Last week (15 -21 May) was National Families Week. National Families Week is organised by Families Australia, a wonderful organisation, and its aim is to celebrate the vital role that families play in Australian society.

This year’s theme, ‘Stronger Families, Stronger Communities’ highlighted the importance of families to communities and that community wellbeing is enhanced by family wellbeing.

Families Australia CEO Dr Brian Babington, said ‘National Families Week is a great time to reflect on and take action to further strengthen our families.’

Hear! Hear!

Which brings us to the 2021 Budget delivered last week by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg where the theme of ‘supporting families’ ran from start to finish.

First and foremost, as members and supporters will have noticed, the Australian Family Party makes an important distinction between ‘support for families’ and ‘support for the family’. The first focuses on government spending and handouts, the second on family resilience and self-reliance.

Take childcare for example. In the 2021 Budget, the Treasurer announced a $1.7bn increase in childcare taking the total childcare expenditure to approximately $9.0bn per annum. And while this might be great news for childcare centre owners and two-income families who benefit from two tax-free thresholds, single-income families who provide childcare at home at no cost to the taxpayer are severely disadvantaged. Mothers who want to look after their own children miss out. The way the family is taxed, particularly the single-income family, is outrageously inequitable. The Australian Family Party strongly advocates income-splitting for single-income households.

The level of spending in this year’s Budget is breathtaking.

Family First’s successful 2016 campaign slogan was ‘Every family, a job and a house’. If every family had a job and owned their own home, the campaign went, the benefits to the nation would be enormous.

That is family resilience and self-reliance. Full employment, home ownership.

Here again, while a $25,000 home buyers grant might seem nice, when you consider government fees and charges make up nearly 40 per cent of the purchase price of a home, the government is quietly taking $250,000 with one hand and loudly giving back $25,000 with the other. Where’s the sense or integrity in that? A huge brick wall in the form of taxes, charges, levies and planning restrictions has been built across the road to home ownership and all a $25,000 grant does is add another rung to the ladder that struggling home buyers use trying to get over the wall.

Australia’s total debt and deficit is set to hit one trillion dollars in four years’ time. A billion is a thousand million. A trillion is a million million. The mind boggles.

One of nature’s cast iron laws is, ‘What goes up, must come down’. Somehow we’re going to have to repay this trillion dollars. Hmm …

The list of spending items in this year’s Budget was endless. Former West Australian MP John Hyde used to say, “Any lightweight can lead kids into a lolly shop, but it takes real leadership to lead them out.” That is Australia’s problem.

“Australia’s child-protection system keeps applying the same, flawed strategies which basically means children are harmed by the very system that’s meant to protect them. It puts an over-emphasis on family preservation prolonging the time children are kept with highly dysfunctional families. When, as a last resort, they are finally removed they are churned through unstable foster care and returned to their families where the reunification is likely to break down. For many children, they spend almost all of their childhood and adolescence in care and never get a permanent and safe family for life. Many of these children could have, should have, been adopted.”  — Dr Jeremy Sammut*

Over 40,000 Australian children are currently in government-sponsored care. Approximately 30,000 have been there for more than 2 years. Less than 200 were adopted.

The first question that must be asked is, ‘Why are so many children cycled in and out of government care?’ And second, ‘Why are there so few adoptions in Australia?’

Compared with similar countries Australia has very low rates of adoption.

It seems the chief barrier to increasing the rate of adoptions in Australia are state and territory government child protection authorities. In South Australia for example, the inquest into the death of toddler Chloe Valentine revealed the abject squalor of the environment the child was forced to endure, an environment authorities were well aware of. An anti-adoption culture appears to be ingrained in state and territory child protection authorities.

19^th Century English philosopher and parliamentarian John Stuart Mill was one of the first to declare that “Children have independent rights as future citizens. If parents fail in their obligations to fulfil those rights then the State should step in”.

Regrettably, the rights of abusive parents seem to outweigh the rights of abused children.

