Investors compete with 1st home buyers

Here is an interesting graph on the type of properties owner-occupiers and investors buy, based on national sales for past 12 months.

Assuming that 1st home buyers are buying in at the lower end of the market, then there is direct competition between them and investors. The irony is that the investors are buying the houses that 1st home buyers will have to rent.

Malcolm Turnbull wants housing affordability to be an election issue but at the same time decries Labor’s negative gearing policy because it will reduce house prices. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

The problem with housing affordability is that it is very difficult to make significant inroads into the problem. Increasing average wages while housing prices remain relatively steady is one way. But wage growth is an record lows so that doesn’t appear to be solution that will work in the short term.

When you add it up, it’s just Abbott-lite

There is growing disillusion with Malcolm Turnbull. Despite the rhetoric about an agile nation, innovation and technology, Turnbull has changed nothing since deposing Abbott. We can look forward to an election campaign based on fear of change: fear of changing negative gearing, fear of introducing a tax on carbon, fear of asylum seekers and, if Cory Bernardi gets the bit between his teeth, fear of same-sex marriage.

Spot the difference

Under a headline “Behold Malcolm Abbott”, Political editor, Michael Gordon, writes in The Age:

Political editor, Michael Gordon

On Friday the PM went further. “We can’t afford to let the empathy that we feel for the desperate circumstances that many people find themselves in to cloud our judgment,” he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell. “Our national security has to come first.”

The only difference between what Turnbull is saying and what Abbott  would have said is that Turnbull  has the decency to recognise that some people may have  “empathy … for the desperate circumstances that many people find themselves”.

Earlier in the week, Turnbull had shown that he was “rock solid” on Abbott’s climate change policy too, signalling his readiness to run a carbon-tax scare campaign against the Labor policy big business had tacitly endorsed.

And this from the man who sought bi-partisan support for attacks on carbon.

The problem for Turnbull on both fronts, and on negative gearing and marriage equality, is that his position now sits so uncomfortably with his past statements and, more importantly, with the expectations of many who greeted his ascension with such unbridled enthusiasm and hope.

On negative gearing and child care Anne Summers writes: Have we seriously become the kind of country that is willing to pay for a $300 a week tax deduction to help a one-year-old baby own a property but we are not willing to stump up anything like that sort of money to allow kids to have high-quality childcare?

Anne Summers

At present we pay parents $7500 a year, which is $144.23 per week, to help out with childcare expenses.

Note the different amounts to offset family spending: $300 a week for property investment but only $144.23 a week for investment in a child’s early learning.

 

 

 

Farmer Turnbull’s barnyard animals: Mutton, the border protection Collie.

Farmer Turnbull had inherited a number of animals when he took over the farm. Coal-fired the flatulent draught horse, Floppy the negatively geared rabbit, Buttercup the diesel rebate cow, Mince the Poodle, Clarence, the Carbon Tax goose and Mojo the rabid budget mongrel. Priscilla the paid maternity leave show pony Had met an untimely end earlier and wound up as pet food and Mojo saw which way the wind was blowing and moved overseas.

Many people had hoped that Farmer Turnbull, classical scholar prone to pretentious quotations would clean out the Augean Stables stables but it was not to be.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” muttered Mince the Poodle but not loud enough to be heard.

With the departure of Mojo, some changes had to be made. Scottie, the Scottish terrier took over and Mutton the border collie was given responsibility for keeping the perimeter safe. His major qualification for this role was his ability to run and bark, at the same time and tirelessly.

Many of the neighbours complained about the noise he made but Farmer Turnbull was unmoved. The more time Mutton spent running round barking, the less time he had for visiting ex-farmer Abbott and involving himself and general bum sniffing.

Farmer Turnbull’s barnyard animals: Bronnie the cantankerous goose

One of the many animals that Farmer Turnbull inherited, rather unhappily, from Farmer Abbott when he took over the farm, was Bronnie the cantankerous goose. She had been around for as long as anybody could remember and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find anything useful for her to do after she had spent the morning preening her feathers.

