Tag: Housing

The Paddock That Grew Nothing

On why “save our farmland” is the wrong fight for the right reason.

Wollongong Railway Station, 1900. 

Take a good look at that old photo of the railway station. Timber and tin, a scatter of weatherboard cottages, and open paddock rolling away in every direction. Now go and stand where the photographer stood. There isn’t a vacant block for miles. Every one of those paddocks filled in, one approval at a time, and nobody felt the loss on the day it happened. That’s how it always goes. The green doesn’t vanish in a single bad decision. It goes in slices, each one too small to argue about, until one day you look up and the hills have a rash.

The same station, 1920. Twenty years on

And it didn’t stop in 1920. Local residents Lesley East and Annette Young and their now husbands still remember driving into Wollongong in the early 1960s to see Psycho at the Regent Theatre on Keira Street, then a grand Art Deco picture palace only a few years old. They parked in a paddock right near the cinema. A paddock, in the middle of town. Today Wollongong is a city of more than 200,000 people, the Regent has been a church since 2005, Crown Street is a pedestrian mall, and the idea of an open field to leave your car in near the main street sounds like a tall tale. But that’s the whole point. Every one of those paddocks was “just one block” once.

Nobody stood in it the day it was lost.

So I have a lot of sympathy for the worry behind Graham Pike’s comment on one of my Catch-Up posts. He was referring to a development application on Minnamurra Lane, Jamberoo, a house and a farm shed on a vacant block, the one Cr Lawton sensibly sent off for a second look and independent legal advice at the May Council meeting. Here’s part of what he said:

“We might not be using the vacant lands or the land in question for food production right now. but most of these lands have been used for farming within the past century or less and, most importantly, we’ll need them for food production again as the human population, even in our area, increases uncontrollably and unsustainably and the resulting suburbanisation sprawls across and fragments this same agricultural/food producing land. The zoning of the land as RU1 or RU2 is a human construct and immaterial. It is still land that we have used and will in future need to use, if any is left uncovered by concrete and asphalt, for food production.” Graham Pike, Jamberoo

I’ve turned that over for days, because there’s a lot in it I agree with. The slow creep of houses and sheds across those hills is real. I’ve watched it happen. And his bigger worry, that we keep paving over the very ground we’ll need to feed ourselves one day, is a serious one.

In a later note, Graham went further and put his finger on what he sees as the root of it all: too many people. Human overpopulation, driving an economy that chews through the natural world. It’s a heartfelt view and plenty of thoughtful people share it.

That’s too big for me to sort out. What I’d say is simpler: whatever any of us thinks about how many people there ought to be, they’re already here. They were born, they need a roof, and saying “there are too many of them” doesn’t put one over a single head. So my mind goes to the thing we can actually do something about, which isn’t the number of people, but where they’re going to live.

The thing is, all that green didn’t go in one big decision anyone could point to. It went in slices, a block here, a shed there, each one too small to worry over on the day. Nobody ever stood up and voted to lose it. It just happened while we weren’t looking.

So maybe the better thing isn’t to fight every single house, but to decide on purpose where the houses should go, instead of letting them turn up one at a time until the hills are full again and we’re left wondering how.

And there’s a part of these “save our farmland” conversations that almost never gets said out loud. Farming is a business. For most farmers, the land isn’t only where they work. It’s the biggest thing they own, the nest egg meant to see them through old age after a lifetime of hard years and thin margins.

So when we say a paddock must stay green forever, I think we should stop and hear what we’re really asking. We’re asking that farmer, and only that farmer, to lock away the worth of their own land so the rest of us can enjoy the view on the drive past. A person in town can sell their house for whatever it’ll fetch. The farmer gets told their paddock is a community treasure and they ought to keep it green for a fraction of what it’s worth. I’m not sure that’s protecting farming. It feels more like asking one family to foot the bill for everyone else’s nice outlook.

I’ve stood on that side of the fence. I dairy farmed for decades, and I know what it is to look at a paddock and see both a lifetime’s work and the only retirement you’ve got. So I find myself asking the question that doesn’t get asked much: is that fair?