It has been nearly 50 years since the introduction of the single mother’s pension by the Whitlam Government. This policy helped end the practice of forced adoption as the provision of taxpayer-funded income support gave women who became pregnant out of wedlock the option of keeping their children. The unintended consequence however, has been that welfare for single mothers has led to the very social problems forced adoptions were designed to prevent – the inability of many single mothers to properly care for their children. The right to welfare became a pathway to welfare dependency which has contributed significantly to the scale of the child protection crisis confronting Australia today.

In 2019, the Federal Government’s House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs Report ‘Breaking barriers: a national adoption framework for Australian children’, stated that the best interests of children should be at the centre of child protection systems.

For children who are unable to live with their biological parents, adoption has been internationally proven as the best way to provide a safe, stable and loving family life.

While it has been argued that adoption robs children of their identity, modern, ‘open adoption’ models which are specifically designed to maintain children’s connections to their cultural heritages and birth families disprove such claims.

It has also been claimed that adoption will steal children all over again. Again, NSW adoption reforms disavow such claims.

That adoption is a socially unacceptable and illegitimate practice based on past practices such as forced adoptions and indigenous experiences is a taboo which must end. There can be no meaningful change or end to the cycle of intergenerational dysfunction until that taboo is broken.

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*Dr Jeremy Sammut is the author of several research papers and the book, ‘The Madness of Australian Child Protection: Why Adoption will Rescue Australia’s Underclass Children’. Dr Sammut’s ground-breaking research on Australia’s child protection crisis has led the national debate about adoption over the past 10 years. His research influenced reforms which were passed in 2018 by the NSW Parliament.

For generations, grandparents have provided practical help, unwavering support, a wise listening ear and of course childcare, all at no cost. How good are grandparents.

Relationship Psychologist Megan Tuohey says children who have access to grandparents who love them will experience a broader and deeper sense of belonging.

“These children are more likely to experience those same feelings of security and belonging in the world as they move through to adulthood. It provides a sense of security and trust in their lives.”

A close relationship between a grandparent and grandchild can have a positive impact on the happiness and wellbeing of the entire family. Simply put, having grandparents around is good for everyone. Having two levels of love and support in a family is particularly beneficial for children in their formative years. Children will often find it easier to listen to a grandparent than a parent!

Through a grandparent’s beliefs and values a child’s perspective of what constitutes a healthy, normal relationship is often shaped by the relationship the child has with a grandparent.

One study (Boston College) found “An emotionally close relationship between grandparent and grandchild is associated with fewer symptoms of depression for both generations. For children, having grandparents around means having the perfect companions to play with and have fun. Grandparents are some of the best partners when it comes to using creativity and imagination to discover the wonders of life.

In turn, most grandparents truly love their role. The benefits to grandparents of having grandchildren in their lives cannot be overstated. Grandparents who are active in their grandchildren’s lives experience better health and a greater sense of purpose. In fact, many grandparents believe being a grandparent is the single most important role in their lives. Grandparents also offer a link to a child’s cultural heritage and family history.

Millions of grandparents look after grandchildren on a regular basis. Leaving children in the capable hands of grandparents gives parents an irreplaceable sense of comfort and security.

Of course not every child has a grandparent. This need not be cause for despair. The best foundation a child can have is to be raised in an intact, loving family.

Likewise, not every older person either has grandchildren or in more tragic cases, access to their grandchildren. For those denied access, the excellent work of organisations like Grandparents For Grandchildren is acknowledged. Here again, removing the obstacles and burdens which lead to such scenarios should be a priority for legislators – including introducing subsidies for grandparents who look after grandchildren, especially considering the amount spent looking after children in government care.

Australia’s aged care system costs billions and the horrific tales out of the Aged Care Royal Commission show it is a system that isn’t working. From grandparents to great grandparents, relocating elders away from living with their families and into nursing homes to be looked after by strangers has not been good for society as a whole. Much more needs to be done to support families caring for aged parents and grandparents at home with the family.

The family should always be Plan A.

Last week we discussed Steven Biddulph’s book ‘Raising Boys’ and how boys can be nurtured into becoming open-hearted, kind and strong men.

As all men are not open-hearted, kind and strong, clearly we are not there yet.