Farmer Abbott had decided to make her Head Prefect, in charge of keeping order in the barnyard. This gave her license to give unruly barnyard members are good picking, something that she was extremely adept at doing. Unfortunately, over the years Bronnie had become rather more interested in shopping trips rather than making a contribution barnyard life. Some of her expeditions had raised eyebrows but there was a general feeling that if she was off shopping then she wasn’t around pecking everybody.

But her spending habits became more and more bizarre and when it was realised that she was spending a fortune on pate de foie gras, the goose was pretty well cooked. Trying not to demonstrate excessive alacrity, Farmer Turnbull moved to relegate Bronnie down the pecking order.

Every three years, there was a minor shakeup of barnyard membership and barnyard members were given the opportunity to vote people off the farm if necessary. It was rare for barnyard members to be given the shove but, despite strong support amongst the golden goose set, Bronnie was ignominiously given the DCM.*

* Don’t Come Monday

Farmer Abbott’s farm yard: the rise of Malcolm the telecommunications pigeon

Farmer Abbott decided to put Malcolm the pigeon in charge of telecommunications. It was a sensible thing to do. After all, he was a pigeon and had spent time as a racing pigeon and as a carrier pigeon.

You also have a great idea for a new telecommunication system: a combination of semaphore stations and carrier pigeons. The simple stations would waive their arms in the normal fashion and carrier pigeons would move between those who are out of line of sight.

It was hailed as a brilliant idea and cheap to boot. There were some dark mutterings about neighbouring farms installing the new electric telephone but they were generally shouted down. “Imagine how many pigeons will have work.” was the cry.

Many people could not understand why Farmer Abbott had appointed Malcolm. He was a notorious bum sniffer. Bum sniffing had a long tradition in the farmyard and was a national pastime.  It was the way that Farmer Abbott kept track of who supported him. But it was also a means to snuff out support for challenges to farm ownership. Over the years, animals had become adept at the game and being able to disguise their bum smell to hide their allegiances.

And so it was that when Malcolm was appointed a fresh round of covert bum sniffing began. Malcolm did not normally take part in the bum sniffing but left it to his friend and ally Mince  the poodle.  After months of denial and keeping his nose clean, Malcolm called a party bum sniffing meeting. Many of the farmyard animals had been keeping their backs to the wall but now was the night of reckoning.

In a decisive show of bottoms, Malcolm replaced Farm Abbott as head of the barnyard.

Ex-Farmer Abbott retired to a small cottage on the back blocks of the farm. He would move emerged occasionally, shouting at anyone who would listen. But the crowd is diminished and he resorted to is old hobby of smuggling budgies through a hole in the farm fence.

 

My dog Preferences and the annual bum-sniffing competition

I have a little dog called Preferences, a kelpie-labrador cross, which means he tends to lie around a lot. As a general rule, he doesn’t like being exercised. He only gets out about once a year to the bum-sniffing competitions. There are three of them: the national competition, the state competition and local competition. So he doesn’t get much exercise, but as I said, he’s a pretty lazy dog. When we go out to one of the annual competitions there are normally two main events in two paddocks: the upper paddock and the lower paddock.

We normally do the lower paddock first. It’s pretty simple, Preferences runs round sniffing bums and at the end of the morning the most popular dog wins. The upper paddock competition is rather more complicated making it a cross between a dogfight, a bunfight and Friday night in Clancy’s saloon. There are all sorts of dogs running round: mad dogs, bad dogs and dogs that are dangerous to know.

Preferences normally goes in, sniffs a couple of bums, decides it’s all too hard, lies down and refuses to move. I can’t say I blame him. Apart from all the normal suspects, there is a group of dogs called Preference Deals. They are very hard to pick as they tend to blend into the background and move around really quickly, ducking and diving everywhere. Every now and then, there is a big group sniff off.

Preference Deals at work

I saw one once, and I must admit that it certainly knew which were the important bums to sniff. The trouble with the dogs called Preference Deals is they usually move so fast that the other dogs don’t get a chance to sniff them. So you don’t know what their influence is until the results have been announced and you find that some real dogs of candidates have got up.

