morry040

International student intake as a ratio of housing supply is the main issue. If dwellings were being built at the same rate of international student intake, then affordability or vacancy would not be a problem.

Look up your local universities (they’re all non-profit organisations with financials reported in the ACNC) and realise just how much their business model has become funded by international students. Here’s a few examples:
University of Melbourne: 69% of tuition fee revenues comes from intl students
University of Queensland: 70% of tuition fee revenues comes from intl students

The universities also receive government funding, pay no income tax (because they are “nonprofit”), and don’t need to contribute anything to the housing problem that they are feeding. It’s time for them to help carry the burden - they should either provide housing or help pay for it.

I think it’s more about the web visitor cost. Handling traffic and API calls becomes a financial problem when there are a growing number of companies using bots to scrape data. Larger companies are moving their content behind paywalls, which acts as a bot filter, and have also identified that they can generate a revenue stream from subscriptions and API connections. Old content on the web is not deemed to have much business value, so it’s a decision of either charging for it or scrapping it.

There’s quite a difference between rapid prototyping on software/hardware versus the human body.
Musk’s approach to developing engineering advances has worked well in the software, aerospace, and vehicular industries. Development on inorganic things is much more predictable, we can isolate variables, and it is easier to understand cause & effect. If you screw up some software on an inorganic system, your program might crash, your rocket might explode, or your car won’t start. These risks can be anticipated and costed fairly well, therefore rapid prototyping has an acceptable risk/reward ratio in that environment.

The human body, on the other hand, is an extremely complex system that we still don’t fully understand. Each person is a unique variation on the model and that changes over time depending on upbringing, diet, exercise, and life experiences. Applying the same engineering approaches from inorganic industries has a much higher risk once you cross into the medical realm. If you have errors in a medical situation, you risk sickening, injuring, or even killing a person. The risk/reward ratio is skewed towards ensuring that human life is protected at all costs.

Using SpaceX as an example, the first three launches failed spectacularly and a fourth failure would have ended the business but fortunately the fourth test was a success. If you’re suggesting that we apply the same risk-taking to Neuralink, are you suggesting that it’s acceptable for the first three patients to die, as long as the fourth is a success?

It’s estimated that Tidal pays $0.013 per stream, Spotify pays $0.003 - $0.005, and Apple pays $0.01 per stream.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-tidal-pay-per-stream/

If you have management that tries to push for a return, give them this article from Microsoft and request a discussion of its many points.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work-is-just-work

WFH, particularly in 2020-2021, was the opportunity for managers to learn how to effectively manage remotely, using metrics and good planning practices. Those who failed to do so should be the ones questioned as to why they should remain as managers.

I would love to see the overlap between the courses taught and the recognised skills gaps that we have in Australia (referenced as the basis for why we import so much overseas skilled labour). According to the migration reporting, chefs are the third highest skillset imported, so I would think that cooking classes would be a useful course for jobseekers…

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/research-and-stats/files/report-migration-program-2022-23.pdf

A big difference, however, is that houses in the 80s were 3-4 times the average income. Now that ratio is about 10x.
Younger generations always need to work harder than older people, yes, but the major difference is that working hard these days doesn’t provide the same rewards that it once did.

https://www.finder.com.au/owning-a-home-in-the-80s-vs-today

You can use this tool to compare: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Australia&country2=United+States

My cinema down the street costs $18.50 for an adult.

Seems to be a logical choice, particularly when the universities are moving away from hiring staff based on merit. The unis will end up with a bunch of underqualified lecturers teaching to the only students able to afford the degrees (international students).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-17/qut-defends-removing-merit-from-hiring-policy/103114562

I’ve lived overseas and I disagree.
Australia is no more racist than some other developed and developing nations, and there are countries with more racism than Australia.
Travel to different cities in the US and notice how neighbourhoods are subtlety segregated by race.
Talk to any European about their thoughts on gypsies.
Ask Japanese about their thoughts on Koreans.
Look up the usage of the word “keling” in south east asian cultures.