And it’s a slippery word, fair. Everyone in this thinks they’re on its side. The people in town feel it’s only fair the hills stay green, they get the view and lose nothing. The farmer feels it’s only fair they get to realise the worth of the land they’ve worked their whole life, the same as anyone else can with what they own. Both are sincere. Both are “fair.” They just can’t both have their way.

And it tends to be the farmer’s fairness that gets left out, because the farmer’s usually not in the room when the rest of us decide their paddock is too precious to touch.

So where does that leave me? Not where you might think. I’m not saying build everywhere. And I’m not saying the green hills don’t count, they’re a good part of why people love this place, and why the visitors come. The slow spread of sheds and houses across those ridgelines is real, and worth watching very closely.

But if we want our farmers to keep the hills green for the rest of us, the least we can do is be honest that we’re asking them to give something up, and decent enough to talk about who carries that cost rather than pretending it’s free.

Lock the gate on a farmer’s land and we haven’t saved farming. We’ve decided their retirement is a fair price for our view.

Good on Cr Lawton for asking for a proper look before anyone signs anything. That’s the kind of careful, eyes-open thinking this deserves, on this block and the next one. The conversation I’d like us to have isn’t “green or houses.” It’s “if we want the green, who pays for it, and is that fair on them?”

I don’t have a tidy answer. I’m not sure there is one. But I think we owe the farmers at least the courtesy of asking.

A note on the photos: I came across these two images on Facebook, where they were dated 1900 and 1920 and identified as Wollongong Railway Station. I haven’t been able to independently verify the dates or the photographer, so if anyone can confirm the details or knows the original source, I’d love to hear from you, please get in touch.

Why GDP Gets So Much Attention

 

Same money, two doors. Most of it went to the houses.

Last time we cracked open GDP and found the weird bit: your house can double in value without the country making one extra thing. We worked out why. You buy a house that’s already there, you’re richer, but nothing new got built. That’s just savings in a nicer jacket. Money goes into a business instead and it buys gear, takes people on, makes stuff. That’s productivity, and that’s the thing that lifts everyone, not just the bloke who spent the money.

So your house doesn’t count. Fine. But here’s the bit you’d be right to ask about: so what? Why does that matter for the whole country, not just for you?

Because the country’s only got so much money to put to work. And where it goes decides what kind of country you end up living in.

Picture all the nation’s savings as one big pool. Every year money flows in, and it has to go somewhere. It can go into businesses that make things and hire people. Or roads and trains. Or it can go into buying houses that are already standing and bidding the price up. Same pool, different doors. And for years now we’ve shoved a massive chunk of it through the housing door.

Money through the productive door, the country can make more next year than it did this year. More stuff, more services, more done per hour. That’s the pie getting bigger. Money through the housing door, the pie doesn’t grow. The same house just changes hands for more. You feel richer because the number on the place went up. But the country can’t actually do or make a single thing more than it could before.

Do that for thirty years and you get exactly what we’ve got. A country that looks loaded on paper and can’t work out why it feels stuck. The money’s real. It’s just locked up in land that makes nothing. And the things that would grow the pie, the businesses, the new industries, got starved of the money that went into property instead. That’s the bit people miss. The boom in one is the drought in the other. Same pool.

Here’s what that looks like on a normal Thursday. The jobs figures came out this week and they were grim. Unemployment up to 4.5%, worst since late 2021. Thirty-three thousand more people out of work, nearly 19,000 jobs gone in the month. Hit young people hardest, youth unemployment’s over 11% now, and this month the losses fell mostly on women. That’s work getting harder to find, which worries a household long before it worries anyone in Canberra. And on the very same day, the share market had one of its best days in weeks. Two numbers, one morning, pointing opposite ways. What’s good for the big end of town and what’s good for your kitchen table just aren’t always the same story.

