Politics Super Thread - keep it all in here

[tigger]

I guess time will tell, but the package does appear to me to be too tightly targeted.

There is a compelling argument for more social housing but this package is intended as a stimulus for the building industry, so it's success or failure should be judged on how well it achieves that purpose. The need for social housing is really a separate issue as are hospitals, schools etc.

I'm not an expert in this field but it appears likely to me that a package that includes renovations is likely to result in the stimulus being more broadly spread across the building industry than a package that focuses solely on new builds (as it would if it were restricted to social housing)

 

[mike]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.

It won't stimulate any building industry in Greater Sydney or Melbourne, as you will struggle to get a new house and land for sub $750K, unless it's a 3 bed, single garage dog box on a 250m² postage stamp on the outskirts. Might benefit the other states and regional areas though which will probably be worse affected by COVID than the two largest cities in Australia.

I agree in that I would much rather see the money spent on public infrastructure projects, but Nelson also makes a valid point. That $25K might make a renovation that was previously a little bit too expensive now feasible with the input. It also stimulates the property market and makes it that little bit more attractive for those who were looking to buy cheap, outdated homes to renovate and sell (or live in.)

Having just signed a building contract, I've added about $40K of upgrades to my place. Now some of them are very practical like a 10kW solar system, low energy lighting fixtures and a gas wall mounted fireplace (large cost items that represent the large chunk of that cost,) but a lot of them admittedly are aesthetic like black bathroom fixtures, frameless showers, fully tiled bathrooms etc so yeah I can understand your concern about that.

ScoMo from Marketing is back. Having done poorly during the bushfires, very well with the Covid19 outbreak we a back to very poor again Post Covid19. Who exactly will this benefit? Who will be better off after the money is spent?

I would suggest it won’t be the tradies, as it will be spent on higher value inclusions rather than more work. Only the higher income bracket would have the resources to spend $150K in the first place. Would low to middle income earners risk borrowing $150k in this climate? I would say most wouldn’t. So I see it will be the highest earners benefiting the most.

$750K for a new house in Sydney or Melbourne, don’t think so.

This is a missed opportunity to spend on public housing. You only need to walk around the capital cities and see the homeless sleeping rough to know that we need it. And given then uncertainty and the likelihood of increased unemployment after Covid19 the need will only grow. Tradies would have benefited, low income earners would have benefited and society as a whole would have benefited from spend on public housing.

ScoMo from Marketing missed a once in a generation chance to improve the plight of the most vulnerable in our society. The end result is once this is all over, nothing will have changed or improved. It’s very disappointing.

 

[Tiger5150]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.

Public housing is a State responsibility. This is Federal money.

 

[Tiger5150]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.

It's what they have to do to achieve the outcome they want. If they spent it all on social housing then for every dollar the government spent to stimulate the industry there would $0 in private investment to go along with it. The way it is set up the $25,000 is only offered for renovations/constructions $150,000, so at a minimum there is $5 of private investment for every dollar spent. Now some of those renovations or constructions would have happened anyway, but they're hoping that it will encourage a lot of people to proceed with builds and renovations that otherwise wouldn't. It's meant to increase consumer confidence and spending to boost the economy and save jobs. The "haves" are the ones that the economy needs to be spending money.

Apart from social reasoning, my direct experience is why I stated that most of it will go to upmarket fittings, fixtures and fittings, as that is almost always the major difference of increased budgetary spending, with a negligible difference on labour costs in general construction contracts. As such, adding that which you already alluded to, in that it will only be the deal maker for some, plus mostly at the lower end of the market, I expect it will be less effective than public housing spending, even before the many flow on benefits of having people housed are taken into account.

New Zealand decided on that approach as they found it to be a more productive and effective use of stimulus funds in both the short and long terms.

NZ doesnt have State Govts. Public Housing is a State government responsibility.

 

[mike]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.


Public housing is a State responsibility. This is Federal money.

You don’t think it could have been channeled through the States as targeted funds? It‘a nonsense argument. The federal govt does that sort of thing all the time.

 

[Tiger5150]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.


Public housing is a State responsibility. This is Federal money.

You don’t think it could have been channeled through the States as targeted funds? It‘a nonsense argument. The federal govt does that sort of thing all the time.

REally? Give me one example of when the Federal Goverment dictated what they spent their money on.

