most: of the $46 billion in tax revenue foregone […]
Tags:Tax
The Political Economy of the Compact City: the Story from Sydney
December 4th, 2015 · No Comments · Cities, Government, Housing, Planning reform
There are few more contentious urban projects than Barangaroo, the history of which was recently described as “a quintessentially Sydney story”. It’s a description that highlights the complex and contested nature of Sydney’s urban renewal landscape, which is also revealed in a new City Futures Working Paper by Dr Raymond Bunker. Entitled The changing political […]
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When developers come knocking: why strata law shake-up won’t deliver cheaper housing
November 27th, 2015 · No Comments · Cities, Housing, Housing supply, Strata, Uncategorized
Originally published in The Conversation by Laurence Troy, Bill Randolph, Hazel Easthope and Laura Crommelin Recent changes to strata title legislation in NSW will remove the need for all owners to agree to sell or redevelop their apartment block as a whole. This means that some owners may now have their apartments sold against their […]
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Crtl+H the tax reform debate: find ‘GST’; replace with ‘land tax’
November 10th, 2015 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing
Here’s a tip for Federal and State politicians, and the people who advise them. Take the current debate on tax reform. Hit Ctrl+H. Find ‘GST’, replace with ‘land tax’. Hit return. Now you’ve got a positive agenda for tax reform.
Tags:Tax