Banking on immigration to keep house prices inflated

Their policies to fund token amounts of public housing while blaming external factors for limited supply will not improve housing availability but simply dress the windows of Martin Place and Collins Street.

Adrian Tilley, Carindale, Qld

Immigration surge: turn it around, Jim

Your report “Immigration a ‘good thing’, says Bullock” notes that “Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock says record-breaking levels of immigration are not adding to inflation” – to which there is only one response: bollocks.

In the year ending March 2023, net overseas migration was 454,400, contributing to an overall population increase of 563,200. That’s over half a million extra people who had to be fed, clothed and housed. Four-fifths was from net overseas migration. On the basis of 2.5 people per household, that’s an extra 225,200 housing units that had to be provided in one year, without taking into account the need to house the already homeless (over 122,000).

If supply does not keep up with demand, prices rise – so it’s no surprise we now see record high rents. Last month, Domain reported that Australia needs 70,000 more rental properties to balance the market as tenants suffer through the longest stretch of continuous rental price growth on record.

There may be other factors affecting the situation, but the bottom line is balance between supply and demand. And the reality is demand outweighs supply by a large margin. Prices have risen, sometimes shockingly so. Interest rates too have risen, so renters can’t save enough for deposits to buy into the market.

This is not to blame immigrants, who need homes as much as the rest of us. No, government policy is to blame, specifically whoever sets immigration numbers. We understand that is Treasurer Jim Chalmers. So please turn it around, Jim.

Jenny Goldie. national president, Sustainable Population Australia, Deakin, ACT

A family home is more than an asset

In “Albanese coy on taxing the family home” we hear yet again complaints about intergenerational equity. If someone has worked for 40 or 50 years compared with someone working for, say, 10 years, then there is no intergenerational equity. It is the same trajectory for a mortgage and family home. Indeed, the longer you are in the workforce, the more money will be accumulated and the lower a mortgage. It was the same for older Australians when they started out in their working lives as it is for today’s younger generations.

One thing has changed, though – the family home, which provides security and wellbeing for the occupants. However, in the last 30 years the house has been seen as an investment rather than a home – and hence, for some politicians, an asset to be taxed in the name of intergenerational equity.

All Australians aspire to have a family home, so leave it as it is. Make homes more affordable. The best way to do that would be by abolishing negative gearing tax incentives on houses purchased for profit.

Brad Hinton, Garran, ACT

Perspective on WFH needs staff input, too

Jemima Whyte’s report “Work from home frays workplace connections, productivity: CFOs” makes for an interesting read, but raises more questions than it answers. The productivity alarm bells have been rung mostly by senior managers, so this is just one half of a complicated workplace tale. To get a clearer perspective, the voices of the junior staff need to be heard.

The pandemic-induced WFH option provided the junior staff with an alternative for the first time. Surely, their new-found WFH preference is a clear signal that all is not well in the corporate world. An examination of organisational cultures and toxic practices may reveal more than senior managers are prepared to recognise or accept.

It’s time for the corporate world to re-examine its values and work practices, to reflect, and to re-engage with staff they are often quick to label as recalcitrants.

How else are we are to find common ground to address the challenges we face for our national wellbeing in a globally competitive environment?

Kaz Kazim, Randwick, NSW

Origin ‘pump and dump’ operation

It was with only mild surprise that I read the report that Brookfield and its partners suggested that they’d put Origin back on the ASX within five years. This looks like a repeat of previous takeovers that are long on promises to increase investment to improve the takeover target, but are really “pump and dump” exercises to enrich the raider and their advisers.

Good on AustralianSuper for seeing through the lies and protecting the national interest.

Vince Logan, Wamboin, NSW

Shareholders on the sidelines in soap opera

Origin Energy has become as fluid as a daily soap opera. It wasn’t affected by the US screenwriters’ strike because it is a live show. Origin shareholders, including me, are being sidelined to a studio audience – told when to clap, laugh, or vote (“Proxy confusion could tilt Origin vote to AustralianSuper”).

We are spectators to Origin, Brookfield/EIG and AustralianSuper – a tussle seasoned with expensive lawyers and advisers – participating in a complicated financial version of the party game Twister. As in the game, the result will be a pile of intertwined bodies and no winners, with shareholders whistling Dixie.

Ross Illingworth, Melbourne, Vic

PwC did not commit an original sin

Should Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand be rebuked for the patently inadequate fine they imposed on PwC? After all, CA ANZ cannot be expected to predict the future. Except, CA ANZ didn’t have to. Recent history had already provided a clear insight into what happens when a large “accounting” firm goes off the rails, down a ravine and into a ditch.

It was barely 20 years ago that the HIH Insurance royal commission delivered its report, which included the failings of HIH’s auditor, then big five firm Arthur Andersen. What did CAANZ fail to learn from Arthur Andersen’s demise that it is now going to implement following PwC’s hot mess?

C.M. Abbott, Leeming, WA

Getting judgmental about matrimony

Thanks, Peter Townsend (“Courts asked to find elderly grooms unfit to wed”) for the insight into the consequences of besotted sugar daddies tying the knot, while tying impatient inheritors into knots.

That mere judges, “assisted” by lawyers and sundry experts, could annul sacred, yet neurotic, matrimony boggles the mind. The wigged cohort has no better grasp of human behaviour than the fee-paying (and receiving) parties.

Now that the cat – judicial administration of settled matrimony – is out of the bag, why limit it to senile grooms? For greater fun and academic fodder for law and psychology schools, extend the cutting edge down the age range. If seemingly lucid seniors are clueless in navigating complex choices, youth with surging libido and inexperience to match would be worse.

Short of sugar daddies obtaining prenup actuarial advice before shuffling to the altar, the outlook for uncontested marriage seems stochastically uncertain. Toss a coin …

Ramani Venkatramani, Rhodes, NSW