What we have in Australia is perhaps a more overt style of referring to cultures or differences, but the barriers to integrate with Australian culture is much lower than other countries. For some migrants that have come from cultures where they had a racial privilege (e.g. caste systems), it could now be confronting to them that their standing in Australia is lowered and equalised.

The way that we establish social bonds (banter, joking around, jabs, insults etc) can also be confusing to foreigners and be perceived as racist, but it’s an old UK way of establishing camaraderie by proving that you can dish out an insult but also take it as well. Like stand-up comedy material, this method is being tamed as time goes on.

One final indicator of racial division is the level of mixed marriages. If it was a serious problem, we would see low levels of marriages between different countries of origin. In the EU, the rate of mixed marriages is about 8% (1 in 12). In Australia, the rate is 3.5x larger at 29%.

We shouldn’t concede that the public has to pay more to fix this problem. We just need to pressure our government representatives to prioritise funding for education above that of other areas.

The average teacher makes $84,810 per year.
It is estimated that there are 307,041 full time teachers.
This equates to a full teacher salary budget of $26B. We know that education is managed at the state level, but let’s just experiment with a scenario whereby the federal government decides to provide a funding boost to salaries. Giving all teachers a 25% pay rise would cost $6.5B per year.
How much was the 2023 budget surplus just recently announced by the government? $22B.
So, the government could have covered a 25% pay increase to all teachers in Australia, using a third of the surplus that they realised in this year’s budget.

Ok, that’s for one year, but what about future years, you might ask…
Well, how about we take some of the funding from the scrapping of Stage 3 tax cuts. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that the cost of the Stage 3 tax cuts will be $313B over a decade ($31.3B per year). Those tax cuts could even be watered down so that they don’t impact lower incomes. The top 20% of income earners in the country receive 73% of the benefit from those tax cuts.
Let’s only have tax cuts for the bottom 80% of income earners. That would still give us $22.8B per year in extra budget that we allocate to education. It’s that simple.

As soon as you legally change your name, it becomes your legal name. The only places where you would need to state that original name might be on something like a passport / visa / or tax return.

If your goal really is to try and change some perspectives, then I would recommend reading this article on how to talk with others about racism.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/social-psychologist-offers-key-to-ending-racism/

GAZETTE:How do you break through?

LIVINGSTON: I’ll start with the discomfort. People are afraid of conflict in these kinds of conversations. But research has shown that conflict can actually be productive, if it’s the right type of conflict. Task-based conflict is when people disagree about the best course of action. And person-based conflict is when you say, “I think you’re an idiot for [arguing that viewpoint].” So try to focus on the problem and not the person. The second thing is to engage in conversations with curiosity and not with certainty. Research shows it’s much more productive to be in what is called inquiry mode versus advocacy mode. What you’re trying to do in these conversations is either to discover what the truth is — by asking questions — or to discover a common ground. And you can’t do that if you’re too deeply entrenched in your own convictions or ideological position.

Ah yes. The imaginary GDP created from trading properties with each other.

In the 7 properties that I have rented over the last 15 years, I have never known a landlord to just kindly “update” their property. The properties are at an acceptable standard when first purchased and the only way that things change is when something breaks, is damaged, the tenants complain, or the owner is preparing to sell. This is probably influenced by the majority of landlords outsourcing property management to agencies (research suggests ~75%), who are financially motivated to provide the minimum basic standard for maximum financial gain.

Do you have any data or research on the profile of sellers? I find that there is not a lot of research out there, so I’m curious to learn how I would explore your claim that most sellers use their proceeds to invest in small business. Selling a property just to buy a property helps the real estate sector and some banks, but I think that calling it a valuable contributor to GDP is a stretch.

What we do know is that people in older age brackets typically own their own home (78%+ for the 65+ age group). However, people in that age bracket also demonstrate a decline in consumption, spending about the same as someone in the 15-24 age bracket. This could be interpreted to show that older sellers are not freely investing the returns from their property sales back into the broader economy. Instead, they are conserving their money to last through retirement.

