Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️

So many of Victoria's problems can be solved with one easy trick: abolish the City of Yarra.

Head of ABS defends debunking far-right ‘mass migration’ claims after censorship accusations Chief statistician David Gruen says bureau did not censor anyone and is ‘trying to take the side of truth’ after misuse of overseas arrivals figures

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

‘All problems come back to housing’ is one of those lines which is simultaneously a Premier buck passing a problem to another level of government while being entirely, unquestionably, true

Switching 50km/h speed limits to 30km/h would protect cyclists while barely affecting commutes, research finds One expert says a cyclist hit by a car travelling 50km/h has about a one-in-ten chance of surviving, while at 30km/h it was a nine-in-ten chance

New study from Melbourne finds reducing residential speed limits from 50km/h to 30 km/h on local roads would protect cyclists from danger, make riding less stressful and get more people cycling while not causing traffic delays for cars.

First they came for Brighton and I didn't speak up because I was not rich...

Seeing trailers for some upcoming Screen Australia backed films and it’s amazing how so few Australian Stories involve cities at all. Everyone in our cities are completely devoid of stories. Our streets are narrativeless. Only the Bush has agency.

Halloween has come early for Boroondara's planners...

...they might have to approve medium-density housing! 😱 😱

It’s not just NIMBY attitudes either.

This flows into how council decision making happens — whether as a result of the “paradox of empowerment” or as systemically as a result of how governance systems are designed.

Renters are excluded from consultations, strategies or even the very act of voting.

What does the Nicole Kidman/Keith Urban split mean for the Sydney property market?

No, Australia does not need new cities.

My new essay sets the record straight: we have a lot of cities, but we aren’t using them as well as we could be. To make our cities more successful, we have to open up a lot more land for commercial uses to enable agglomeration.

If a NSW pattern book design gets built in Melbourne before a Future Home does imma lose it

The lost boys: Australia’s male education ‘catastrophe’ New research highlights gaps between male and female students and private and government school students.

Yet again The Age is uncritically publishing a story about a research paper from The Australian Population Research Institute and whitewashing them as objective academic experts instead of a thinktank of washed-up cranks.

At least this time it isn't just another anti-migrant tirade.

Someone also made the point to me that career political staffers as MPs seem more willing to say anything to stay elected. Compare your Katie Allans and Keith Wolahans to Tim Wilson, for example.

Australia has become a staffer state Dan Wang argues that America is a society of lawyers and China is an engineering state. What are we, and what does it mean for our policy?

Banger of a Substack article by Manning Clifford, editor at large of @inflectionpoints.work.

The US and UK political class is dominated by former lawyers. Beijing is full of trained engineers. Australian MPs, however, mostly used to work for other MPs, as advisers.
substack.com/home/post/p-...

The study they reference is even from pre-NCC 2022. Looking at the CSIRO dashboard, it seems the % has more than doubled since the study!

From a high level perspective, it seems to me that areas with the lowest climate risk should be working overtime to allow more people to live there (aka Victoria).

This report paints a very grim picture for everywhere north of the Murray River.

Meanwhile here in Brisbane, we’re not even planning for the fires, floods and heatwaves we already get — let alone far more frequent and far more extreme ones.

Stonnington is claiming that their current strategy can deliver 17,000 homes *more* than the Victorian Government's housing target.

However, they fail to mention that their strategy needs nearly the entirety of Stonnington to be demolished and rebuilt by 2051. Very feasible...

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The case against worrying about pre-transfer poverty

It's weird logic. PC has advocated for codified planning controls which often requires many more number of words, but it's fine because now everyone has a clearer understanding of what is and isn't allowed!

If you were going to read this but thought “actually I want you to cut it by a third and read it out to me”…

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/l...

To be more clear, you also literally cannot rent "affordable housing" if you're too poor in many cases due to "renter stress thresholds"

Affordable housing, IMO, is bad because it comes at the opportunity cost of funding social housing. It's a zero-sum trade off that means we can house less people at risk of homelessness

Are subsidised homes for the middle class better than social housing for those at risk of homelessness? Planning academics and Yarra’s mayor seem to think so.

We support the DFP’s 3% levy for Victoria’s Social Housing Growth Fund, which means more social housing for more people.

Another one of the systemic exclusion of renters from urban politics — whether it’s chronic underrepresentation in decision-making spaces, repeat studies that show that renters aren’t proactively engaged in consultations, or how local council elections make it harder for renters to even vote.

A new paper highlights that while countries like Australia have seen construction productivity fall, NZ saw a boom in the 2010s.

Their secret? Zoning reform.

By allowing more medium-density housing in cities like Auckland, they supercharged their construction sector

It's a bit frustrating that The Greens haven't made this a part of their platform. I doubt Labor will ever act on this without The Greens forcing them to!

If the Commonwealth is worried about budget neutrality then they should just get rid of GST exemptions for non-profits. It's Bad Actually that there's a financial incentive for cash strapped State Governments to delegate service delivery to NFPs.

Labor’s rank and file demand housing towers remain in public hands An emotive debate about social housing will shift from the floor of the state Labor conference to Jim Chalmers’ Economic Reform Roundtable.

Massive shout-out to Labor for Housing for their strong advocacy on getting CRA and GST reform for public housing on the agenda. If we want more public housing, we need to change the incentives!

www.theage.com.au/politics/vic...