In the scramble to find solutions to the housing crisis, all eyes remain averted from foreign buyers, who are buying new housing in NSW and Victoria at a rate of $8 billion a year – equivalent to one in five homes completed across the two states. And although foreign investors are only allowed to buy only new homes, and some foreign citizens are restricted to removing a maximum of $US50,000 ($66,000) a year, rorting is rife. Cash is transferred to agents in Australia via multiple small payments through networks of family and friends. Or networks of companies are used to buy properties. AUSTRAC investigated more than $3 billion in suspicious transfers by Chinese investors last year, including $1billion in property transactions. Perhaps our government could "guts up" on behalf of its citizens and start taking effective action. However, heaven forbid we be perceived as xenophobic, or that lucrative deals be affected. Cold comfort for a generation denied that most basic of needs: a home.
Deborah Morrison, Malvern East
Two birds with one stone
There are concerns that cutting negative gearing would cause house prices to fall (and this would be bad) and that allowing first-home buyers to use their super as a deposit would increase demand and push up prices. However, if we did both simultaneously, it would result in little price change but moves housing from an investment opportunity for the lucky to housing as a necessary component of living.
Alan Murnane, Highett
Allow stamp duty exemption
Superannuation should not be diverted from its purpose of funding retirement. Instead, governments should exempt all first-home buyers from stamp duty and increase the duty paid by investors so the exemption is revenue neutral. This policy would save first-home buyers an amount similar to the average super balance for young people and also act as a small disincentive for investors, although the higher stamp duty will be tax deductible.
Dennis Robson, Ivanhoe
Socially destructive policy
The bad news: the government refuses to tackle the socially destructive policy of negative gearing. The good news: in adopting this anti-social stance it has effectively signed an electoral death warrant.
Graham Williams, Glen Waverley
Liberals govern exclusively for wealthy
The refusal to do anything about policies on buying property betrays the Liberal Party's true motives. Scott Morrison is relaxed about it being easier for a person to buy a 10th investment dwelling rather than a first home. Property ownership is thus ever more concentrated. Getting states to open up more land will only provide more properties for investors to buy. They will continue to outbid home buyers who can't get taxpayers to help pay the interest on their loan. The Liberal Party has left the middle ground and is now an old-style Tory party, governing exclusively for the wealthy, be it through forcing down wages in insecure jobs, reducing services to the poor through Centrelink crackdowns or in that most basic of rights, the provision of housing for new families.
Paul Kennelly, Caulfield North
THE FORUM
Sheltered from ravages
The Adani mine is about class and privilege. Annastacia Palaszczuk and Messrs Turnbull, Joyce, Shorten and Adani, who are making the decisions on the mine, have assured futures – due to generous pensions or because they are seriously rich in their own right. They will have enough money to shelter their families and descendants from the devastating effects of climate change.
On the other hand, the people who will bear the brunt of the climate disruptions we in the West have set in motion are for the most part the world's poorest. The people of Bangladesh are doomed because of rising seas in the south and, in the north, glaciers that will melt and then dry up. The people of other large river deltas such as the Mekong and the Nile may be similarly affected, while the people of the Pacific islands are already fighting rising seas. And on it goes. The consequences for millions of voiceless poorer people are horrendous, yet we are fixated on job creation. It's time we looked further than the ends of our privileged noses and worked for our brothers and sisters in the wider world.
Jill Dumsday, Ashburton
Comic politicians
Who needs a comedy festival when we can listen to our politicians? Did you hear the one about taxpayers giving $1 billion to a rich Indian company based in the Cayman Islands to build a white elephant rail line? But it is no laughing matter. While crying crocodile tears about the budget deficit, the government squanders our taxes on a fool's errand that will threaten our energy security, increase our energy cost and destroy our environment. The evidence from smart business and scientists is that a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewables will provide effective energy management, better economics and a sustainable environment.
William Chandler, Surrey Hills
Vicarious experience
In the 1990s my wife and I went on a tour to Darwin and Kakadu. The first event was "The coral reef by night". At the wharf we looked around for a boat but found to our surprise that the reef was actually an aquarium in a large shed, quite nicely done, but little better than the tropical fish shop back home.
The coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef worsens year by year as ocean temperatures rise. Perhaps in the near future the best that tourists to Queensland can hope for will be a similar indoor experience. While dumping the Adani mine might not save the reef, proceeding with it will ensure the destruction of even more of the natural world, along with our own prospects.