In Steven Biddulph’s follow-up book ‘Raising Girls’ he posits, “Raising a happy, healthy, well-adjusted daughter from babyhood to womanhood can be a challenge. Girls need to be strong, self-assured, know they are loved, and can stand up for themselves and others in an exploitative world.”

Columnist Kerry Wakefield is more blunt, “Girls can be slow to grasp what can be a Jekyll and Hyde pubertal transformation of the nice boy next door. While girls are thinking about what dress to wear and who they fancy and what the mean girls are saying, the boys are organising the booze and indulging in promiscuous carnal cruelty and who they have a chance with. When setbacks such as violence and sex assaults occur, women are told to ‘#Reclaim the Night’, that they should wear what they like when they like and not let toxic masculinity dictate their behaviour. Which is a bit like sending Bambi off into the woods without mentioning, Oh look out for the wolves”.

Shifting the debate about raising girls to how to better raise boys is not helpful. Saying men’s attitudes have to change and men should treat women with respect is an admirable sentiment but until they all do let’s start with how things are, not how we think they should be.

One thing is not in dispute, raising girls works best when mum and dad are married. A father’s influence in his daughter’s life, finding out what is important to her, is an important stabilizing factor. Divorce adversely impacts girls’ sense of security and well-being. Rates of teen pregnancy increase dramatically among girls whose parents divorce.

The advent of social media only exacerbates this challenge. Social media has contributed to a significant deterioration in girls’ mental health. Social media in the form of cyber bullying has turned deadly for girls. Sexting is rife. Internet pornography is unavoidable. Online sexual predators are pervasive. Girls are constantly being targeted by tech designers who know how to manipulate their attention and make them compare themselves to unrealistic standards of beauty. This leads to poor body image, eating disorders, anxiety and even gender dysphoria.

As discussed last week, to function properly society relies primarily on two things – individual conscience and the family.  The question is, ‘What role should the state play in ensuring individual consciences develop as they should and the family functions as it should?’

For a start, the state should be doing everything it can to encourage couples to marry and stay married. Also, as the old saying goes, “When poverty comes in the door, love goes out through the window”. There is much the state could do to reduce the financial pressure on families including income splitting for taxation purposes, subsidies for grandparents who look after grandchildren and putting an end to price-gouging by state governments of water and power costs.

When it comes to raising children – boys or girls, all roads lead to Rome – the family.

In his excellent book Raising Boys, Steve Biddulph discusses how boys can be nurtured into becoming open-hearted, kind and strong men.

In stark contrast, studies of abandoned children adopted from South American and eastern European countries demonstrate how attachment disorder can lead to sociopathy, and sociopathy to violence.

Society relies on three levels of protection against harm. Level one is a person’s own conscience; level two is the family to keep its members in check; and level three is the police.

Nurturing the conscience starts in infancy. Here, childhood connection is vital.

For a free society to prosper, people have to be able to control themselves. Teaching self-control starts with the family. The family cultivates within a child the right way to view life and the world around us.

By any measure, studies show that boys raised by intact families – married mother and father, do better than any other form of family arrangement.

It is a tragedy that more than 3,000 Australians take their lives each year. More young men take their own lives than are killed in road accidents. Boys raised in father-absent environments are five times more likely to commit suicide, ten times more likely to abuse drugs, fourteen times more likely to commit rape, and twenty times more likely to end up in a correctional facility. They are like ships without a rudder. Fatherless households are a dreadful problem. As are divorce, domestic violence, loneliness and addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography.

Part of the current turmoil regarding the treatment of women lies in the breakdown of the family.

It follows that reducing the incidence of family breakdown will lead to a reduction in violence against women.

Columnist Paul Kelly says conservatives like the Prime Minister need to show they have an effective voice on justice for women.

‘Marriage is good for society’ is a conservative message. Government policy could start by encouraging couples to marry, not discourage them with things like inequitable tax rates.

Society’s Plan A is the family. Plan B, the police, is a poor substitute. More focus on Plan A please.

Next week, Raising Girls.

