7 comments

1. RosemaryJ36April 10, 2024 at 6:07 pm

   What the hell was the Coalition doing during its years in power for us to now be facing a national housing crisis???

2. Phil PryorApril 10, 2024 at 9:46 pm

   The Co-and-far-Can-Lition, led by mad maggoty misfit, mentally merdey Morrison, a subterranean skill- less cesspit, suppurated in Canberra for nine years of waste, lies, deception, laziness, incapacity, duncery, deviations, podpolishing, penalties on ALL OF US. And now, Peter Duckwit- Futton, A gold medal brain farter, has said he can oppose all things by permanent chronic opposition. We’ll all have thermonuclear toasters and jugs, wheelchairs, T V’s, vibrators, the bloody LOT. Just you wait, until after the money is delivered…we have to satisfy the donors, crawlers, patrons, coercers, funders, ploltters, schemers, media masters…

3. TonyApril 11, 2024 at 6:49 am

   Rosemary, both Coalition & Labor treat their real estate portfolios as of national significance numero uno.

   Every way possible to unfairly increase the value of that asset class is permanently on the table. It’s the denial of the reasonable opportunity for successive generations of ordinary Aussies to buy a family home that damns the actions of both major parties. I remember once years ago, when Labor’s Tanya Plibersek was Minister for Housing, I went onto her dept website to see what was happening. 18 months into the job and the website message to the public was to the effect: ‘Site under construction’. We are supposed to believe they are busy creating a stable economy with sufficient homes to live in and they couldn’t be effed creating a website. They are freeloaders, plain and simple.

   Ask young people about Labor’s immigration policy that’s increased inflation pressures this last year.
   The property debacle is deliberate, with the major parties, the banks, the media, all on the same page.

4. ClakkaApril 11, 2024 at 2:33 pm

   There’s a lot to do, and it’s a head-spin trying to manage the horse and cart matters, as well as sweeping the mindless blather of the RWNJs, the LNP and their moron media flunkies out of the way.

   Throughout history famine has occurred and wars have been fought principally because of and for acquisition of land. This persists today, and we remain threatened by collapse due to misuse and abuse of the global environment.

   Factors at play:

   Population: ……… 1950 2.5bn 2023 8.0bn 220% increase
   Arable land pp: .. 1950 1.5ha 2023 0.6ha 60% decrease

   It is notable that cities are mainly constructed on the most productive arable land

   LAND USE

   OVER TIME:
   ……Year………………1950 ……………… 2023 ……….. % change
   Cropping ………..1.20 bn ha ……… 1.63 bn ha ……… 35.8%
   Grazing ………… 2.49 bn ha ……… 3.20 bn ha ……… 28.51%
   Built-up Area … 20.53 mn ha …… 83.16 mn ha …… 305.06% (incl cities towns villages & infrastructure)

   HABITABLE LAND:
   Livestock: . 38m km2
   Crops: …… 10m km2
   Forest: …. 40m km2
   Scrub: ….. 14m km2
   Cities: …… 1m km2 (incl villages & infrastructure)

   NON-HABITABLE LAND:
   Glaciers: .. 14m km2
   Barren: …… 20m km2 (incl beaches)

   LAND FOR FOOD:
   …………………………………………………… per 100g protein ……… per 1000 kilocalories ……….. per kg of product

   Lamb & Beef ………………………………….. 348.4m2 ………………… 236.15m2 ……………………… 696.02m2
   Dairy ……………………………………………….88.8 m2 …………………. 43.44m2 ………………………. 227.77m2
   Coffee & Chocolate ………………………….. n/a ………………………… n/a ………………………………. 90.58m2
   Nus groundnuts peas pulses grains ….. 26.7m2 ……………………11.59m2 ……………………….. 39.12m2
   Pigs ………………………………………………. 10.7m2 …………………… 7.26m2 ………………………… 17.36m2
   Poultry ……………………………………………. 7.1m2 ……………………. 6.61m2 ………………………… 12.22m2
   Fish & Seafood (farmed) …………………… 5.7m2 ……………………. 7.58m2 ………………………… 11.38m2
   Eggs ………………………………………………. 5.7m2 ……………………. 4.35m2 …………………………. 6.27m2
   Fruit & Veg ………………………………………. n/a ……………………….. 15.38m2 ……………………….. 5.10m2