 

[GNR4LIFE]

Lol anyone see this?

https://youtu.be/j17XLCh1w-Q

You know, my grandmother is 80 years old. She has dementia. It seems like it’s in the final stages, yet it’s been that way for 6 or 7 years, she just keeps going. Before she was in her current state, when she had her faculties, before she was diagnosed, but we all knew something wasn’t right, she would get very aggressive. Aggressiveness wasn’t in her nature at all. We since learned that one of the traits of people with dementia is they become very aggressive, because deep down they know something isn’t right, and the anger and aggressiveness is part of frustration. This is Rudy. During 9/11 he was America’s Mayor, he come across like everybody’s grandfather. Now sadly, he’s unhinged and even more incoherent than the President. People want to talk about Biden, this video is the perfect example of a man with cognitive issues

 

[mike]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.


Public housing is a State responsibility. This is Federal money.

You don’t think it could have been channeled through the States as targeted funds? It‘a nonsense argument. The federal govt does that sort of thing all the time.


REally? Give me one example of when the Federal Goverment dictated what they spent their money on.

Roads, transport infrastructure and other large infrastructure projects. Grants for heaps of spending. If they grant money they can say what it is to be spent on. Simples.

 

[Tiger5150]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.


Public housing is a State responsibility. This is Federal money.

You don’t think it could have been channeled through the States as targeted funds? It‘a nonsense argument. The federal govt does that sort of thing all the time.


REally? Give me one example of when the Federal Goverment dictated what they spent their money on.

Roads, transport infrastructure and other large infrastructure projects. Grants for heaps of spending. If they grant money they can say what it is to be spent on. Simples.

Roads, Transport infrastructure remain Federal Assets afterwards. They are not state projects. They can not demand what the States spend money on constitutionally. They would not trust and should not trust to give the states $xB and trust they spend it where they wanted and would need to set up a beauracracy to administer it.

It cant and wouldnt happen

 

[GNR4LIFE]

I’ve been following the odds the last couple weeks, Biden has come in from 2.70, now he and Trump, who is a convicted Rapist and Felon are 1.92 each. There are still other candidates in the market though. The next best in the market at $34........Hillary. It’s one thing to argue the Dems will drop Biden (i don’t think they will) but to think they’ll drop him for Hillary? The Dems are more likely to read this forum and ask me to run. She was resoundingly rejected in 2016. She was such a terrible candidate that it contributed to in getting the US to where they are now.

 

[mike]

Whilst it targets the market into which I will hopefully soon return, I am disappointed in the proposed package to stimulate the residential construction industry. Even with the eligibility rules, this is money once again spent on the haves at the expense of the have nots.

There has long been huge under spending on public housing, so in conjunction with states providing the land, it would be money much better spent on thousands of dwellings for the homeless amongst us. Instead, a good chunk of it will be spent on opulent fittings and inclusions.


Public housing is a State responsibility. This is Federal money.

You don’t think it could have been channeled through the States as targeted funds? It‘a nonsense argument. The federal govt does that sort of thing all the time.


REally? Give me one example of when the Federal Goverment dictated what they spent their money on.

Roads, transport infrastructure and other large infrastructure projects. Grants for heaps of spending. If they grant money they can say what it is to be spent on. Simples.


Roads, Transport infrastructure remain Federal Assets afterwards. They are not state projects. They can not demand what the States spend money on constitutionally. They would not trust and should not trust to give the states $xB and trust they spend it where they wanted and would need to set up a beauracracy to administer it.

It cant and wouldnt happen

Have you never heard of joint funding?

So you are saying that if the Federal govt came to the States with a wad of money to build public housing the States would reject the offer! That’ll do me.

 

[tigger]

The Feds do provide money for specific purposes.
They had money on the table for the East West link in Melbourne. When Labor got in and cancelled the project in favour of a rail project, the Feds withdrew the money and wouldn't contribute to the rail project.

 

[diedpretty]

I guess time will tell, but the package does appear to me to be too tightly targeted.

There is a compelling argument for more social housing but this package is intended as a stimulus for the building industry, so it's success or failure should be judged on how well it achieves that purpose. The need for social housing is really a separate issue as are hospitals, schools etc.

I'm not an expert in this field but it appears likely to me that a package that includes renovations is likely to result in the stimulus being more broadly spread across the building industry than a package that focuses solely on new builds (as it would if it were restricted to social housing)

I think its too restrictive. I suppose they had to come up with a figure. I am considering doing renos to my house but there is no way that i will be doing 150k worth. Maybe it should have been on a sliding scale starting at 50k. I think more people would be inclined to take on a smaller amount of debt in times of uncertainty about job prospects and limited income.