It’s been said England invented bureaucracy and India perfected it. We can now add ‘… and Australia deified it’.

In his book The Lucky Country, Donald Horne said Australia was run by second-rate people who rode on the back of the country’s natural resources ie pure luck, and then claimed credit for it.

Take the most important issue Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats have had to deal with in our lifetime – COVID19. They and the whole world have been focused on this every day for more than a year and when the vaccine became available, the UK vaccinated 25 million of its citizens immediately. Israel vaccinated 5 million and will have its entire population vaccinated within weeks. Australia on the other hand has been moving at a snail’s pace with Australians being told to book a vaccination on-line. Those most vulnerable to the virus – the elderly, then have to navigate their way through an on-line questionnaire or be told ‘phone-bookings only’.

The very word bureaucracy gives the game away. Bureaucracy is derived from two words – ‘bureau’ from the French word for ‘desk’ and ‘kratos’ from the Greek word for power, hence ‘bureau-krat’, ‘desk-power’.

Clearly, looking to politicians and bureaucrats to solve all the nation’s problems is not the answer.

The Australian Family Party believes we can serve Australia best by putting the family first. The State has a duty to the family. Society has a duty to the family. And what the State and society owe the family is recognition. Recognition that the family should be front and centre, not the political class.

The three words most commonly used to describe Texas are ‘hot as hell!’

Well, last month hell froze over. Literally. The arctic conditions which swept across Texas caused mayhem. Author Michael Moorcock writing from Austin, Texas reported shortages of food and milk, frozen water pipes bursting and birds and animals dying. Multi-car pile ups caused by motorists unfamiliar with icy roads were commonplace. People were dying from hypothermia. All previously unheard of. Hot southern European countries like Spain and Greece were similarly hit with icy conditions. Some parts of Australia have had their coolest summer in nearly 20 years. What is going on?

As members and supporters would know, this is our first post on climate change. As our aim is to put the family at the centre of every conversation, the current climate situation is unavoidable.

Reducing CO2 is costing families a fortune. From power bills to planning laws to manufactured goods, measures to reduce CO2 are everywhere. And while Australia is making tiny reductions to its CO2 emissions, China, India, Russia and a hundred other developing countries are increasing their emissions. Across the world CO2 emissions are increasing, yet temperatures have dropped. We were told increases in CO2 cause increases in temperature. Is this year an aberration? Will temperatures rise next year? What if they don’t? What if CO2 isn’t to blame after all? It wouldn’t be the first time a theory has been found to be wrong. Meanwhile, families are suffering financial hardship. If the CO2 theory does end up being wrong, perhaps those who made millions from renewable energy will reimburse us.

Thank you again for your support. Please help us to keep this thing going by clicking here.

Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm

Australian Financial Review, 1 March 2021

As everyone knows, the government has borrowed a lot of money to stimulate the economy in order to recover from its COVID-19 control measures. Gross debt is expected to exceed a trillion dollars this financial year. Getting the budget back under control is vital if workers are to avoid paying exorbitant taxes for generations.

There are various ways this could be achieved. Here are three obvious areas in which the government could make a start without risking even more harm through inflation and the erosion of savings.

As we are regularly reminded, the best form of welfare is a job. Gaining a job would be vastly easier if people were allowed to escape the workplace regulation prison. Neither the government nor the bureaucrats could possibly know what suits each individual worker and their family. It is a fatal conceit for the government to assume it knows what is best for any individual.

Hundreds of millions of dollars goes on social security and welfare to people who could otherwise be working and financially independent. That includes not only those on Newstart and JobSeeker but also recipients of disability and age pensions, many of whom would welcome the opportunity to earn some extra money.

The disruption economy clearly shows what happens when people are free to work as they prefer; Uber allows people to run their own taxi service as and when it suits them, for which there is huge public support; AirBnB has enabled people to make money from their own homes or holiday houses; TaskRabbit and similar services allow people to offer their labour to do almost anything on terms and conditions that suit them.