That gap right there is the whole thing in small. A country can post lovely-looking numbers while the ground under ordinary households gets wobblier, because the wealth and the work have come unstuck from each other. And part of why they came unstuck is where the money went. Money sitting in land that just gets dearer isn’t money building the businesses that’d hire those 33,000.

You see it everywhere once you’ve spotted it. Wages that don’t climb like they used to, because there’s no productivity growth underneath pushing them up. A tax system that rewards buying the thing that makes nothing and punishes building the thing that does, so even more money goes through the wrong door. Smart people and big money chasing the next property deal instead of the next business, because that’s where the easy money’s been. None of these are separate problems. It’s the one problem wearing different hats.

Lets not make it too neat. Housing isn’t all dead weight. Building new homes is good, very good. It employs a lot of people, and having a roof over your head is worth something no GDP number ever captures. And plenty of countries with dear housing still get along fine. One bad month of jobs figures doesn’t prove any of this on its own either, the economy has its own ups and downs that have nothing to do with houses.

So it’s not that houses are the baddie, and it’s not that one bad month of jobs figures proves the whole thing on its own. It’s that when a whole country leans this hard on the one thing that doesn’t grow the pie, year after year, the pie stops growing. And when the pie stops growing, you’ve got less to go round for everything else.

That’s why it’s a big deal. The GDP in not some magic number on the telly. The GDP is the scoreboard for one choice the country keeps making without quite meaning to: do we build the thing, or just sell each other the thing we already built for more. We’ve spent a long time doing the second. And the bill for that isn’t a number. It’s a country that could’ve been doing more, and isn’t.

Your house doesn’t count. Turns out that’s not some quirk of the accounting. It’s the whole story in one line.

Daily News Round Up – 22 May 2026

Very local, state, national and the wider world, in everyday language, for people who haven’t got all day.

From a fired-up Kiama Council saying no to amalgamation, to jobs slipping and the Iran war keeping petrol dear, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 22 May 2026.

Very Local: what our Council got up to this week

A busy night at the Kiama Council meeting on Tuesday 19 May. Here are the bits that caught my attention.

“No to amalgamation.” The big one. Councillors voted unanimously to reaffirm Kiama as a “strong, proud and independent council” and say a flat no to any merger. The clever part: they’re writing to the sitting member for Kiama and every declared candidate for the 2027 state election, asking each one to put their position on amalgamation in writing so it can be tabled in public. Everyone on the record before the next election. Watch this space.

Money is the cloud over everything. Behind the scenes sat a finance and governance improvement plan, a budget review, and a note about Council’s Performance Improvement Order, which is the state government’s “lift your game” notice hanging over Kiama. That pressure is the real reason the amalgamation fight matters. A small council is scrapping to prove it can stand on its own two feet.

Youth services under a question mark. The Mayor tabled a letter from federal MP Fiona Phillips flagging the possible closure of Council’s SENTRAL Youth Services. The Assistant Minister’s reply says headspace Kiama and others can pick up the slack. Reassuring on paper, but if you’ve got teenagers it’s a sign local youth services may be on the chopping block as budgets tighten.

More homes for Gerringong. Two greenlights worth noting: two residential flat buildings approved at 104 Belinda Street, and 48 Campbell Street set up as an “Urban Release Area,” which is planning-speak for land rezoned for new housing. Housing supply is the thread tying the whole region together right now.

A Jamberoo house off to the lawyers. A dwelling and farm shed on Minnamurra Lane got messy. Councillors split four-all and the item was carried on the chair’s casting vote, deferring it for legal advice first. It’s back in June. A tied vote tells you it’s genuinely contested.

Skate park families, take note. Council backed Option 3 for the Kiama Sports Complex. The promise to find a new and better skate park site got softened to simply relocating it “as per the revised plan.” Keep an eye on where it actually finds a home.

Looking after the locals with fur and roots. In-principle support for the “Save the Greater Glider” campaign and a possible expansion of Seven Mile Beach National Park, plus a long-term plan to tackle the asparagus weed choking the Werri Beach dunes.

