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The ABC’s recent Q+A housing special left many questions unasked and unanswered. Labor, Coalition and Green MPs all say they want more people to be able to buy their own homes. The most obvious way to achieve that would be to reduce the price of housing. Yet no politician will make that an explicit policy aim.
In the face of developments where the commons are intruded upon for private profit and economic efficiency, we need to treasure such unfashionable concepts as the commonwealth, the common good and the houses of commons – the places for deliberation and decision where what is in the common interest is given priority over the benefit of the few.
The aggregate picture of the economy may seem healthy enough after two years of heavy immigration, over 800,000, and the return of students and tourists. But the elephant in the room remains. Australia is a two-tiered society sharply divided between people who own homes and people who do not. The generational divide is worsening.
The key to combatting increasing levels of loneliness and social isolation will likely start in the way we think about cities, public spaces and social care to enable meaningful connections between people, and help to guard against harms caused by habitual loneliness. But we'll need to get creative.
What does it mean when ideas of scarcity – supposedly the driving principle in understanding supply and demand – are no longer the only or best way to think about economic activity? What is needed to understand the post-industrial environment is a new way of thinking about economics and finance.
Much of the discussion about tax reform is about the mechanisms of collection; around changes to things like negative gearing, stamp duty, land tax, capital gains tax, and superannuation. But what is missing is a statement of values about what we expect our tax system to fund.
In fiction, place often feels secondary. But when place comes alive in writing, it is a delight. When it’s a place that has shaped you, or continues to shape you, then your own mythology expands.
In Western societies, antisemitism is particularly noxious. To be understood, however, it needs to be precisely defined and set in the in the broader context of antipathy on racial, religious and other grounds.
As the world continues spiralling into total chaos, there remains, shockingly, absolutely nothing to watch on any streaming service. And I’m not talking about a lack of options – there’s enough content to drown in, while, ironically, leaving us parched. I know how Coleridge’s mariner must have felt.
Any legislation hastily designed to negate the effect of the High Court decisions will be vulnerable again to be struck down on judicial appeal. That haste suggests an initial disregard for human rights and the rule of law by Governments and an ingrained resistance to any limitation of its power. Vindictive laws come at a heavy cost to the integrity and reputation of the lawmakers.
Amid escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas, the focus should turn to the mounting stockpile of advanced arms. In our bid to secure a world worth living through weapons, we may annihilate it. Disarmament may seem utopian, but the real madness lies in an unchecked arms race.
Beneath the facade of Australian prosperity lies a hidden country where over three million citizens, including a staggering 761,000 children, grapple daily with the hard choices that come with poverty. With an urgent need for reform, what policy shifts could bring about the transformation this nation needs?