   With a baseline at 1961, for crop land due to tech and efficiencies we needed only 70% of the land to yield the same amount of crops. Albeit, by today that yield improvement is likely to have peaked. And with the rapid increase underway in anthropogenic climate change, their are hugely increasing risks on crop (and grazing) yields giving rise to global food shortages. Anyway, from the lists, it would be reasonably clear what types of food we should eat.

   And all that is not to forget the main agricultural problems, and those are a massive lack of fresh (incl potable) water. With much of it being increasingly consumed by production of fossil fuels. The need to eliminate ultra-toxic use of nitrogen based fertilizers. The almost complete depletion of the world’s phosphorous supply. The accumulation of massive amounts of FF-based chemical toxins in the world’s agricultural soils. Extreme actions of climate change increasingly blowing and washing soils off the land and into the oceans.

   All that said, it is fairly easy to see that the standout issue is burgeoning population growth. Nevertheless, the population fertility (replacement rate) is falling significantly, and old-age survival rate increasing, so until they balance in say 50-100 years, there will remain a significant lack of ‘productive / working’ people. So increasingly there will be pressures on population redistribution (emigration / immigration), and dare I say fleeing / arriving refugees. And even with the achievement of peak-tech, AI and automation, what state would dare be the first to introduce a Universal Basic Income?

   So much for a dusting of background information, back to Oz housing shortage ….

   Seems Oz has lacked insight and forsaken pulling the right levers.

   We must:

   stop building mega-houses:

   wasting of resources for construction
   wasting of energy for construction
   wasting of energy for operation & maintenance
   more stringent controls on sustainable resource usage
   use better more recyclable products
   promote more modular housing components made in factories
   all new dwellings to have self-sustaining built-in energy systems
   stop occupying more land than is necessary per occupant

   have better land planning schemes

   smaller single dwelling allotments
   more and better planned common use land
   more and better planned vertical density where appropriate
   better planned retail / community service centres
   better planned public transport interlinks
   less mega-roads
   less incursion to arable land

   other schemes

   moderation of negative gearing and capital gains concessions
   better end-to-end insurance schemes for building
   more training for building trades and professions
   develop / fund govt / social housing design & construction teams
   more integration of aged care
   mandate for green concrete – low energy & emissions – cement making
   better design of concrete / mortar regarding aggregates / fines shortage
   mandatory glass recycling re shortage of silica sands
   more and better use of ceramics in building
   cease logging old-growth native forests
   rapidly increase planting of forests for building & paper products & CC abatement

   And so on and so forth. It goes on, and so do the vast complexities and conundrums, such as in the energy pivot to renewables from FFs; for solar panels substantial swathes of land are needed in reasonable proximity to towns / cities, but clearly such swathes of land are also needed for agriculture and/or forestry. Which ever way one looks at it, the biggest need is clean air and clean fresh water and no toxins in the environment, so the balancing paradigm has to be that vs energy preservation / production. And strong, fit people to put them in place.

   All parliaments across the world know these things. But in pluralist democracies in particular, they may find themselves entrapped by the influences of greed and toadyism of those privateers with more combined wealth than the states. So governing and legislating walks a fine line between getting it right incrementally, and those in an alternate government that just may want to suck on the teats of the privateers.

5. Harry LimeApril 11, 2024 at 4:11 pm

   Clakka,we can shout into the void all we like,most people won’t give a fuck until the herd of elephants slams through the front door.As long as money and materialism rules, we’ll sleepwalk into the abyss.Yes, I know,politics is embedded into the corporate/neoliberal juggernaut.Wonder why we’re fucked? Hope we don’t have to sit an exam on your latest dissertation..the dog is sure to eat my homework.

