No ideas on these...I just typed in "Nicest entry level subdivisions in Australia". This is what came up (AI)...I believe it will be the hottest issue in the election. For entry-level property buyers in Australia, several regional and metro suburbs offer affordable options. In Queensland, Woodridge and Kilcoy/East Ipswich are good choices for units and houses, respectively. In New South Wales, Carramar and suburbs like Campbelltown, Liverpool, and St Marys in Western Sydney are affordable. In Victoria, Albion is a standout for affordable units, and regional towns like Mount Gambier in South Australia offer low house prices. Western Australia has suburbs like Orelia and Armadale, while Brisbane has areas like Inala and Logan Central. Here's a more detailed look: Affordable Suburbs by State: Queensland: Real Estate notes. Woodridge (units), Kilcoy and East Ipswich (houses), Inala, and Logan Central offer affordability. New South Wales: Carramar (units), Campbelltown, Liverpool, and St Marys in Western Sydney. Victoria: Albion (units), and potentially Fawkner if prices are rising. Western Australia: Orelia and Armadale. South Australia: Mount Gambier, Barmera, Waikerie, and Port Lincoln. Factors to Consider: First Home Buyer Grants: Many states offer grants or schemes to assist first-time buyers, such as the New South Wales First Home Buyer Grant or the Victorian First Home Buyer Grant. Location: Consider proximity to jobs, schools, and other amenities. Property Type: Units tend to be more affordable than houses, especially in metropolitan areas. Market Conditions: Property prices can fluctuate, so research current market trends. Tips for Entry-Level Buyers: Start with Research: Use online property portals like Real Estate, Domain or Redfin, and talk to real estate agents. Get Pre-Approved for a Loan: This helps you understand your budget and negotiate more effectively. Be Prepared to Act Quickly: Affordable properties can sell quickly, so be ready to make an offer. Consider Renovations: Older homes may offer a more affordable entry point, but factor in renovation costs. Don't Be Afraid to Negotiate: Negotiate the price and any potential upgrades or inclusions in the offer. Just wondering how they will solve this issue...
"Logan Central, Inala" Logan Central is like a South African shanty town. Inala used to have one of the highest crime rates in Australia. Property works in value cycles. As one cheaper locality is deemed cheap, it booms, then the next cheapest one, on and on it goes. But Logan Centeal and Inala will always be cheap, for good reason.
Federal elections this Saturday coming..... Exclusive Brethren don’t vote but are secretly campaigning for the Coalition By Michael Bachelard, Kieran Rooney and Sumeyya Ilanbey April 28, 2025 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...igning-for-the-coalition-20250428-p5luny.html A separatist Christian sect which tells its members to hate the world and which objects to voting is actively campaigning for the Liberal and National parties ahead of Saturday’s federal election. The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, has dispatched hundreds of its members to pre-polling booths in marginal seats while instructing them to keep secret that they are members of the controversial religion. Plymouth Brethren Christian Church members at a polling booth in Reid. Campaign workers in five marginal seats in Victoria and NSW told this masthead they had encountered 20 or more brethern members wearing Liberal or National campaign T-shirts handing out how-to-vote cards, some who identified themselves as members of the sect. The seats – Kooyong, Gorton, Hawke, Gilmore and Calare – are held by Labor or teal incumbents. The accounts were backed by Labor Party campaign sources, speaking anonymously because they were not authorised to speak publicly, who claimed the brethren members were active in seats in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, including Bennelong, Parramatta, Whitlam, Macquarie, Paterson, Lyons, Reid and Blair. A brethren member (right) at a polling booth in Reid. In some seats, campaigners have said people identified and confirmed by this masthead as brethren members had physically and verbally intimidated members of other parties. Workers across the spectrum say the brethren members are saying the same line to voters: “Make Australia Smile Again.” This masthead has