property

From the Minister for the Aged:

I need to let you people know that you have had it pretty good so far but you cannot expect things to continue as they are. You Baby Boomers are in fact an impending liability on the country. Having said that (and in a way, I wish I hadn't) you are probably mostly still in the workforce, but think what a drain you will be when you have finished your useful, paid, working life. I warn you that you will all need to pull in your belts, in the interest of Team Australia (pardon the expression but it is so very suitable in this context!)

Necessary reality check

There are the three areas where the expectations built up over your working lives will need to undergo a reality check.

1. Aged Pension

The first is superannuation. You thought that superannuation was a good way to save for your retirement and you have been saving in this way for at least two decades. Well, in fact, this has been very selfish of you as putting money away for 30 years (instead of using it for holidays or to buy a house) has given you a tax break. So although you are saving for your own retirement so as not to be on an Age Pension when you retire, there is no need to feel any satisfaction about this because you have been doing this at the tax payer’s expense! The country cannot afford this rort that you have been willingly participating in, thinking you have been doing the right thing. Your gains need to be clawed back! Just watch this space for what is in store for you,.... you greedy hoarders.

Now we don’t want you on the Age Pension and we don’t want you to accumulate too much money in "super" for your retirement either. At least not with the tax advantages (although without the tax advantages you probably wouldn’t want to tie money up in “super", anyway). We, the government actually don’t know what we want you to do so we’ll just do something to superannuation and see how you all react.

If, after all this, you can’t afford to go on living at any point , the problem will probably take care of itself.

2. Health insurance

This brings me to the second area of consideration, which is health insurance.

Many of you have been paying into Private Health Insurance for decades as well. As you know, Medibank Private is now living up to its name. It has now actually been privatised (November 2015). As a business and in the interests of its shareholders, it cannot afford to carry risky cohorts and I’m afraid that you people either are becoming or about to become too risky. It doesn’t matter that while you were young and healthy you kept paying premiums to Medibank Private and never made a claim. Your attitude, that you were happy not to make a claim and that you felt you were contributing so that others, less fortunate with their health, could, was very sporting. Once again, however, a reality check is needed. Medibank Private, and I’m sure, the other private health funds, need to assess their risks and charge appropriate premiums for certain risk groups. As I have just said, you, as the now aged or soon to be aged, are high risk!

Things go wrong more often with older people and this is a burden on the country. In the case of health insurance, it is also a burden on other policy holders and potentially to shareholders. You need to pay a price that reflects your risk as an aged or soon to be aged person to the insurer. If this means that you can no longer afford the premiums (they will be steep, I can tell you) then you will need to fall back on the public system and I can also tell you that the public system does not want you! No, the public system is overwhelmed with treating young locals and backpackers from all over the world in their emergency departments, not to mention stabbings, king hittings and other casualties of drunken or drugged youthful exuberance. As I have said, this problem may take care of itself: if you are lying on a stretcher in a corridor, having been triaged as low priority, you may not survive and that will be a blessing to the system.

Planning your Exit Strategy

It is so opportune that there is a group called “Exit” who are in favour of people being quietly assisted to exit this mortal coil ahead of their allotted moment. If they could get some more traction, I personally (and mark you I don’t speak for the government on this) feel that this could save billions from the national health bill. Think seriously about this as you could make your exit maybe even ten years ahead of schedule and it would do wonders for the median age of the population. You can be assured that you are very easily replaced with much younger people from other countries with many years of work left in them.

If there were a move for people to go for the ten year earlier exit, that would leave a lot of houses in the suburbs where people want to live and send their children to school. It would be a win-win. Of course you wouldn’t be here to win, but just before your exit, I’m sure you would have a feeling of satisfaction that you had done your bit.

3. Driving tests for over-70s

The third area where we need to trim the fat is on our overcrowded roads. Thus we are seriously thinking of making everyone over 70 do the drivers license test again. Now I must warn you that it won’t be the breeze it was when you were pretty and 18 years old. No, no-one will be charmed by you. In fact the police who test you may well be badly disposed towards you and enjoy the power of their position in the testing situation. They have all heard how greedy the Baby Boomers are and how they took more than their share and wouldn’t move out of their houses when gently persuaded by Bernard Salt, and not so gently persuaded by fast rising council rates!