Peter McCarthy, Mentone
Mocking free speech
The banning of Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi is deplorable. No wonder the rest of the world regards the West as hypocritical when it trumpets "values" such as free speech. This is just the latest of a long list of censorship decisions in Western countries against support for Palestine. In the land of "Je suis Charlie", it is a criminal offence to call for a boycott of Israel. But not to boycott and sanction Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and so on.
Colin Sheppard, Essendon
More to the story?
There must be more to the deportation back to Fiji of the Prasad parents than we are being told. It is the only explanation for our government's cruelty. The facts presented show that that Jitend and Joytika have not received any welfare since claiming asylum and their Australian citizen children have not been allowed to use Medicare.
So two parents who are not a burden and most likely a benefit are being persecuted. And two citizens are being denied their birthright of support from the government and are being forced to either fend for themselves in Australia or accompany their parents to an uncertain future. It is time to show you have a heart, Peter Dutton, or give a plausible reason why you are persecuting this family.
Alan Inchley, Frankston
Cruelty shapes society
The treatment of refugees is an issue like no other for our society. Although totally at the government's mercy refugees have no means of holding the government to account. They have no vote and no natural power base. The major parties know that while there is no coherent voting bloc supporting generosity, votes from bigots are assured. As both sides share the guilt neither can censure or even moderate the other's actions.
Fifteen years ago it would've been impossible for any Australian to believe that so many of the principles we held as essential for a civil society could be violated by successive governments.
We now lock up children. Take away the liberty of people we know to be innocent. Deploy our armed forces to drive desperate people out to sea. Justify the persecution of innocent people in the name of deterrence of others. The list goes on. Our approach is not only extremely cruel to innocent people, it is shaping Australian society.
Kate Kennedy, Coburg
City becoming obese
If Melbourne were a human body, a medical examiner might instead suggest it was becoming obese ("Growing pains", Extra, 9/4). In recent times Melbourne has grown by a third, and in just the past year accepted 108,000 people. As with obesity, existing arteries struggle to supply the expanding body; and lungs do not enlarge to provide the needed oxygen.
Anyone who has lived in Melbourne for some years has seen it spread to almost 150 kilometres across. They would know our roads are becoming choked, and that our transport system is inadequate. While we endure ever-increasing population density, where are the new green open spaces that could be our expanding lungs? State and federal MPs need to take a deep breath, and stop long enough to realise that infinite population growth is simply not possible.
Elizabeth Meredith, Surrey Hills
Enriching prison firms
Matthew Guy's move to tackle crime is welcome. However, the new sheriff says the cost of his initiative doesn't matter. When asked where the money would come from, he indicated savings would be found as feeling safe is first and foremost. Infrastructure must clearly be considered secondary then – it's no good having good public transport if we don't feel safe. Similarly education and health must be at risk. I'm all for getting tougher, but the way to do that is through sentencing, not mandatory sentencing. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work; America, the world's greatest jailer, is abandoning harsh, mandatory sentencing. Change sentencing laws so that a person who has a prior conviction for an offence must face the next level of sentencing for a subsequent offence. Mandatory imprisonment will simply make private companies rich at a huge cost to the state.
Douglas Potter, Surrey Hills
Led up the garden path
I recently applied for a management position in the Victorian public service. Before submitting my application, I contacted the person nominated on the position description to ensure the vacancy was genuine. I was assured it was. Six weeks later I received an email from the human resources representatives advising me I was unsuccessful because "the position has been filled by the redeployment of an unplaced staff member". I contacted the person regarding the disconnect between what he had advised me and the reality. It appears 28 applications had been received, with the panel interviewing only one person.
At the very minimum, the public service should include a disclaimer that the "VPS is obligated to advertise this position, but it may be filled by the redeployment of an unplaced staff member". And if it wants to be really transparent, it should add that "the best candidate may not necessarily 'win' the job".
Paul Cook, Yarraville
Formative misogyny
Nick Miller's overview of the at times brutal "masculinist" ethos that characterised British "boys only" public schools from the 19th century through to much of the 20th century was revealing.
However, he overlooked the blatant misogyny that led to their formation. "Muscular Christianity", extolling "manliness" and sporting prowess in students, was in large part a late Victorian England response to widely held fears about the encroaching "feminisation" of the young men comprising the elite classes. The Etons and Harrows were tasked with preparing the future male caste of administrators and "warriors" within Britain and its Empire. Such schools, and their replicas in Australia, not only institutionalised bullying and notions of class and racial superiority but by default relegated females to an anonymous, subordinate social role. The nasty legacy of such institutions lingers to this day.
Jon McMillan, Mount Eliza