seen documents from senior leaders of the controversial sect that show the church is co-ordinating the effort centrally but ordering its members to remain “undercover” and not to identify themselves as members. A Plymouth Brethren Christian Church spokesman said its members had the right to volunteer in elections like every other citizen but the strategy was not co-ordinated by the church. He did not answer a question about whether there was an agreement or understanding with the Liberal or National parties to supply workers. A Coalition campaign spokesperson denied there was any agreement with any religious organisation and “have never asked volunteers or members what their religious beliefs are”. Labor declined to comment. “Elect Vessel” of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church Bruce D. Hales (left front), preaching in the United States. The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church is a closed global church led by Sydney-based “Man of God” Bruce Hales, who preaches a “hatred” for people outside the church. Women are treated as second-class citizens and homosexuality is not tolerated. Evolution is taught in schools as a theory only. Brethren followers, known to each other as “saints”, believe Hales is “so close to the Lord Jesus that he can feel his heartbeat”. Companies associated with the church’s leaders are under active investigation by the Australian Taxation Office’s Private Wealth – Behaviours of Concern section, which raided the headquarters of what’s known as the brethren “parent company” without notice last May. The companies are suspected of “tax evasion, fraud, secrecy or concealment”. Former brethren insiders, speaking anonymously to protect their sources, have told this masthead that senior brethren leaders based in Sydney recently held a Zoom meeting on what they described as the “King’s business”, meaning its contents should be kept secret. At the meeting, which happened as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s poll numbers began to decline, invited elders were told to organise hundreds of brethren members to go to polling booths to support Liberal and National party candidates. Documents that emerged after the meeting, sighted by this masthead, show the elders were told to “pray and take action” and that the church’s volunteers should be “fired up each day to dominate the play”. In Macquarie, Liberal candidate Mike Creed, who is a married gay man, is being supported heavily by members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. Hales has described homosexuality as “unnatural against the anatomy”. Creed has been approached for comment. Ex-brethren member Ben Woodbury said he was astonished that his former community was supporting that candidate. Woodbury was persecuted for being gay – causing him to leave the church – and then forbidden from seeing his family again. “It’s the [church’s] hypocrisy that gets me,” said Woodbury, who has revealed details of the brethren’s political campaign on his @excultboy Instagram and Tiktok feeds. A young Plymouth Brethren Christian Church woman’s farewell card from her workplace. In one brethren group chat on the encrypted app, Signal, sighted by this masthead, female church members were described as “secret weapons” in the campaign. Men were told to bring their wives or daughters with them to polling booths. The men should do the talking, but the women should hand out brochures because they were “so attractive no one will say no”, the message said. The documents show workers being told to stand up to any opposition they encountered, but to leave quickly in the event of media attention. Brethren sources with knowledge of the insider communications, but too fearful to speak publicly, say they have been told that while working on the campaign, they should not consider themselves Plymouth Brethren Christian Church members. A number of the men have been photographed at polling booths wearing shorts despite brethren doctrine that “God takes no pleasure in the legs of a man”. The women are mostly wearing short, netball-style skirts and often leggings, despite the church’s normal requirement that they dress modestly in skirts below knee-length and avoid wearing trousers. The women have also removed the “token” – often a bow or hair clip that has replaced headscarves – from their hair. Some of the reported behaviour of brethren booth workers