So from now on, I’m going to exercise my little dog Preferences and make sure he gets round to sniff all the bums in the upper paddock.

Eye in the Sky film review

 Eye in the Sky is a moral dilemma wrapped up in a political spy thriller.

The dilemma is whether the Americans and the British should fire a drone missile at a group of terrorists preparing for a suicide bomb mission. If they fire, there is a high probability of killing not only the terrorists, but also a young girl selling bread on the street. If they do not fire, there is a possibility of a much higher death toll if the bomb is ignited in the market or shopping centre.

Aisha Takow plays Alia, a small girl selling bread outside the house where the terrorists are preparing their attack. Part of the debate centres on the possibility of her being killed by the missile.  Such is the ruthless logic of such operations that a 45% chance of her being killed is considered acceptable.

Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren)  watches the house she is targeting.

The technology is such that everyone can see how many loaves of bread Alia still has left to sell.  A small short-range  beetle drone can take photos inside the house  where the suicide bomber is being armed

The drama of the film is developed in two ways. The first centres on how the decision is made to fire the missile. The military and political implications of the decision are thrashed out by Lieutenant General Frank Benson  (Alan Rickman) and a group of politicians: Attorney General George Mathewson  (Richard McCabe), Brian Woodale  (Jeremy Northam ) and British Foreign Secretary James Willett (Iain Glen) who are sitting in an office in London watching the mission unfold with live footage from the drone.

At the end of the telephone, in the operation centre is military intelligence officer   Colonel Katherine Powell, (Helen Mirren) who has been tracking the terrorists for six years and now has them firmly in the sights of her drone-bourne Tomahawk missile.

She is desperately keen to launch the missile.

The tension in the film is also developed around the fate of Alia, whose bread stall is within the killing zone.  It is clear that the terrorists are preparing to leave the house and the opportunity to kill them will be lost if the missile is not fired quickly. What is not clear is how long it will be before Alia sells all her bread and moves out of danger.  Tension is heightened by the efforts of a Kenyan undercover agent, Jama Farah  (Barked Abdi), who was in the street outside the house, to buy the bread. 

As pressure builds to launch the missile, the politicians prevaricate and the decision bounces between Singapore, Beijing and Washington. In Beijing, the Foreign Secretary is playing table tennis with the Chinese national champion and really cannot be bothered making a decision. In Washington, the Americans have no qualms at all. The US citizen inside the house forfeited all rights when he joined the Al-Shabaab extremists.

The film also lays to rest the myth that drone warfare is impersonal. The pilot of the drone is USAF drone pilot 2nd Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul).

He can see Alia playing with her hoola-hoop in her backyard before she goes out to sell the bread. She is a very human face of the the collateral damage that the missile will inflict.

The film was particularly well made.

The storyline is tight and the acting is superb, although you suspect that neither Alan Rickman nor Helen Mirrem would have found their  rather one-dimensional roles particularly demanding.

Helen Mirren’s Colonel Katherine Powell is a driven and demanding intelligence officer. Her only redeeming and humanising feature is that her husband snores. Rickman’s Lieutenant General Frank Benson is world and war weary, particularly when it comes to dealing with politicians. His only redeeming and humanising feature is that he is concerned that he has bought the wrong doll for his granddaughter’s birthday. If he sees any irony between his concern to buy the right doll and the fate of a small Somalian girl, he does not show it.

He is given the final lines, but not the final scene in the film when he says, “Never accuse a soldier of not knowing the cost of war.” But it is the final scene that shows what that cost really is.

A roadmap for Manus Island detainees

The Manus Island detention centre will close after the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled it was illegal and unconstitutional, PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill

The decision which ruled the detention centre breached the constitutional right of asylum seekers to personal liberty, throws the Turnbull government’s offshore detention regime into chaos and thrusts border protection high onto the political agenda, just weeks out from an expected election campaign

Earlier on Wednesday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the court ruling was ‘‘under consideration’’ and the detention centre was the responsibility of the PNG government, adding ‘‘I can’t provide a definitive road map from here’’.