The second saving area is to end the duplication between the Commonwealth and states, particularly on health and education. These are state responsibilities, yet the Commonwealth employs over 6000 public servants in the health portfolio and over 4000 in education while running no hospitals or schools. That’s on top of the billions it distributes to the states for these functions.

To take this argument further, there is no need for any government, state or Commonwealth, to run any schools. There is sufficient knowhow and capacity in our community for schools to be run by non-government bodies. Students who need support can be funded directly, leaving their families to decide where to send them.

The third saving suggestion is to remove barriers to home ownership. While the Commonwealth and state governments boost demand for housing through the HomeBuilder and first home owner schemes, as does the Reserve Bank’s ultra-low interest rates, nothing is being done to boost the supply of housing.

As anyone contemplating building a new house discovers, the actual cost of building a house is relatively low and hasn’t changed much in 30 years. It is the price of land that has skyrocketed. Traditionally, the median house price was around three times the median income, allowing young home buyers easy entry into the market. State governments then stepped in to make huge profits by stifling the release of land and drip-feeding it out at massively inflated prices. House prices rose to more than six times the median income.

The ramifications of this, both social and economic, have been disastrous. Hundreds of thousands of additional dollars are paid on mortgage payments which cannot be spent on other things – clothes, cars, furniture, appliances, travel, movies, restaurants, the theatre, children’s education, charities and many other discretionary purchase options.

While competition for properties in desirable locations will always result in price inflation, it is the regulated scarcity on the fringes of our cities that is at the heart of the problem. The outer suburbs are where first home buyers have traditionally got their start as land in these areas has been plentiful and affordable. Now it is neither, and first home buyers of moderate means have no place to start.

The inequity may not be all that evident at the moment but in time it certainly will be.  As we all know, if you don’t own your home by the time you retire you will struggle.

The Commonwealth could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year by reducing grants to those states that engage in price-gouging of residential land holdings through their land management corporations. It could also immediately sell off its own surplus land. The resulting lower prices would have a multiplier effect: more housing activity, more employment, more income tax paid, more building materials made and sold, more whitegoods, appliances and soft furnishings.

Bringing the massive deficit under control is not something that can be kicked down the road. It requires political courage, something sorely lacking in Australian politics at the moment.

Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm are former senators.

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown.  His cottage may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter.  All his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.” – William Pitt, British House of Commons 1763.

It’s been said that housing is the single most important factor contributing to a family’s financial and emotional security. Secure and stable accommodation is central to our well-being.

In recent years a disturbing trend has emerged in the level of home ownership among young families. It is in substantial decline. Those who bought into the housing market before 2000 when prices were low have done very well, but those who have bought since then have had to take out big mortgages in order to enter the market.

Housing is being consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Homelessness is growing. Low income people – young people in particular, are spending a much higher percentage of their income – up to 50%, on housing costs than previous generations at the same age, and the number of young people in rental accommodation has doubled. The number of years to pay off a home loan has also increased dramatically and the number of people who are ‘mortgage free’ by age 50 has halved.

The severity of the problem is also being masked by low interest rates. An interest rate rise would be catastrophic for the many homeowners who have borrowed huge sums in order to enter the market highlighting the danger of measuring affordability by the capacity to meet mortgage payments, rather than the total amount borrowed.

In creating the conditions for housing to become the privilege of the few rather than the expectation of the many, governments have produced intergenerational inequity and breached the moral contract between generations which dictates that we should leave things better than we found them.

In making housing less affordable for the next generation it has denied them much more than a roof over their heads, it has denied them the security and benefits that go with home ownership and the opportunity to provide options for themselves in later life.

Those who own their homes have much more control over their lives. Many are now choosing to defer having a family in the hope that they will be able to somehow put together the funds to buy a home later in life. If they can’t afford to buy a house, they certainly can’t afford to have children.

German economists are said to be baffled by reports that rising house prices in many western countries are deemed to be ‘good news’. In Germany, inflation in house prices, like inflation in energy prices or food prices, are considered just the opposite. How can it be “good news”, they ask, when it now takes two incomes to support a mortgage when previously young couples could buy a home and raise a family on one income? Or that a homebuyer will pay many hundreds of thousands of dollars more in mortgage payments and government taxes and charges than would otherwise be the case?