has been aggressive. Labor campaign workers in the NSW seat of Macquarie, who are not authorised to speak publicly, have said brethren volunteers in Liberal T-shirts were overheard telling constituents a “vote for Labor is a vote for adultery” and that “Labor wants to kill babies”. In the seat of Reid, where the Liberal Party is challenging ALP incumbent Sally Sitou, a man confirmed independently by this masthead as a brethren member stood in front of the Labor volunteer, physically blocking her from handing out how-to-vote cards. The Labor campaign described the behaviour as “intimidating and bullying”. Bretheren members join the Liberal campaign in Kooyong. In Gilmore, on the south coast of NSW, campaign workers for Labor MP Fiona Phillips said about 10 brethren members, who did not live in the area, had been handing out how-to-vote cards but did not know any of the Liberal Party’s policies and were “aggressive and non-respectful”. Labor state MP Anna Watson, the Parliamentary Secretary for Roads, said she had been handing out cards for Phillips at the Shellharbour Council Civic Centre and had heard the “Make Australia Smile Again” slogan and seen volunteers intercepting individuals at their cars to take them personally into the polling centre. “If someone pulled up with an older person in the car, they’d be on it like blowflies. Helping them out of the car, walking them in … and tell them how to vote Liberal. It’s against the rules,” Watson said. In Calare, a regional seat west of Sydney, where independent Andrew Gee is facing a battle with the National Party’s Sam Farraway, a campaign worker for Gee said perhaps 20 members of the church had followed the candidate from booth to booth at the weekend in what they had interpreted as a “hamfisted way of trying to keep him from handing out”. “It was all very strange,” said a source close to the campaign who was not authorised to speak publicly. “Andrew’s been in politics for a while, so if it was designed to intimidate, it was a fail.” In Kooyong, where teal candidate Monique Ryan is defending her seat against a campaign from Liberal Amelia Hamer, photos and videos have emerged of dozens of people identified as brethren by former church insiders, and dressed similarly at and around the polling booth. Ryan said the workers had used the “Smile Again” slogan until the Liberal booth manager told them to stop. “It’s been clear from conversations with them that many of the Liberal volunteers at Kooyong pre-poll are from outside the electorate. I’m disappointed to see the Liberal Party so closely engaged with a group opposed to gender equity and evolutionary science,” she said. Bretheren members supporting the Liberal candidate head to a polling booth in Kooyong. In Hawke, in outer Melbourne, where the Liberal Party is trying to unseat incumbent Sam Rae, Labor campaign workers identified dozens of brethren members using the “Smile Again” slogan. This masthead visited polling booths in Melton and Burnside Heights on Monday, where Simone Cottom is trying to oust first-term Labor MP Sam Rae in Hawke and John Fletcher is facing off against Labor’s Alice Jordan-Baird in Gorton. Fletcher and Cottom both declined to comment when approached by this masthead about their campaign’s arrangement with the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. Both directed questions to Liberal Party headquarters. The brethren spokesperson said their church did not campaign for or support any political parties and had “not organised or co-ordinated any volunteer efforts of any type in any location”. He said he had “reached out to some of our parishioners” and been “made aware that many have decided to volunteer this year for candidates from various parties”. “When individual members of our church volunteer for politicians or candidates, this is at their discretion, and they do not represent the church’s view when doing so,” the spokesman said. As for the church’s policy on voting, he said: “Australians were allowed to not vote on religious grounds and some members exercised their right, while others do not.” The Australian Electoral Commission said that, over the first week of pre-poll voting, the AEC had received a small number of complaints about behaviour, and “on several occasions, we have reminded campaign volunteers from parties across the political spectrum to interact respectfully and with civility at all times”.
