Rivers of Gold - Let's follow the money 24 April 2018 Hon Kenneth Madison Hayne AC QC Commissioner Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry Dear Sir, When an Australian walks into a bank...

4 February 2018 Mr John Fraser Secretary to the Treasury The Treasury Langton Crescent Parkes ACT 2600 Australia Dear Mr Fraser, The following is for your consideration. Could you please outline the options available to members of the Australian public...

If you are over 40 and starting to read this post, I politely suggest that you move along. There isn't going to be anything in this post that will interest you. Just me babbling on about the past. ...Have they gone? Is it just you and me now? Can we...

Imagine if Australian house prices weren't a problem. Imagine if the average Australian wage kept up with the annual increase in house prices.  Below is an exchange with the RBA on that very topic. You can view the full exchange and the original letters...

Photo by Steven Penton cc. On 29 September 2017 an updated register was released detailing foreign ownership of Australian agricultural land, available here from the Foreign Investment Review Board for the 2016-17 year. The 2015-16 report is available...

Last Thursday the AFR published a piece titled, "No wage rise without productivity: IMF".  If you're an Australian worker and you started to read the above AFR article, you'd quickly get the impression that Australian workers should increase their...

Labor senator Sam Dastyari made the statement this week that there is something "fundamentally wrong and rotton" with the influence corporate Australia has over the Australian political process, while speaking at a Pub in Canberra. From SBS: Labor senator Sam Dastyari...

Source for above is here. Recently Domain published a comment piece by Jamie Alcock, associate professor in Finance at the University of Sydney Business School, titled, "Busting the five myths about negative gearing". The first issue with the article is...

Image above by Alex. The Australian Financial Review (aka the AFR) raised the negative gearing issue on 24 February 2014, when they published an opinion piece by Bob Officer titled, "Removing negative gearing would be a mistake", link here. Bob Officer is professor...

Image above by Wonderlane. Macrobusiness posted an article today titled "All taxes come out of rents", link here. For some reason, I became unable to comment on my third response to an exchange with @Rumplestatskin. Two emails to Macrobusiness and a few exchanges on...

Image above by Woodleywonderworks. Australian Government inquiries usually lead to reports that are ignored. Will this affordable housing inquiry be any different? Only time will tell. Below is my submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics for the...

Image above by Jim Fischer. The Australian newspaper's Henry Ergas wrote an opinion piece yesterday arguing that lower income renters would pay the price if there were any changes to negative gearing in Australia. He starts the piece with his goal, which is to destroy...

Image above by DoodleDeMoon. From the About Us page at SmartCompany: SmartCompany is a completely free news, information and resource site for Australia's entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and business managers to help keep them ahead of their...

The AFR macroprudential policy questions Most of the editorial in the Australian Financial Review (The AFR) on 18 September 2013 called "Keeping a lid on housing prices" seemed quite reasonable, except for the last paragraph. The last paragraph reads, As the RBA...

I have been overseas from late January and returned 29 March, last Friday. The last five weeks were spent at Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand doing mindfulness of breathing. If meditation is a relatively unknown topic for you, there are two reasonable articles on it here...