Senator Day calls out land bankers

There is no doubt the current Land Tax system needs be reformed. It must be pushed higher, flattened and have a lower land tax threshold.

These revenues can be used to replace the damaging developer charges that are passed on to first-time buyers, resulting in huge interest costs. Stamp Duty must go. The local council also suffers – Developer Contribution payments can be spread over 30 to 50 years, whilst the council stretches to provide infrastructure immediately. Victoria's Growth Area Infrastructure Charge should be culled in place of this fairer form of taxation.

Let's hope more politicians come to realise the incredible pressure housing is placing on society. This must happen quickly as the next financial derivative – Rental Backed Mortgage Securities – is already seeing the locked out Renting from Wall Street. The US market for RMBS has quadrupled in just eight months.

That a household needs to earn $150,000 per annum to have any breathing room is an indictment on the so-called Great Australian Economic Miracle.

1. Assume control of the vacancy figures. Ensure this vacancy measure only includes property available for rent. Ignore properties held for capital gains.
2. Buy land off farmers at firesale prices outside the Urban Growth Boundary. Hoard land inside it.
3. Shriek at the Victorian State government – 'all affordability needs is more land'. The formula then requires a push for the re-zoning of said farmland, with that golden bureaucratic pen tick promising so much.
4. Ensure the local council is dominated by developer friendly interests. Seed their company planning division with former local and state government planners.
5. Donate heavily to state governments and politicians.
6. Blame the planning process for delays. As Senator Day says:
   

   In his submission to the Senate's housing affordability inquiry – which heard evidence about housing tax breaks from Treasury officials this week – Senator Day said politicians received donations from property developers keen to maintain scarce land supply, resulting in higher property prices. "The MPs then publicly support urban planners who rail against the so-called evils of urban sprawl, none of which stands up to scrutiny," Senator Day said.

7. In the meantime lobby for new infrastructure projects surrounding the land holding. Private windfalls are publicly financed, without question. See how a $24 billion hole in London has helped push land prices up 25% in a year:
8. Cloud media landscape to divert attention away from the fact investors have swelled from 12 to almost 40% of housing loans in Australia.
9. Then drip feed the newly re-zoned land the market. In some cases this has lasted 15 to 20 years. The formula is such that the next staged release is only liberated when an appropriate 'demand assessment' has been completed.