Tax, not supply, behind housing crisis: Expert slams $45b property grab By Sarah Brookes April 29, 2025 https://www.watoday.com.au/property...-slams-45b-property-grab-20250426-p5luec.html Australia’s housing crisis is being driven by relentless tax hikes on the property sector, not a lack of supply, according to property commentator James Limnios who warned voters would be stunned governments have raked in a staggering $45.1 billion in property taxes, up 80 per cent in just a decade. The managing director of Limnios Property Group said the current housing crisis had its root cause in governments gouging the property sector with higher taxes with fresh ABS data showing property taxes collected by just local and state governments had surged by $20 billion. Taxes are impeding new housing supply according to property commentator James Limnios. Credit: Erin Jonasson “And these taxation figures produced do not include the huge amounts of indirect taxation income the federal government obtains from the property market through GST,” he said. “We have a housing crisis because we have a taxation crisis in the property market which is preventing much-needed new housing from entering the property market at a time of surging demand for homes.” Limnios said demand was set to surge even higher off the back of housing policies released by both major political parties during the election. Labor will allow first-home buyers to get into the property market with a 5 per cent deposit without having to pay lenders mortgage insurance while the Coalition has promised to make the interest payments on the first $650,000 of a mortgage for a new home tax-deductible for eligible buyers. “Instead of focusing on further increasing demand for housing, we need to help fix the supply side by reducing taxes on property, especially for smaller property developers,” Limnios said. “Housing supply is being crippled by the fact that half the cost of building a new house in some parts of Australia is made up of property taxes.” Figures contained in a recent Housing Industry Association report found that up to $237,000 – or more than one-third – of the cost of a new house-and-land package in Perth was government taxes, regulatory costs and infrastructure charges. HIA chief economist Tim Reardon said the more government tax new homes, the fewer homes will be built. “It is incongruous that governments set home building targets, while at the same time tax new home building even more,” he said. “If governments were keen to solve the affordability problem, they need to look at the tax they are imposing on new housing.” And for developers wanting to build apartments, the report found that the massive property taxes and infrastructure charges imposed by government for a new unit ranged from $149,000 in Perth to $346,000 in Sydney. Limnios said that high cost of getting a development off the ground was making it “virtually impossible” for smaller boutique developers to bring desperately needed new product into the market. “In WA, property taxes now account for one-quarter of the state’s tax revenue,” he said. “These taxes on property include transfer duty, which is now the state’s second-largest tax after payroll tax. “This cascade of property charges and taxes across all three levels of government is making the Australian dream of owning a home harder to achieve for a growing number of people, whether you live in Perth, Hobart, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide or Darwin.”
Yup, have been saying this all along. Government have created the problem, government doesn't want to fix the problem, government are using housing to enrich themselves at everyone elses expense, never mind enslaving their own citizens. Government then lie to everyine claiming "increasing supply" will fix the problem.
Rapid immigration, a surge in property wealth and China’s insatiable appetite for raw materials fueled a record stretch of developed world-beating growth. Now, the strains are setting in. Photographer: Isabella Moore/Bloomberg Politics Elections Australia’s Economic ‘Miracle’ Is Ending No Matter Who Wins Vote The two main candidates are pitching contrasting visions to an electorate seeing living standards decline By Swati Pandey and Ben Westcott 29 April 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...tter-who-wins-the-election?srnd=homepage-asia Whoever wins Saturday’s Australian federal election will face an inescapable reality: The three pillars of the nation’s 30-year outperformance that gave rise to its “miracle economy” moniker are breaking down. Rapid immigration, a surge in property wealth and China’s insatiable appetite for raw materials fueled a record stretch of developed world-beating growth. Now, the strains are setting in, leaving Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and center-right opposition leader Peter Dutton pitching contrasting visions to an electorate seeing its living standards go backwards. It’s an election that’ll be decided in seats such as Sydney’s Bennelong, where a surge in immigrants has worsened a housing crisis; rural electorates like the coal region of the Hunter that’s now grappling with the energy transition; and voting districts including Melbourne’s Kooyong, where a loose grouping of independents