The bottom line: it all comes back to money. The improvement order, the budget reviews, the stand against amalgamation, and the worry over youth services are really one story. A small council fighting to stay its own boss while the dollars get tighter. The homes, the gliders, the skate park are all happening on top of that.

Across NSW (State)

Cost of living is still the song that never ends. Sydney’s hung onto its title as the dearest city in the land, and the jobs picture just took a knock too (more on that under Federal). The one bit of breathing room remains rents, which after years of brutal rises have finally levelled off, though nobody’s exactly celebrating at the checkout.

And tonight the city goes a bit magic. Vivid Sydney switches on this evening and runs every night until 13 June, lights glowing from 6pm to 11pm. There’s a 6.5km walk of light displays from Circular Quay through The Rocks, Barangaroo and Darling Harbour, and the drone shows are back, though they’ve shuffled over to Cockle Bay this year. It’s free to wander and look, which is the main thing in a year when everything else costs the earth. Rug up if you go. It’s proper winter now.

Across the Country (Federal)

Jobs took a hit. Today’s big home-front number. The unemployment rate jumped to 4.5% in April, the worst it’s been since late 2021. About 33,000 more people found themselves out of work, and nearly 19,000 jobs actually disappeared over the month. It hit young people hardest (youth unemployment is now over 11%), and this month the losses landed mainly on women, who drove the whole fall in employment while the men’s rate held. This means work is getting harder to find, and that’s the kind of thing that worries a household before it ever worries a politician. Oddly, the share market had one of its best days in weeks on the very same day. A reminder that what’s good for the big end of town and what’s good for your kitchen table aren’t always the same story.

The Budget shake-up, still rumbling on. You’ll remember Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his big-swing Budget on 12 May. The headline change for ordinary folk: the government wants to limit negative gearing to new builds from July 2027, and change capital gains tax so it’s tied to inflation with a minimum tax on profits. If you already own an investment property, or had one under contract before 7:30pm on Budget night, you’re left alone. The idea is to give first-home buyers a fairer shot, and they reckon it could help around 75,000 people into a home over a decade. The Opposition’s dead against it.

And here’s where Michael West earns his cuppa. While the big mastheads chase the Budget headlines, the independents are digging where it’s uncomfortable. Two beauties this week from Michael West Media. First, a coal miner versus the Big Australian: BHP, a $300 billion giant, is taking Michael West Media itself to the Federal Court to try and shut down its reporting on an injured coal miner’s wage-theft case. They tried to rush through urgent orders to pull the stories down, and the court told them to wait their turn. The fact they’re being sued and still publishing the file number tells you what kind of outfit they are. Second, Cricket Australia is running an “independent review” into a $600,000 cloud-computing deal at the centre of “contracts-for-mates” allegations, but the whistleblower who raised the alarm has already been made redundant. Exactly the sort of follow-the-money stuff worth your support if you’ve got a spare dollar. Their whole model is “don’t pay so you can read it, pay so everyone can.”

Around the World (International)

The Iran war is still the one that reaches your petrol pump. The US-and-Israel war with Iran has been grinding on since late February, and a shaky ceasefire brokered by Pakistan keeps wobbling on and off. The latest worry is that US intelligence reckons Iran is rebuilding its military faster than expected and has already restarted making drones during the truce. Pakistan’s army chief has flown to Tehran to keep the talks limping along. The fighting keeps squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping lane, which is exactly why fuel’s been dear the world over, and why so much of our Budget was built around cushioning petrol prices.

Outrage over the Gaza flotilla. This one’s moved fast. Aid activists who’d tried to sail to Gaza were intercepted by Israeli forces, and a video posted by a far-right Israeli minister, taunting them while they knelt bound on the ground, sparked a global firestorm. At least ten countries summoned Israeli ambassadors to explain themselves, Australia and New Zealand among them. As of today, Israel has now deported all the activists, sending them home via Turkey, after even Israel’s own PM called the minister’s behaviour out of line.