I’ve been thinking about this perspective for a while now, so it’s good to see the topic raised in the mainstream media. If you compare a business investment or buying shares in Australian companies with investing in property, there is much greater value to society and positive flow-on effects from business investing.
A business can use the investment to hire staff, produce more goods / services for export, and growing revenues mean more tax revenue for the government.
With investment properties, the owner buys a property by outbidding someone who may have just wanted a home and they then proceed to charge that same group with a rent burden. No additional jobs are created from the investment property and a cost burden is placed on the renter, reducing their disposable income.

As a society, we need to start thinking about investment properties in the way that we would think about fossil fuels. We know it is easy and it makes money, but it’s bad for future generations and we need to transition to alternatives.

Yeah, it’s a small amount compared to what is actually needed. In the bill digest, it’s mentioned that government’s 2021 review of affordable housing estimated that “the number of social housing dwellings required over the 20 years from 2020 to 2040 would be 614,000, plus 277,000 affordable housing dwellings. It estimated the cost of closing this shortfall at $290 billion.”

That said, the Greens’ pressure on the negotiations has definitely improved the proposal. The first reading of the bill mentioned that the $10B commitment was just going to sent to the government’s investment fund and that withdrawals would be capped at $500m per year. That means that Labor’s original plan was for the $10B to be spread over 20 years. Compare this to the $290b estimate of what the country actually needs over the next 20 years and it’s clear that Labor only ever wanted to fix 3.4% of the problem.

Direct link to the report

Some interesting findings:

• As of the first quarter of 2023, there were 32,033 active short-term rental accommodation (STRA) listings for 19,773 active STRA dwellings, of which 11,193 dwellings were estimated to be used for STRA on a permanent basis.
• Permanent STRA dwellings account for less than 1% of the total dwelling stock in Queensland.
• The availability of active entire-home STRA, on average, is about 80% on a quarterly basis, with an average utilisation rate of 60% for apartments and 50% for houses.
• The average revenue per available STRA dwelling has a strong seasonal dynamic closely tied to holiday periods.
• Active entire-home STRA are comparable to hotel accommodations in terms of occupancy and profitability, suggesting a strong financial incentive attached to the STRA business in Queensland.
• A clear benefit of STRA goes to landlords who can now more effectively diversify into the short-term rental market.
• Benefits also accrue to travellers, who now potentially have a greater choice of rental accommodation that may also be more affordable and better suited to their needs.
• More accommodation options might facilitate more visitors or potential longer stays in a region creating larger economic benefits.
• It is noted that not all travellers using STRA are tourists. Other important categories of users include people staying near hospitals for medical treatments, people relocating from interstate or overseas, and workers on temporary job assignments.
• STRA offer local residents a form of home business to assist with housing cost. This is particularly true of hosted stays.
• STRA have been shown to support additional small business, particularly those offering services to short-stay visitors such as cafes, restaurants, laundromats, convenience stores, etc.
• STRA-related businesses may also support entrepreneurial activities in regions with historically fewer such opportunities.
• Neighbourhood change related to STRA may also displace businesses catering to longer-stay residents. These may include car repair services, dental clinics, and other services that short-stay visitors are unlikely to use.
• There is international evidence to suggest that STRA impacts hotel performance. However, higher quality hotels and chain hotels are found to be less affected by STRA.

As for the impact on renting and rental affordability:

• STRA is a small contributor in explaining rent prices. The contribution typically in the range of 0.2% – 0.5% from an increase of 10% in the total number of STRA total listings, else equal.
• Dwelling stocks are a significant contributor in explaining rent prices. The contribution of a 10% increase in the overall stock of dwellings is expected on average to lead to a decreased in rent prices in the range of 1% to 2%, else equal.

One aspect that I would have liked to have seen investigated is the impact STRAs have had on rental supply. The research seems to downplay the impact on overall dwelling supply, explaining that STRAs are less than 1% of total stock, but there was no review on whether STRAs have removed dwelling supply that would have otherwise belonged to the long-term market. We know that there are approximately 31,000 QLD households on the public housing waitlist, so having ~20,000 dwellings used for STRAs instead of long-term rentals is a factor worth investigating, but this is not explored in the research.

The FY2024 numbers would only be the average prices during July - August 2023. We still have 10 months of price movements for the 2024 numbers to be the final results and this Summer is probably going be hit with a lot of energy usage from air conditioning…