has emerged as a third player in Australian politics. Polls suggest the May 3 election will be tight, with many pundits predicting the winner will lead a minority government, requiring smaller parties and independents to form a parliamentary majority. US President Donald Trump has hung heavily over the vote, with both Albanese and Dutton claiming they’re best placed to deal with his tariff salvos and America First agenda. Australian Household Indebtedness Is Rising Australians take on more debt even though per person economic output is shrinking Source: OECD, Australian Bureau of Statistics The economic tailwinds from China's emergence, rapid population growth and the dividends from reforms in decades past are fading, leaving whoever wins the election with a "herculean task" to convince the nation to shift course, according to James McIntyre at Bloomberg Economics. "A change of gears is needed if the `lucky country' is going to keep enjoying the prosperity that many have come to expect," he said. “That means tackling challenging reforms that previous governments have shirked for a generation.'' But it’s bread-and-butter issues like rising energy prices, a chronic undersupply of housing, elevated grocery bills and high interest rates that have dominated the campaign as Albanese pitches cost-of-living relief while Dutton tries to lay the blame for the country’s woes at the prime minister’s feet. While Australians aren’t alone in feeling the pinch, in the last couple of years they’ve fared worse than global peers. From the start of 2023 to late 2024, gross domestic product on a per-capita basis declined at a time when the average of OECD economies was steadily climbing. While Australia wasn’t in recession, its people were. Where Voters Are Feeling the Housing Pinch Majority of households in almost a third of electorates are under housing-related stress Source: Digital Finance Analytics, Note: Based on 52,000 sample survey to February 2025. That’s opened the door for Dutton to potentially defeat a first-term government for the first time in almost a century. A recent poll showed one-in-two people expressed concern at what they saw as the Labor government’s failure to address the cost-of-living crisis. The coal region of the Hunter that’s now grappling with the energy transition.Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg Among those feeling the strain is Vanessa Cheng, who runs a Japanese-style cafe in West Ryde, roughly 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of Sydney’s CBD in the electorate of Bennelong. Since quitting her IT job to start the eatery back in 2023, she’s seen the cost of essentials from coffee beans to cocoa powder and eggs surge. Rising rent and energy bills compound that. “It’s very challenging and my debts are only growing,” said Cheng, who is an undecided voter. “Sometimes I think why did I even start this cafe. It would have been easier 10 or 15 years ago.” Cheng said she'd like to see more support for small businesses like hers, including easier regulatory and tax settings. She pointed out that her father, a first generation Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant, was able to buy a house and support his family without needing help from relatives. She has given herself three years to turn her business around and repay money her father loaned to her. He also came to the rescue when Cheng needed a deposit to buy a house in Eastwood, a suburb dotted with Chinese and Korean restaurants and grocery stores a few minutes drive from her cafe. Australia Is Growing But its Citizens Aren't Gap between overall GDP and per-capita GDP has widened since pandemic Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics Cheng’s story illustrates the difficulties confronting younger Australians. Based on the pre-Covid trajectory of per capita GDP, every Australian is now A$2,400 worse off each year than they would have been otherwise, estimates Jonathan Kearns, chief economist at Challenger Ltd. and previously a senior official at the nation’s central bank. Bennelong, a Labor marginal seat, spans from the expensive Sydney harbor waterfront suburb of Greenwich in the north to Eastwood — popular with Chinese migrants — in the west. Data from Digital Finance Analytics show it’s among the top 10 electorates with both severe mortgage and rental stress, based on how much money households have left after expenses. There are 22 seats held by Labor, minor parties and independents on a margin of less than 5%. If the Liberal-National Coalition can scoop up most of those, Dutton will be in a position to form government. About 200 kilometers north of Cheng’s West Ryde cafe, the old Liddell power station towers over the surrounding landscape in the seat of Hunter. The generator is no longer functioning — the last unit was decommissioned in 2023 — yet it’s emblematic of an energy debate that’s gridlocked policy in Australia for almost 20 years and is again a significant issue in 2025. The Labor government plans to transform Liddell into a green manufacturing hub, potentially for Australian-made solar panels, providing jobs for miners and other workers connected to the coal industry. Critical of an excessive reliance on green energy, Dutton has proposed embracing nuclear