Clearly the fate of the asylum seekers has not been high on the list of the Prime Minister’s priorities.

There’s actually a very simple solution.  Grant these people asylum in Australia.

If Malcolm Turnbull wants to save some political face, he can set up a bipartisan committee, which may include people from outside the parliament, to re-examine Australia’s asylum seeker policy and to consider the future of the detainees in PNG.

Or he could do the statesmanlike thing and just say, ” I will put an end to the suffering of these people. They will be settled in Australia.”

And if Bill Shorten is prepared to support this stance, there will be no backlash to either party.

It wouldn’t benefit the Greens, because it’s already policy for them.

There is no  immediate and logical connection between the detention of people on Manus and Nauru and the decline in people smuggling activities. It is far more likely that the activities of the Australian Navy and the tow-back policy have been far more decisive in this.

But it’s unlikely that will see leadership on this issue from either Shorten or Turnbull.

The most likely solution that they will simply ship all the Manus Island detainees off to Nauru.

It’s unlikely that we will be visiting Port Macquarrie in the immediate future. Not really a big tourist destination.

And  now Labor MPs Melissa Parke, Lisa Singh, Jill Hall and Sue Lines told Fairfax Media the court ruling was a chance for the opposition to re-think its policy on offshore processing and bring the asylum seekers to Australia – contradicting party policy.

“It’s inevitable that the government will need to have another plan for what is going to happen and the most logical thing to do is to bring those people to Australia,” said Ms Parke, who is a former UN lawyer and advocate for asylum seekers.

 

 

The curious case of Arthur Sinodinos

Cabinet Secretary Arthur Sinodinos has refused to appear before a Senate inquiry into the controversial Free Enterprise Foundation and similar fundraising bodies, slamming it as a “political stunt”.

When I first saw  Arthur Sinodinos on television, I thought he was an articulate, intelligent and rational politician, something of a rarity in Australia. But since then it became clear that there were some problems this young Arthur.

 Arthur is not always across the detail

On 19 March 2014, Sinodinos stood aside from his role as Assistant Treasurer prior to giving evidence as a witness before ICAC. During the enquiry Sinodinos advised he was unaware of a $74,000 donation made to the Liberal Party by Australian Water Holdings, despite being Deputy Chairman, with a $200,000 salary. At the time of the payment Sinodinos was also Treasurer of the Liberal Party                                    ( Source Wikipedia)

There is only so many times you can say “I don’t recall” before you start to look decidedly dodgy.

And then it was the question of his position at AWH in the first place:

The  Saturday Paper reports: He is unlikely to be found guilty of any wrongdoing in the case of Australian Water Holdings, where he stood to make $20 million if the company won a key government contract. In that instance, he has pleaded ignorance. The former assistant treasurer would have it be known that he was not closely watching the business that called him chairman, that paid him $200,000 for about 45 hours of work each year. Curious but not illegal.

Politicians can bluster all they like about political stunts, but refusing to appear before a Senate enquiry makes it looks if you have something to hide.

 

 

Pell evidence rejected by staff: no comment required

The Age reports that

 Pell ‘repeatedly told’ about abuse: staff

Child sexual abuse Officials reject cardinal’s lie claim.

Senior Catholic education officials have spoken of their shock and anger at Cardinal George Pell’s evidence to a royal commission that staff had covered up complaints about a paedophile priest.

When asked by counsel assisting Gail Furness to respond to Cardinal Pell’s claim that the Catholic Education Office failed to properly inform him about Father Searson, Mr Annett replied: ‘‘I admit some shock that [Cardinal Pell] referred to inaction on the part of that Catholic Education Office. I was disappointed and perhaps angry

Monsignor Thomas Doyle, former executive director of the Catholic Education Office, told the commission Cardinal Pell’s evidence that he was deceived by education office staff was wrong. ‘‘I thought he was quite wrong and I think I was very disappointed that he said those things about the Catholic Education Office because I don’t think they were true,’’ he said.