Oh dear, I just realised that I am in fact a "soon to be elderly," myself at the age of 56. Oh Hell! But I don’t really have to worry as I will receive an enormous, very generously indexed taxpayer-funded Parliamentary pension for life. Because of my position I can probably avoid the driving test! Anyway, I have a chauffeur.

"Why are you picking on senior drivers?” I hear you ask. Well, you will have declined in ability, you might pass out at the wheel.

"But the percentage of drivers having accidents is actually lower in older people,” I hear you say. I don’t care, it’s intuitive and I’m sticking to it. It’s not always a matter of statistics but of common sense and economic rationalism. If all drivers of 70 and over are required to take a diving test, think of the revenue for State Road authorities, for the police, even perhaps for driving instructors. It would add to GDP. The possibilities are endless!

I see some very dissatisfied faces in the audience. Sir, you object to the need to go for your license again on the grounds that you run a company with $5 million per year turnover and that you have made some of your best business decisions in the last 12 months. Yes, you would be required to do your driver’s license test again. Whilst I will admit that your business achievements auger well for your cognitive abilities, in fairness we will have to include everyone - no exceptions...

...oh except for people like me of course!

Why doesn't the government cut land costs? High costs of land, and the resources it carries - energy and water - are responsible for our failing economy. The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories. The greatest costs to workers are the rents they pay for personal accommodation. Small and medium-sized businesses pay both for their business premises and for their personal accommodation. Manufacturing in Australia is losing out to high rents and housing costs. Wages must go up to satisfy the malignant effect of land-speculation, which government continues to encourage against our common welfare. But, why don't they just cut the land-costs? Stop pushing up property prices by reducing immigration and you won't have to put wages up. Business will become competitive on the world market again, because most of its profits won't go on rent of premises. Let's get rid of the property developers. Let's outlaw land speculation. [Title changed from "Cut land-costs, not wages. Down with property developers, Up with workers!" on 9 Oct 2011.]

We hear that over 90% of small businesses quickly go broke. Some of you may assume that this is because they are all incompetent. That would mean that you have a low opinion of your fellow Australian and that you haven't considered the costs that operate in our society and are causing our factories to close.

The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories.

Do we ever hear the Liberal Party or the Labor Party say anything about this?

No.

But land costs and rent costs erode profit margins and drive everyone except the major corporations out of business.

The major corporations (which include newspapers, banks and developers) invest in land and are responsible for high rents and mortgages. They constantly lobby against ordinary Australians for more immigrants to keep those costs high. They are in the business of putting the rest of us out of business.

Why is the government ignoring that land cost factors completely dwarf all the other factors causing Australian manufacturing and most other small business to founder?

The public service is bringing in contractors in order to keep wages down. Once they did not have the right to do this. Once they had to negotiate fairly.

We are losing our rights to decent wages and conditions at the same time that big business is forcing up rents and housing costs.

The mass media is full of nonsense about how the economy cannot afford for wage rises. The mass media has nothing to say about the huge iceberg our economy is running up against in rising land prices. It only talks about how a tiny minority of people who have invested in second properties are able to sell their houses for more money. It says nothing about how business fails and people become homeless due to these rising costs.

Now I hear of how state governments are talking about bringing in contractors to undercut cleaners' wages. Cleaners are arguably among the most poorly paid workers in Australian industry. They work very hard and have little status.

The same thing is happening to drivers, with local governments considering colluding to introduce strike-breakers in order to stop industrial action to negotiate small wage rises in another ill-paid industry.

Why is it always those who can least afford it who must bear the brunt of our ill-run economy, whilst the CEOs and head-kickers get huge wages for simply being mean and greedy?

Please send this cartoon to Julia and Wayne and your local politicians and ask them, "Why don't you just cut the land costs?"

For those who follow the stock exchange, building materials share values are the key to the boom and bust cycle of Australian (and similar systems) property, infrastructure and construction booms. When building materials values go down we know that overall market demand decline has settled in. It means that the developers and engineers have reduced their forward orders for bricks and mortar. At the same time Australian state governments have been told to reduce their own little-known immigrant-sponsorship programs.