The immutable laws of supply and demand – the causes of high housing costs

It was once the case that if a person, or indeed a country, knew how to make something, the world would beat a path to its door. The factories and mills of 19^th Century England bore witness to the power of being able to make things. Britannia ruled the waves. Today, manufacturing is global. From motor vehicles to whitegoods, kitchen appliances, widescreen TV sets, personal computers, mobile phones, the world is awash with supply – and demand. And yet despite this ever-increasing demand, prices continue to fall.

So why does housing – a simple manufactured product, defy this trend? Why does a house, which like other manufactured goods containing readily accessible components, increase in price out of all proportion to other consumer products?

Demand stimulators like immigration, low interest rates, favourable tax treatments and first home buyer grants have unquestionably increased demand for housing, however increases in demand do not, of themselves, cause prices to rise. The exponential increases in demand for mobile phones, laptops and digital TVs has not led to increases in price. In fact the opposite occurred – prices have fallen, in some cases by more than half due to increases in supply of these goods. The 1950s and ‘60s population explosion – the ‘baby boomer generation’ saw massive increases in housing demand but house prices remained stable because supply kept up with demand.

So what has gone wrong?

On the fringes of our cities there is a more than adequate supply of cheap land and a housing industry ready, willing and able to put houses on it at competitive prices.

So why are houses not being built on this cheap land? Cheap land attracts not only home buyers but commercial interests as well, leading to more employment opportunities.

The answer is simple – money.

Take South Australia as a case study.

The SA Land Commission Act of 1973 clearly stated the aim of the Land Commission was “the provision of land to those members of the community who do not have large financial resources”. The Act further made it clear that the Commission “shall not conduct its business with a view to making a profit.” Once the Commission was up and running however and the potential to start making a quid became apparent, these noble motives were quietly ditched. Clauses like “shall not make a profit” were deleted and replaced with “maximise financial returns to government”. The Commission then changed its name to the SA Urban Land Trust, then to the Land Management Corporation then RenewalSA. The SA State Government has made millions by manipulating the land market – all at the expense of housing affordability.

Members of parliament have also hopped onto the property-owning bandwagon with numerous ‘investment properties’ of their own and, keen to maintain their own wealth, publicly support urban planners who continually rail against the so-called evils of ‘urban sprawl’.  The resulting urban growth boundaries which restrict home building activity through zoning laws, force new home buyers into high density housing developments in inner suburbs. It is the monetisation of urban planning.

Claims that urban sprawl is bad and that urban densification or urban consolidation is good for the environment, or that it stems the loss of agricultural land, or that it encourages people onto public transport, or that it saves water, or that it leads to a reduction in motor vehicle use or that it saves on infrastructure costs for government are false.

Urban consolidation is an idea that has failed all over the world. Whether it’s traffic congestion, air pollution, the destruction of bio-diversity or the unsustainable pressure on electricity, water, sewage, or stormwater infrastructure, urban densification has been a disaster. Urban consolidation is not good for the environment, it does not save water, it does not lead to a reduction in motor vehicle use, it does not result in nicer neighborhoods, it does not stem the loss of agricultural land, it does not save on infrastructure costs for government and worst of all it puts home ownership out of the reach of those on low and middle incomes. Sir Peter Hall of the London School of Economics claims, “The biggest single failure of urban densification has been affordability.”

This limiting of housing on the urban fringes of cities distorts the inner suburban market where the ‘Save our Suburbs’ groups – committed to maintaining the character of existing suburbs by limiting the amount of additional in-fill housing, are highly effective. This further exacerbates the supply/demand distortion.

And it’s not as if high rates of construction of high density housing apartments – a favourite of urban planners, leads to improved housing affordability. Sydney, Toronto and Vancouver which have seen very high rates of high rise apartment construction are among the worst cities in the world in terms of affordability. Here again, planning restrictions limiting the number of apartments per site in the form of height restrictions add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of an apartment. In Sydney for example, the average construction cost of a high rise apartment is $430,000 whereas the sale price is over $800,000.

