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Keywords: Real Estate

  • ECONOMICS

    Why the rich are getting richer

    • David James
    • 19 November 2014
    6 Comments

    Investing capital in the production of goods and services may create jobs, but it's not the best way to make money. It's more profitable to manipulate the financial system to create more money from money, which is why the finance sector does so well. The polarisation of wealth is less extreme in Australia, but we have our own capital-driven Ponzi scheme - the residential property market, which has become an exercise in making money out of money. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Australian history through the eyes of a dirt digger

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 24 October 2014
    9 Comments

    Satirist David Hunt's best-selling Girt The Unauthorised History of Australia prompted Joe Hockey to offer him a job as speech writer. There’s plenty of dirt. Australia was the place to be, writes Hunt, 'unless you were black. Or a woman. Or gay. Or suspected of being Irish. Or even worse, all of the above'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Encounter at the gate

    • Brian Matthews
    • 12 September 2014
    6 Comments

    I'm standing at the front gate, about to go for a run when he swings round the corner. He speaks in a deep, modulated voice that seems to run on like a quiet stream. Just when you think you might answer, the flow smoothly resumes, and he is an adept prince of the non sequitur. 'Ever take a short cut through the cemetery?'

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  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's delayed GFC

    • David James
    • 08 September 2014
    7 Comments

    What is only now starting to come into focus is the extent to which the whole economy is in hock to house prices. A sharp fall in the housing market will put intense pressure on our major lending institutions, leading to a deeply depressing effect on all parts of the economy. The regulators, as ever, are taking a hands-off approach.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Commbank plunder part of new world economic order

    • David James
    • 07 July 2014
    7 Comments

    As the Pope and economist Thomas Pikkety have observed in recent times, the inequity created by capitalism is a growing concern. But the problem with this argument is that 'capitalism' is too broad a term. The attack would be far better directed against the financialisation of developed economies. A new type of sovereign has emerged, and like all rulers they are cheerfully engaging in acts of plunder.

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  • RELIGION

    Church-state issues and the Royal Commission

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 October 2013
    2 Comments

    'The Church should not give any appearance of hiding behind the corporate veil. Justice demands that present church leaders agree to satisfy any judgment debt against their predecessors or their deceased predecessors' estates when there is an allegation of past failure to supervise or adequately investigate a sexual predator in the ranks. Any damages should be paid from church assets.' Frank Brennan addresses the Australian Lawyers Alliance Conference, Rydges Lakeside, Canberra, 26 October 2013.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Pilgrim's misguided tilt at TV fame

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 June 2013

    Luciano pleads with two startled widows at a funeral, who reassure him that he is on the right path to getting into 'the house'. While they think they've offered comfort to a troubled seeker, he thinks he's received an inside tip from Big Brother's spies. The dissonance between his pursuit of fame, and the comfort found by others in religious faith, is profound.

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  • EDUCATION

    Holistic cures for school snobbery

    • Ellena Savage
    • 31 August 2012
    2 Comments

    Once, my mother reprimanded a young student whom she taught at an expensive private school. The boy replied that his dad could 'buy and sell' her. As easy as it would be to conclude that private schools breed poor behaviour, rude children are just that — class has little to do with it.

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  • RELIGION

    The truth about the Vatican's money

    • Paul Collins
    • 15 August 2012
    35 Comments

    People often talk about the 'enormous wealth of the Vatican'. Some think the Vatican owns all the Church's worldwide real estate, others that all that art could be sold for the poor, others that the Vatican is corrupt and busy laundering vast sums of Mafia money through the 'Vatican Bank'. Now for the first time we have some hard facts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Problems with atheism

    • Various
    • 17 April 2012
    14 Comments

    The problem with being an atheist is the lack of possibilities, a world to come into being, a kingdom to be worked for, blood and sweated for, any hope of future travels curtailed with science.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    All democracies great and small

    • John Warhurst
    • 27 February 2012
    5 Comments

    From strata communities to federal politics, citizens of democracies exhibit similar characteristics. These include limited knowledge and interest, suspicion of office-holders, and assertions of self-interest. Those who stand for election deserve more credit than they often get because they are a small minority.

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  • MEDIA

    Uprooting fake online activism

    • Fatima Measham
    • 03 October 2011
    7 Comments

    Much marketing deceives. The problem with the fake grassroots activism known as astroturfing is that it artificially inflates numbers to provide a semblance of legitimacy. This is why it has become the strategy of choice for propagating fringe views such as climate denialism.

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