I get wound up about stuff. Stuff that I have no control over.

Yeah I should just chill out and get on with shit but I like to think of myself as fairly smart so I think about why the things I don’t understand happen. It generally comes down to stupidity or greed. Be it greed of power, money, ego or more likely, all three. Let me chuck in an example and you can figure out yourself what this is.

We have a new Federal government as of 2022. They are a Labor government which to non-Aussies means the Republicans/Tories lost. And that is exactly how it actually happened. Labor’s collective vote decreased in this election, but since the right wing nutjobs collective went down even more, Labor won the election in typical Aussie Steven Bradbury fashion.

You see, down here we only have 2 major political parties. There are also The Greens (left), One Nation (very right) and technically the Nationals (also right) but they are joined to the Liberal Party (who are not Liberal but conservative – go figure that one out) at the hip in an absolutely permanent alliance. The Greens pick up a few seats here and there and generally do well in the Upper House (Senate) where they have held the balance of power Federally a few times. One Nation are, to my mind, a bunch of shrieking banshees who are xenophobic and terrified of the Chinese as well as anyone sensible, and they tend to do well in Queensland for some reason. But the biggest winners in our election were a bunch of Independents who were aided by a pool of private funding from a Climate Change activist fund to get the existing Government out at any cost.

It worked.

Problem is that Labor, the party of the Trade Union movement and allegedly the working class, now have to actually do something to try and prove that they deserved to win and didn’t just fall in due to rank incompetence of the other lot.

Now one of the biggest problems we are having now in the land of Oz is the cost of living and ultimately a housing affordability crisis. I’m fortunate that I own my own home. It’s small, it’s old, and it’s not in a great area for my kids to get work or anything else happening in their lives, but it’s mine and no bank or landlord can take it from me. So yeah, very fortunate. I work for a department of the NSW Government, in what is I think a decent paying, fairly secure role. But I am currently the sole income earner here. If I had to pay rent, or a mortgage that is increasing almost every time the Reserve Bank have a meeting due to interest rate hikes to curb inflation (and I’ll get to that on another day) I would probably be screwed. Food, electricity, fuel, insurance, water, council rates – basically anything you can name, has got a lot more expensive of late. Which leaves less cash in hand for those not in the fortunate spot I am. Consequently many people are getting booted from rental properties as those renting them out know they can bring someone else in who will pay more. And that is a large part of the point I am about to make.

Since when was it ok in our society to make shelter a ruthless investment?

I know people have owned properties to rent them out since feudal times but since interest rates dropped to basically zero an absolute shit load of homes have been built and snapped up by investors looking to get renters into them to pay off their mortgages for them. People have borrowed 90-95% of the value of the home, banking on interest rates staying low and getting someone else to pay it off for them. Well, that ain’t so easy now and interest rates are climbing faster than your local bamboo crop. So now we wait for the Government to bring in some meaningful reform that will help those on lower incomes survive these times. To help older people who cannot afford their rent anymore, plus the sick and unemployed. House prices are wayyyyyyy too high for most people to break into the housing market without going up to their eyeballs in debt. And rents are skyrocketing everywhere. My solution?

You can own one investment property and receive the current taxation treatment on that property. For any after the first one you are taxed on your collected rent marginally.

Marginally means added to your income as taxed like it was Overtime. If that doesn’t drop the prices of homes by 50% in 6 months I’ll be utterly amazed. Farewell to idiotic bank profits of billions every three months. Sayonara to real estate agents mega fees. And a firm goodbye to the arseholes who are profiting off people struggling to put a roof over the heads. Oh and allow me to wave Auf Weidersehen to all of the AirBNB hosts who kicked their long term tenants out to gain short term travelers at 4 times the profit margins. I’m swearing in here but even I won’t put the word I’d like to call them all. Rhymes with runts and isn’t considered to be very nice.

Will it cause chaos to the economy? Yep, certainly. Will a lot of people suffer as they have to be foreclosed on for not meeting their mortgages on their third, fourth and seventeenth homes. Absolutely. Cry me a fucking river. Maybe hock your Lexus. Honestly it sickens me to see people think they are better than others because they have money when others don’t. Did they work really hard for that money? Yeah? Ok, fine. But you are not better than anyone because you have it. People often struggle to feed their kids, keep a roof over their heads and look after their elderly relatives through no fault of their own. Maybe their home was burned down in bushfires and still haven’t received the support they were promised. Maybe they got flooded out and their home was written off and they are living in temporary housing. Maybe they were in a good job and were made redundant and now can’t find work as they are my age and employers don’t want people in their 50’s, they want younger people. Maybe they got sick, maybe their kids or parents got sick, and they had insufficient health insurance or their treatment costs ate up their savings. Not everyone is a bludger that gets caught out in these scenarios.

And then our new Labor (for the working class) government promises to keep tax cuts starting in 2024 that are only for the wealthiest Australians (a totally fucked up policy from their predecessors), commit to spending $368 billion dollars on nuclear powered submarines (also started by their predecessors but they were all in on that one from the start anyway so it may as well be their policy) and then the same Government does not overturn the ending of a program to help the poorest people who are in low income housing, initiated by one of their own (Kevin Rudd) many years ago, meaning they are getting evicted across the country to become homeless?

0/10 rating for that shit. Which is basically the rating I gave the previous Government on most things. Conservative governments are not strong on compassion, never have been, never will be. I expect better from a Labor Government. Not that I voted for them. I have in the past but I vote based on policy. I’m one of those weirdos that actually reads what the Libs, Labor and Greens say they are going to do. One Nation don’t say they are going to do anything so there is nothing from them to read. And the Nationals only say what the Libs let them so what’s the point of reading theirs anyway? Not like they get an actual say in anything. I’m also that weirdo in the polling booth forever numbering lots and lots of boxes. I’ll admit the last NSW senate paper defeated me for the first time ever – I only numbered to 77 as it was getting hard to keep it legible with the pencil I had in the tiny boxes. Lucky I brought my glasses. But I never thought I’d see the day when I was giving Labor a 0/10 on housing policy. Well, there it is. Well done you pack of fools.

So as the title says: the more something changes (in this case our Government overlords), the more it stays the same. Which is great. Just fucking great. I leave you with the question of stupidity or greed. Totally your call.