ALP Investments

Are business forecasts another key to Julia Gillard's apparent sea-change in population policy and Rudd's disappearance?
The ALP doesn't rely on mere donations from developers; it has its own huge investments in finance, insurance, mining, development and property, which act as a barometer for the benefits of growth. Could ALP investments and other big business now be warning the Labor Government that construction will no longer be able to soak up immigrants? Sure, pumping up population pumps up demand, but only if there is money to invest. Problem is that the money seems to be drying up.

Boral pulling up sticks

Building materials giant, Boral, long a veteran investor in Australian population growth and an early vocal member of the 20th century Australian population growth lobby, is downsizing some of its Australian and US operations and heading north, presumably scavenging the last inertias of scale in the post-colonial malignant growth of China, India and South East Asian regions.[1]

The Australian Financial Review reported that Boral made a $49 million loss before interest and taxation in the first half of 2010.[1]

The most tasteless era of ostentatious spending on multi-management layers wining and dining big projects and buyers since the one preceding the Great Depression may be on its last legs. The US housing market has gone phutt. The Australian market will follow.

And Boral shares, running at around $10 in 2006, are now about half that.

"Deutsche Bank believes that although Boral's Australian construction materials arm has been one of its strongest-performing divisions, with earnings before interest and taxation up 12 per cent to $107 million in the first half, it could easily cut some $14 million in costs by eliminating several layers of management." [1]

This will be a relief for less exalted workers and managers in the sector. Survival is possible in such industries if they follow the post 1970s oil-shock European model of maintaining infrastructure and housing stock instead of investing in population and construction growth. However, there won't be room for wedding-cake management tiers.

States told to cut their 'secret' immigration programs

Another sign of terminal decline in bricks and mortar bubbles is the new Federal Government's request to the states to cut back their semi-secret immigration programs, including the 176 visas.[2] The states control land and derive income from its sale, notably through stamp duty. To generate land and housing sales they have been engineering population growth, in tandem with property developers and financiers. The associated state-sponsored immigration programs seem to have started in Victoria and are the most excessive there. Introduced by the Kennett government, one of their ploys was to make a low profile category of 'regional immigration' (once designed to assist low-population rural areas by facilitating skilled immigration and loosening definitions of family reunion) into one that applied everywhere, designating dense urban areas as in need of immigration. Long and short-term immigration in numbers previously unimagined has generated a demand for housing and jobs in construction. The same immigration probably supplies many of those non-English speaking construction-workers one sees moving like ants on roadways and tragically moon-scaped once green patches in Australian suburbs, carrying out orders at which most locals would bawk, if in control of the process.

State government spokespeople, including growth-corridor spruikers, have repeatedly claimed that immigration numbers were outside of their control, yet the states advertised aggressively for immigrants. See these articles, for instance: "Premier Bligh pretends Queenslanders cannot cap population growth although 60% want to" and "Melbourne 2008, Life in a destruction zone" and "Julianne Bell delivers resolutions to Planning Minister Madden in late impromptu meeting."

Yet the State Premiers continue to try to mislead the public on this, even subsequent to Gillard's new policies:

"We can't control who comes over our state borders, but the federal government can control who comes into Australia," (Anna Bligh) [3]

Tragically and wastefully the tendency of state governments to deny reality may see green wedges rezoned and destroyed even at this stage of construction detumescence by parliamentary rogues. See for instance, http://candobetter.org/node/2058 and http://candobetter.org/node/2067 Yet it may all be for nothing; those wedges might be sold at a financial loss in the end.

Women in power

We may gauge the panic of big business to the idea of a real debate on population through its mainstream media mouthpieces' hopeful perseveration with tying that rusty and irrelevant old racist can to the idea of sustainable population and Julia Gillard, reflected for instance, in this glowing chestnut where Gillard's red hair provides a cliched motif:

"Who can forget the last redhead to talk tough on immigration and protecting Australian values?

and "This isn't just about talking to voters in western Sydney but also in Queensland, which gave rise to Hansonism. Maintaining seats there is shaping as a major challenge in the federal election."[4]

The comments above evoke the medieval European stigmatisation of red-heads, not to mention witch-hunting. Starting with the new Primeminister, women in Australia may be in for an interesting time as the boys start fighting over the scraps, in the property sector and government.