A nasty Ebola outbreak in Congo. The head of the World Health Organization has raised the alarm about a rare type of Ebola spreading quickly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One to keep half an eye on.

The bottom line

It all joins up, Betty. A war on the other side of the planet pushes up oil; oil pushes up the petrol in the car and the price of everything trucked to the shops; and that’s why the Budget was built around fuel relief while the jobs market softens at home. Closer in, our little Council is fighting the same fight in miniature, scrapping to stay independent while the dollars tighten. And through it all, the watchdogs like Michael West keep poking at the powerful so the rest of us can see where the money really goes. Not a bad day’s reading over one cup of tea.

A note on Betty and Kevin: Betty grew up in Kiama before life took her to Blacktown. Her brother Kevin still lives in their old home town. Keeping up with what’s happening down the coast is partly nostalgia for the place she came from, but mostly it’s how she and Kevin fill those long phone calls she looks forward to all week. That’s what this Catch Up is really for. Not just the news, but the conversations it keeps alive.

Sources: Kiama Municipal Council minutes, Sydney Morning Herald, ABS, Michael West Media, Al Jazeera, The Conversation, CNN, CBC, and others.

Your House Doesn’t Count (And Other GDP Surprises)

A whole house, and the scale reads zero. That’s the thing about GDP nobody explains: a home going up in value adds nothing to what the country actually produces.

A couple of weeks ago I drove seven hours to hand out how-to-vote cards, then wrote the whole thing up. Quite a few of you read it. This week my big adventure was reading about capital gains tax for forty minutes on a perfectly good weekday because a Michael West Media piece landed in my inbox and I couldn’t help myself.

Every time the New York Times, Michael West Media or The Conversation turns up, I do a deep dive. A very deep dive. So between the seven days at a polling booth and the forty-minute tax binge, I think we can all agree: I need to get a life.

The good news is I’m going out with friends this weekend. Nice wine, good food, great company. Long overdue.

Before I go and remember what conversation with non-economists feels like, here’s the thing that piece explained that finally made GDP make sense to me after years of nodding along and understanding nothing.

The two kinds of “investing”

There are two ways to put your money to work. They look the same. They are not.

You can buy something that already exists, like an established house, and wait for it to go up in value. You end up richer. Good for you. But nothing new got made. The house was already standing. No extra jobs, no extra goods, nothing extra for the country. Your wealth went up and the nation’s output didn’t move an inch.

Or your money can go into a business. The business buys equipment, trains people, makes products, hires staff. That lifts what the country can actually produce. More gets made for every hour worked. That’s productivity, and productivity is the thing that makes wages rise over the years, for everyone, not just the person who put the money in.

So one is a win for you. The other is a win for you that’s also a win for the whole country.

That was the click for me. I’d always heard “investment” and pictured someone buying a rental. Turns out economists barely count that as investment at all. If it isn’t increasing what the country can produce, it’s really just savings wearing a nicer jacket.

Why it matters for the budget

For 25 years Australia poured its money into the first kind. Existing houses. The tax system practically begged us to, with the 50% capital gains discount and negative gearing making an established property the smartest tax play going.

The result is a $12 trillion housing market, nearly four times the value of every company on the stock exchange combined. A mountain of money sitting in houses that just go up in price, instead of in businesses that build things and employ people.

As one financial writer, Harry Chemay, put it in Michael West Media last week, residential land “may appreciate over time, but it does not by itself generate any economic output.” A house going up in value makes the owner richer without the country producing a single thing extra. michaelwest

That’s what the 2026 budget is trying to shift. Nudge the money out of “buy an old house and wait” and into building new homes and backing businesses. Whether it works is a separate question, and the government has done a woeful job explaining any of it, which I got into elsewhere. But the idea underneath is sound, and it’s the first time I’ve properly understood why anyone bothers measuring productivity at all.

If you want the plain-English version of what the budget actually does to your tax, I wrote that for Betty from Blacktown here. The polling booth piece, if you missed it, is here . And the family farms and capital gains argument is here.

Right. Wine.