6. ClakkaApril 12, 2024 at 9:15 am

   Yes Harry Lime,

   It may well be that the dogs, and cats, will be eating more than our homework. Apologies for my dissertation, it’s just the way my brain works. Perhaps unfairly taking advantage of this fine blog where most have well above the attention span of circumcised gnats racing to obtain status and bling.

   BTW, in my para starting With a baseline starting at 1961, … the comparison date of land use / crop yield, 70% reduction, ‘2014’ should have been included.

   Anyway, as evidenced by the outcome of the Oz ‘indigenous’ constitution referendum last October, and also the previous ‘republic’ referendum October 1999, a predominance of the Oz populace are easily duped, and when pressed to think, can’t, and instead opt for the status quo, no matter how appalling, oppressive and inappropriate.

   Of the multitudes that came to Oz for a better life, thoughts of the imperia from which they fled appear not to recognize that by law Oz remains beholden to the most brutal and destructive imperium ever, now the exemplar of blithering self-annihilation. They appear to remain conned by pompous, self-righteous bs, and the accoutrements and falsehoods of supremacy.

   For some weird form of comfort, in the main they appear to cling to arcane writs and liturgies devised by conmen for the singular purpose of beguilement and inculcation of fear and hatred whilst theft and bloody conquest is undertaken. Their abdication of personal responsibility to despots and demagogues does little for their dreams nor nightmares as they bury their consciousness via futile orisons, soporifics, alcohol, opioids and an almost endless invention of other drugs, readily available, and most often given to troops so they may deal death.

   Whilst they conceal themselves within the death-cult, destroying all incidental life forms, perhaps they breed-up and present dogs and cats to their children so they may find some ascribed innocence whilst being inculcated into all the fallacies of their world view.

   What a generational punishment! Definitely not the cat’s whiskers, more like a dog’s breakfast accompanied by 1080.

7. CanguroApril 12, 2024 at 10:39 am

   Circumcised gnats, herds of elephants, homework eating dogs along with cat’s whiskers and canine breakfasts; so many veins of allusion enriching the discourse.

   Harry’s correct, of course. He usually is. We’re creatures of habit, shackled by inertia and unlikely to change in any dramatic sense unless we’re overrun by heffalumps in the living room. Phillip Adams had a bloke on years ago, an American climate change wonk, who said that climate change will only be taken seriously when the water’s lapping at the doorstep. Given the increasingly despairing tone of the UN Secretary-General’s pronouncements, it’s hard to disagree with that pov.

   Fossil fuel companies, collectively, have billions of dollars looking for targets to influence and they do it with precise intention – politicians and governments, media corporations, think tanks and similar groups, academics and universities – throw enough money at the target and it’ll speak favourably on your behalf.

   All very well to say more of this, less of that, moderation here, cessation there; to be frank, we pretty much know all of that along with the self-evident aspect of lack of commitment to actual changes that would benefit. Years of observation tend to inform my view that the lowest fruit get picked, the too hard to reach are allowed to rot on the tree, and the next harvest, the same approach. Cynical kanga would suggest that all the so-called ruling classes know that the Oil Age has brought Gaia to her knees, that the trends are irreversible, that the forthcoming ecological catastrophe is a certainty, and that the best we can do is make of the most of what we’ve got. Humans being humans of course, we’ll distract ourselves in every which way as we’ve always done in the face of existential dangers that are yet to emerge above the horizon. As a simple example of that, I’d guarantee the British officer classes were still swanning around in the Raffles and other Singapore hotels guzzling down their gin & tonics whilst the Japanese army were marching down the Malay peninsular in December 1942.

   Think David & Goliath. The mythology came down in favour of the former. The FFCs, I’ll wager, will dominate this time around, and we’ll all bow out, raging at the dying light. To quote Harry’s succinct assessment, we’re fucked.