Notes

[1] Jeremy Wiggins, "Boral set to offload dead wood," Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 2010, page 1.
[2] Sophie Morris, "States' visas blunt skills thrust: Migration," Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 2010, page 8.
[3] Marcus Priest, "Values, being sustainable are the keys: Population,"Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 2010, page 8.
[4]Marcus Priest, "Lurching to the right on boat people: Comment," Australian Financial Review, page 8.

Here is my letter to Professor Michael Archer, no reply forthcoming.

Dear Prof. Archer

I have read about the FATE program on your website and would like to share some comments.

Firstly, how can you consider this program to be helping conservation of kangaroos? How can 'sustainable use' apply to kangaroos when:

1. Their numbers have dropped up to 70% across the nation from 2001-2006 due to the drought and excess kangaroo 'culling' [1]?

2. Up to 80% females are killed. According to population experts killing 50% females is unsustainable [2]?

3. The report by The Australian Society for Kangaroos (a compilation of shocking facts from various government departments) clearly shows how kangaroos are on track to extinction. The fact that the biggest kangaroos have been shot out is proven by the fact that the average age of commercially killed kangaroos these days is only 2-3 years (21 kg) i.e. barely at reproductive age and just out of the pouch[3].

4. According to the Murray Darling Report, if kangaroos are killed in areas where there are less than 5 kangaroos per sq. km, that is a recipe for extinction. Yet kangaroos are being commercially killed in areas where there are less than 1 kangaroo per sq. km. [4].

Kangaroos are approaching, if not at, the tipping point beyond which kangaroos become extinct.

The FATE program will guarantee extinction for kangaroos. Entrusting the conservation of Australia's national icon to the very people who hate kangaroos the most (i.e. farmers) is like asking foxes to guard the proverbial hen house.

Australian government policy has already allowed 40% of native species to become extinct in a mere 220 years since the early settlers arrived. When are we going to wake up and stop this war against wildlife before it's too late?

White man's ecological footprint in Australia has been way too large - we are going through the 6th mass extinction of all species due to human beings' total lack of consideration for and understanding of the ecosystem in which we live. Australian government policy has already allowed 40% of native species to become extinct in a mere 220 years since the early settlers arrived. When are we going to wake up and stop this war against wildlife before it's too late?

Why would people come to Australia and spend $85 billion tourist dollars each year just to go to shopping malls, theme parks and zoos when those attractions exist in any other country?

It's time to end the ridiculous policy of making wildlife pay their way with their lives by becoming renewable resources to plunder for profit till none remain. If we don't become proper custodians of the land, we will lose our most precious treasure - our unique native animals. Why would people come to Australia and spend $85 billion tourist dollars each year just to go to shopping malls, theme parks and zoos when those attractions exist in any other country? What makes Australia special is our iconic wildlife, in the wild and in hordes!

What will happen when they become extinct? Shall we replace the kangaroo with a cow? Leaving an extinct animal on our national emblem would be too painful a reminder of our collective stupidity.

Professor Archer, with all due respect, do you really want to go down in history as the man who drove the last nail in the kangaroos' coffin? Kangaroos are the second most recognised international tourist symbol. We proudly bear them on our emblem and QANTAS jets fly all over the world with the image of a kangaroo on their tails. What will happen when they become extinct? Shall we replace the kangaroo with a cow? Leaving an extinct animal on our national emblem would be too painful a reminder of our collective stupidity. Perhaps now would be a good time to start contemplating what other animal should replace the kangaroo that is as popular and well known? Perhaps cane toads, foxes or how about concrete?

On Australia Day, today, we should be considering how to protect our national treasures, not eating them and feeding them to our dogs. The FATE program encouraging 'harvesting' of our native animals is a mistake of mammoth proportions.

Thank you for your consideration.

Menkit Prince

1. www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/wild-harvest/kangaroo/population/index.html
2. H.H.Lavery 'The Keepers'
3. www.stopkangarookilling.org
4. AAT Submission, General Administration Division, NSW District Registry, No. 535 of 2007 (exhibit 13).
Re Murray Darling Report on quasi extinction - www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com/nswaatappeal2008.html

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