technology and pledged to turn Liddell into a reactor. The energy impasse has left Australia with outdated power generators and soaring electricity prices. It’s an extraordinary position for a country endowed with almost every known source of energy: solar, wind, oil, gas, coal and uranium deposits. But the stop-start policy programs that shift with each change of government have hindered investment. “There’s no road map,” said Kari Armitage, managing director of equipment supplier Quarry Mining. “We’re in that phase of trying to fly the plane and build it at the same time.” Armitage, who wanted to keep her vote in Saturday's election private, said no matter who wins there needs to be a bipartisan consensus on energy policy, so that small companies like hers can adapt to the transition. Jeff Drayton is the mayor of Muswellbrook, a town near Liddell where one-in-five employees worked in the coal industry at the 2021 census. He said there has been a lot of interest in new industries for the town, including green manufacturing, but without government support and policy consistency, the future remains deeply uncertain. “We had a Danish industrial delegation over here, it took me quite a while to convince them that we still have two sides of politics who don’t agree on energy policy. They couldn’t believe it,” Drayton said in an interview in his office. “Their view was: ‘our government stopped arguing about energy policy 20 years ago.’” Guy Debelle, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank until 2022, reckons Australia’s renewables industry could have wider significance than delivering clean energy, it could unlock a new era of economic growth. “Some of the drivers of Australia’s past economic outperformance are beginning to dissipate,’’ he said, referring to a likely downward trajectory in Chinese demand for iron ore over the next decade. “Improving productivity is an option, but it’s not easy to identify how this occurs,” Debelle said. “Australia’s clearest opportunity, where it’s fortuitously placed because of its vast natural advantages, is in green energy. We have the capacity to produce a lot of it — sun, land, wind.” While Labor has been a keen adopter of renewable energy and emissions targets since at least 2007, the Liberal-National Coalition was slower to commit to net zero emissions by 2050 and recalcitrants remain. Under the Coalition’s election platform, seven retiring coal plants will be transformed into nuclear reactors, supported by renewables, gas and storage. The opposition insists that it will restrain power prices by incentivizing gas exporters to keep some of their uncontracted fuel in Australia in a bid to keep a lid on those prices. In the four years through 2024, average nationwide wholesale electricity prices increased about 60%, according to the Australian Energy Regulator. The government has sought to cushion this blow with rebates to households, but it has taken a toll in an inflationary environment with elevated interest rates. Green policies and the more prosaic hip-pocket issues are front of mind for voters in the leafy and gentrified suburbs comprising the Melbourne electorate of Kooyong. The sitting member, former pediatric neurologist Monique Ryan, and her fellow so-called Teal independents around Australia are pressing for the government to push harder on clean energy. The Teals are backed by Climate 200, founded by financier Simon Holmes a Court. In the lower house of parliament, a handful of Teals, all women, have succeeded in ousting sitting Liberal members, hiving off much of the moderate wing of the center-right party. The Teals have sought to broaden their program from clean energy to tax reform and other measures to make the economy more efficient. Ryan and her Teal colleagues are calling for indexation of tax thresholds to inflation in order to avoid “bracket creep,” when wage earners are pushed up to higher levels of taxation as prices and incomes increase. While the Teals have sought to paint themselves as new and above the political fray, Kooyong’s Ryan and her husband were forced to apologize late last month after he was caught on video removing a campaign sign for her Liberal challenger from outside a Melbourne home. If they keep their seats, the Teals may turn out to be kingmakers. While Labor has reversed its deficit with the coalition, leading 52% to 48% in the latest polls, many pundits predict a hung parliament. “A minority Labor government with Teals holding the balance of power may actually not be a bad thing because they have centrist policies,” said Challenger’s Kearns. Whatever the outcome — a Labor majority win, an unlikely outright Coalition victory, or minority government formed by either — the winner will face increased pressure to deliver policies that can revive the nation’s stalling growth engines. “Australia should be an optimistic country, open to the world, globally competitive,” Ken Henry, a former treasury secretary, wrote in an opinion article last month. “To secure that vision, we need an economic policy transformation. Kicking the policy reform can down the road simply won’t do it.” — With assistance from Shadab Nazmi
3rd world countries go broke mainly because of political corruption. Now why is Australia going broke again......?