And it is young home buyers, hit with the spiralling costs of home ownership who end up paying.  Whilst it is true there has been an increase in younger people preferring CBD apartment living, they are mostly forced into these overpriced units without being given the option of a low cost, free-standing home of their own on a large block on the fringe. Given the price distortions inherent in today’s housing market, it is impossible to know what the trade-off points might be between downtown living, size of home, large backyard, children, pets, and suburban living.

Given housing is such a political hot potato, governments have responded but unlike ‘the war on drugs’ where governments primarily focus on trying to limit supply, with housing, the overwhelming response by governments has been calls to try to limit demand – lower levels of immigration, the removal of favourable taxation treatments – negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts and bank lending restrictions.

These are merely window dressing, and, together with measures like changes to self-managed superannuation fund rules, pension rules, first home owner grants, shared equity schemes, social/public/community housing projects, deposit saver accounts, stamp duty exemptions for people down-sizing, congestion taxes, land taxes, negative gearing, capital gains tax, bank lending restrictions (eg requiring banks to have less than 30% of loans as ‘interest only’) they are totally ineffective at solving the affordability problem.

Red tape, green tape, housing taxes, zoning taxes, development charges

Planning controls, development restrictions, environmental regulations, multiple jurisdictions, minimum lot sizes, lengthy approval processes, ‘developer’ contributions, ‘affordable housing’ requirements on new housing developments … building a house is no longer a simple matter. What has for centuries been an uncomplicated industry has become mired in planning rules and regulations which have sent land prices skyrocketing. Restrictive planning rules – effectively housing taxes, now account for up to 50% of the cost of a house.

Traditionally, actual land costs have been no more than 20% of the total cost of a house and land package. Average construction costs have also been fairly consistent across most jurisdictions at approximately $1,000 per square metre, a figure that has changed little in over 20 years. This equates to an average construction cost of a 150 square metre starter home of $150,000. Likewise land development costs – roads, water, sewage, power, telecommunications, footpaths and street signage, across most jurisdictions are consistently around $40,000 per lot. Add profit margin and raw land costs of $10,000 per lot for a total house and land of $200,000 – three times median incomes.

The affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of one thing – the extent to which governments impose rules and regulations over the construction of houses and land allotments.

In essence, what has been described as a ‘housing affordability’ problem is simply a ‘land affordability’ problem.

Regrettably, the general public is profoundly ignorant of the underlying causes of housing unaffordability.

Edmund Burke once said “It is the job of political leaders to teach people that which they do not know”.

First, what not to do. As discussed above, policies which seek to suppress demand – lower levels of immigration, the removal of favourable taxation treatments – negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts, bank lending restrictions, changes to self-managed superannuation fund rules, pension rules, congestion taxes and land taxes, are futile. As are attempts by governments to assist home buyers with first home buyer grants, shared equity schemes, social/public/community housing projects, deposit saver accounts and stamp duty exemptions for people down-sizing.

As for what to do, first and foremost, where they have been applied, urban growth boundaries or zoning restrictions on the urban fringes of cities should be removed.  Residential development on the urban fringe should be made “permitted use.”  In other words, there should be no ‘zoning’ restrictions in turning rural fringe land into residential land.

Second, create a low entry level for those wanting to develop housing allotments. Smaller players need to be encouraged back into the market by abolishing compulsory so-called ‘Master Plans.’  If large developers wish to initiate Master Planned Communities, that’s fine, but they should not be compulsory.

Third, allow the development of basic serviced allotments ie water, sewer, electricity, stormwater, bitumen road, street lighting and street signage.  Additional services and amenities – ornamental lakes, entrance walls, childcare centres, bike trails and the like can be optional extras if the developer wishes to provide them and the buyers are willing to pay for them.

Fourth, no up-front developer or infrastructure charges.  All services should be paid for through the rates system – paid for ‘as’ they are used, not ‘before’ they are used.

Fifth, the Federal Government should consider using corporations powers to override state or city planning laws to allow land holders the right to make their land available for housing.