 

[BirchgroveTigers]

Hmm this is a really poor stimulus package to be honest. The broad idea is trying to use public money to generate private investment, however it's so restricted that this won't happen to that great an extent. Furthermore, by restricting it so much, it's really just going to to go to wealthy people.

They should have lowered minimum renovation spend AND put more money into social housing. You can not only build new social housing to stimulate new build construction, but also do up a lot of social housing that has fallen into disrepair that would give work to the smaller trades businesses that this package is designed to help.

 

[Geo]

I'm just glad there is an issue here in Australian Politics you guys can talk about..quite interesting and enlightening...keep it up lads..

Much better than Merica despite GNR's best efforts..

 

[Tiger5150]

The Feds do provide money for specific purposes.
They had money on the table for the East West link in Melbourne. When Labor got in and cancelled the project in favour of a rail project, the Feds withdrew the money and wouldn't contribute to the rail project.

Exactly, you have just proved my point. In your example the Fed were tipping in money for a federal asset (East WEst Link) but would not put money into a State Asset.

 

[Nelson]

Hmm this is a really poor stimulus package to be honest. The broad idea is trying to use public money to generate private investment, however it's so restricted that this won't happen to that great an extent. Furthermore, by restricting it so much, it's really just going to to go to wealthy people.

They should have lowered minimum renovation spend AND put more money into social housing. You can not only build new social housing to stimulate new build construction, but also do up a lot of social housing that has fallen into disrepair that would give work to the smaller trades businesses that this package is designed to help.

It is means tested so it is only accessible to singles with an income of $125K or less and couples with joint income of $200K or less, so it isn't going to go to wealthy people. The average salary is ~$90,000 now.
I'm sure the package could have been a lot better and I think if they'd used sliding scales and less restrictive means testing it would have a much bigger impact, but they clearly have a budget in mind and would have done modelling to project the likely uptake based around these figures. If it was open slather there would be a high uptake and billions in government spending would be required.
Again, spending on social housing would just mean the government was the sole consumer of services. I have no problem with increased spending on social housing generally, but not every policy needs to be targeted around addressing social issues. Responsible government does include growing the economy.

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

How was old mate having a crack at everyone for standing on his lawn yesterday. "I just seeded it."

No expert on lawns, wouldn't have thought seeding in Autumn/Winter would have been advisable.

 

[BirchgroveTigers]

@Nelson Building social housing stimulates the economy and addresses social issues, hence why it's a winner. I don't have an issue with the broad concept of the policy, but it's poorly targeted and ignoring social housing is nothing more than the LNP's ideology coming through. In fact, I think it's good to try and get private investment in construction. Do both - interest rates are low - the time to borrow is now (obviously it's not limitless, but considering they were happy to borrow an extra 60billiion then they currently are suggests we as a country are clearly capable of increasing the spend on a housing stimulus package).

And the median full time salary is 78k. If you earn 110k a year, you are in the top 10% of income earners (which includes all workers, therefore part time, casual etc so not necessarily as rich as top 10% may indicate but certainly well-off) (https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/are-you-a-top-earner-in-your-city/news-story/bcff2a7ead933e1c616bd8f7d8c055a8).

 

[tigger]

The Feds do provide money for specific purposes.
They had money on the table for the East West link in Melbourne. When Labor got in and cancelled the project in favour of a rail project, the Feds withdrew the money and wouldn't contribute to the rail project.


Exactly, you have just proved my point. In your example the Fed were tipping in money for a federal asset (East WEst Link) but would not put money into a State Asset.

I'm not sure that is correct Tiger5150.
The proposed East West Link would not have been an interstate highway. (Which the Feds are definitely responsible for). It would have been a part of the uncompleted Melbourne ring road. All the other parts of the ring road are managed by Vic Roads and the State government stumps up for repairs and enhancements. So I can't see why that section would become a "federal asset". I can't see that the feds would saddle themselves with the ongoing maintenance cost of a Melbourne-only road system.
.
However I'm not as certain about it as you seem to be. To quote Randy Newman, "I could be wrong....but I don't think so".
(The refusal by the federal Libs to not support Labor's rail project had more to do with politics I think. The East West link was a major point of difference in the state election and Labor cancelled the project after it won government from the Libs).