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Our building regulations need a major overhaul
How many separate approvals are required before an owner can move into a new house in Melbourne's designated urban growth area? Twenty? Fifty?...
Ownership and exclusion: a lesson from the UK riots
Many commentators correctly attribute the UK rioting to decades of misgoverning and miseducating youth. Contributing to this has been the breakdown...
Access to land the root of soaring house prices
In 2004, a report by the Commonwealth's normally reliable Productivity Commission (PC) completely misread the causes of high house prices. It...
Government red tape puts us in house bind
According to the English humourist Auberon Waugh, the urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite...
Houston, we have a housing problem
Adding up everything we own, the Government Statistician reckons Australian families are worth $5800 billion. That's more than five times as much...
Surely the election can afford debate on housing
As a concern among the electorate, housing affordability ranks above industrial relations, interest rates and asylum seekers. But until yesterday,...
Let society shape itself
It's hard not to be cynical. Especially when a developer lobby claims giving the government power to force people to sell their homes - to...
It's time misguided land starvation was stopped
With boom times returning to WA, the housing market is once again overheating. The median house price in Perth is now $512,000, according to the...
Price of a new house could be so much cheaper
A misdirected email from Justin Madden's office showed the Brumby Government at its manipulative worst. Following a planning review into the iconic...
Libertarians spoke out when state began to meddle
Ross Gittins seems to think libertarians have quietly watched as the Rudd government has bungled its response to the north Atlantic banking crisis...