Similarly, the Federal Government should reduce Commonwealth grants to the States commensurate with their profiteering from land supply constraints.

I’m loath to quote the United Nations but one of the UN’s sustainable development goals is “to ensure adequate housing for all by 2030”.

Without some decisive action, this goal will never be achieved.

Beijing to Damascus: A road to peace?

In a recent feature article in The Australian entitled “Christianity is China’s cross to bear”, Greg Sheridan asked whether Christianity can do for China what capitalism failed to do — namely, soften the harsh Marxist/Leninist/Nationalist atmosphere of Chinese society? Peter Jennings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute followed up with “China picks up the pace of militarisation”.

So, is China to be friend or foe?

Rising tensions

At the moment, the trade negotiators, business executives and military strategists do not seem to be holding out much hope for anything other than a hot war, a cold war or a trade war; an increasing number of geopolitical experts predict armed conflict between the United States and China sometime in the next 10 years.

Graham Ellison in his seminal work, Destined for War, discusses the inevitability of the “Thucydides Trap”: that is the geopolitical situation in which a rising power (China) is confronted by a ruling power (the U.S) and the result is bloodshed.

This is a conflict Australia would not be able to avoid. It is here that Greg Sheridan underestimates Christianity’s power. Can Christianity soften Chinese society? It can do much more than that.

Judeo-Christian history in China

As Sheridan points out, the number of Christians in China has grown from four million to 100 million in the past 70 years. For this to occur during a period of some of the most savage anti-religious persecutions in modern history is, he says, almost miraculous.

Almost miraculous? It is exactly how Christianity started.

The most savage persecutor of the early Christian church was Saul of Tarsus, later to become St Paul the Apostle, a principal writer of the New Testament. Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is etched into history.

Judaism and Christianity are also etched into Chinese history going back more than 4,000 years. For more than 2,000 years — before Abraham, before Moses, before Jesus, before Confucius, before Tao and before Buddha – the Chinese worshipped Shang Di, the “Most High God”, “Creator of Heaven and Earth”.

Numerous Chinese characters, texts and scrolls (Huang Di; Shi Ji; Sima Qian; Feng Shan and many others) bear striking similarities — many identical — to the Judaic Old Testament.

In the 16th century AD, Jesuit missionaries led by Matteo Ricci carried the Gospel to China, resulting in one of China’s greatest emperors, Kang Xi (1654-1722), showing great favour towards Christianity.

These Christian missionaries were also both scientists and mathematicians and, following St Paul’s example in his New Testament Letter to the Corinthians, became immersed in the culture of those they wished to reach. They spoke Chinese, wore Chinese clothes, understood Chinese literature and had great respect for Chinese culture, so much so they became political advisers in the Emperor’s palace.

In the 19th century, British missionary Hudson Taylor followed the same pattern and established the China Inland Mission with great success. Taylor brought nearly 1,000 missionaries to China, establishing schools, hospitals and churches throughout the country, such was the hunger of the Chinese people for Shang Di, the one true God, and for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some of the greatest scholars and experts in all things Chinese, from Ricci to Legge to Taylor, all acknowledged that the Chinese Shang Di, the Hebrew Yahweh, and the Greek Theos were the same God.

Authentic inculturation

At the moment, China is playing the role of Saul of Tarsus, persecuting the church, and, like the early disciples, the church in China is fearful of “the evil being done to the saints” (Acts 9:13). So while trade negotiators and military strategists are trying desperately to work out how best to deal with China, we should not ignore the power of the Gospel.

And if there is to be a Damascene conversion in modern China, Western respect for Chinese culture will be a crucial component.

The transformation of the Soviet Union provided a salutary lesson of what not to do.

Now, I admire the United States as much as the next guy, but Russia’s invitation to the Americans to help transform its economic system following glasnost and perestroika did not go well. Their cultures were incompatible. The Americans did not appreciate the importance of culture the way Ricci and Taylor did.

As the saying goes: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Conflict or Christianity? Let us pray for the latter.

Bob Day is federal director of the Australian Family Party and a former Senator for South Australia.