hooman posted:

"People are ignoring the problems that I, a white straight male, have!"

Unless he's arguing "FFS just give the gay people rights this is a settled issue so we can work on other problems".

Birdstrike posted:

I think I agree Cartoon on that there's more likely to be an easing of house prices as opposed to a crash, but I am a bit unsure about where the difference lies. 10%? 25%?

HookShot posted:

I think that is in fact what he is arguing, that there are more important things to worry about.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/704145555530731520

Anidav posted:

Is Turnbull putting a Marco Rubio and just repeating the same lowering pricing line robotically?

tithin posted:

I dunno if no one is paying attention to the whole cardinal pell thing, but there's reports his security were assaulting journalists to stop them asking questions prior to the police video link.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/704145555530731520

quote:

TOUGH TIMES: WA homeowners top national mortgage default list
MOODY’S: Perth housing most affordable since 2004
PERTH had the worst performing property market out of any Australian capital city this year, according a new report released today.

Perth experienced the biggest fall in prices this year- with house prices dropping 6.1 per cent or $35,000 to $515,000, the report from CoreLogic RP data revealed.

Wrapping up the final results for 2015, the report also showed that Perth median apartment prices fell by 3.4 per cent this year to $415,000.

quote:

Fears for public service jobs as NSW Government considers cut to number of state-run organisations By state political reporter Ashleigh Raper Updated about 5 hours ago

Public service jobs in New South Wales could be lost as the State Government considers reducing the number of state-run organisations. NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian will make her case for cuts in a speech to the Sydney Institute tonight. Excerpts from the speech revealed the Government was looking at reducing its entities, which include departments, agencies, state-owned corporations, boards, committees and trusts. The Treasurer ordered an expert panel to conduct an audit of the 870 organisations and present recommendations on how to make them "leaner and more efficient". In the written speech, she said "many of these identified bodies overlap in terms of the functions they perform". "There is an opportunity here to reduce this number," an excerpt said. "Not for the sake of it — but because it will reduce waste, streamline decision-making and make Government work better."

She is expected to use an example relating to the 76 crown land trusts that manage assets, recommending a merger of the organisations. "One of them manages a tennis court centre in Newcastle," an excerpt said. "Another manages a small historic pumping station near Maitland. "While the Government is yet to decide its exact course of action, the panel has recommended that these should not be separate trusts and should be merged into one."

Efficiency means job losses, Opposition says

Shadow Treasurer Michael Daley said New South Wales should be concerned by the Government's plan. "When Liberal governments talk about making things more efficient they just mean sacking people and cutting services," he said. But the Treasurer said the plan was about "more than simply saving money". In the speech Ms Berejiklian cited her work as Transport Minister. "One of my priorities was reforming the bureaucracy that delivers transport in NSW," the speech read. "When I left the Transport portfolio, there were 2,000 fewer back-office staff in Sydney Trains and NSW Trains than there were in RailCorp when I arrived. "At the same time, there were well over 1,100 extra services and customer satisfaction had increased."

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/704145555530731520

Solemn Sloth posted:

marginal seats are still dominated by people up to their eyeballs in mortgages who don't want to hear their property is going down in value and don't give gently caress one about anyone else.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Why the Coalition haven't come up with something to address housing affordability (even as a fig-leaf) is a mystery.

Cartoon posted:

There's is actually another elephant in this room. Even though Sydney and Melbourne are going gang busters elsewhere in the country, that Turdball supposedly governs, prices are already going backwards.

http://www.perthnow.com.au/realesta...32168a3b202ffdb


And that's just capitals. Commercial property values in regional areas have been down graded to as little as a third their 'boom' valuations. The general vibe from the real estate industry is that it's all still going OK, but they would say that. You look a little deeper and it's only areas that have some extraordinary lifestyle element going for them that are holding ground. The chief issue here is a lack of employment opportunities.

Periphery posted:

If the chief issue in those areas (Perth in particular) is the lack of jobs, could the results there provide a rough guide as to what would happen to the rest of the country in case of a recession that causes higher unemployment etc?

Jumpingmanjim posted:

What is the AFP doing in Parliament?

quote:

The Australian Federal Police have denied executing a search warrant and on the Parliamentary Office of any Federal member of Parliament in the past two weeks and seizing any material.

Officials from the department in charge of Parliament House have been assisting federal police with an investigation.

An AFP spokesman confirmed on Monday the agency had been 'conducting inquiries with the Department of Parliamentary Services in relation to an ongoing investigation'

However, the spokesman dismissed reports that a search warrant had been executed on an MP's office in the past fortnight, nor had officers approached any MP to voluntarily obtain documents.

Leader of the House, Christopher Pyne told Sky News he doesn't know the first thing about the reports or what they are in relation to.

Periphery posted:

The impact on property prices of international investment is horribly overstated in the media. It only makes up about 12% of the total market at the moment with China making up something like 2%. While China dying could directly have an effect on house prices I think the overall negative economic consequences would have a greater impact on housing prices than the Chinese not buying our homes anymore.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/704145555530731520

KingEup posted:

I wouldn't take his advice even if he answered the question. It's a dumb question to begin with. Politicians don't exist to give personal financial advice.

Here's some good advice though: don't buy McMansions or any unit that is painted in swathes of bright colours to distract you from the fact it is a poorly constructed eyesore unless you want to lose a fuckton of money. Some of the brand new apartments I've seen recently are absolutely appaling. I went to see a place in Coogee recently and it had a man whole in the ceiling that literally went nowhere and a 950000 pricetag. I mean lol, loving lol.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Are you in construction?

KingEup posted:

No.

Also, I am getting fed up with people talking about income relative to average house prices as though that's some kind of 'check mate, we're hosed'. The most recent ABS census data we have indicates that 90% of mortagees spend less than 30% of their income on repayments and that was when interest rates were triple what they are now.

quote:

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census data shows we are spending an average of $1,235 per month on rent or $1,800 on mortgage repayments. Mortgage and rent payments now consume about 20 percent of the average household budget, a percentage that has grown dramatically over the past few decades. Ten years ago, housing costs made up 17 percent of household spending, while 50 years ago that portion was just 8 percent. As well as housing itself, the cost of household bills has also risen, with Australians devoting 15.5 percent of their salary to phone, internet and power costs, spending an average of $633 each month.

quote:

TODAY, Cardinal George Pell is giving evidence via videolink from the Hotel Quirinale in Rome to the child sexual abuse royal commission.

It is the third time he has testified to the commission - the fourth, if you count the Victorian parliamentary inquiry which preceded it. He has hardly been hiding.

And yet the point of much of the unrestrained vitriol spewed at him is that he is a coward who has refused to “come home” to testify.

But Pell, 74, has a heart complaint and has been told by doctors not to fly, a fact accepted by royal commissioner Peter McClellan after some delay, which only served to add to pressure on the star witness of the $500 million exercise.

Watching Pell is a self-invited group of about 120, including 50 journalists and assorted victims, supporters and Pell-haters who have travelled to Rome, largely on the proceeds of an abusive ditty by anti-Catholic crooner Tim Minchin, calling Pell “scum” and “coward”.


Australian cardinal George Pell denies the accusation that he tried to “buy” the silence of Ridsdale’s nephew and victim David Ridsdale. Picture: Getty Images
The royal commission has sent “support staff” and media people, at unknown cost, to assist this unofficial lynch mob.

It doesn’t matter that he is in frail health and will have delivered 21 hours of testimony after today’s stint.

The worst accusations are that he helped move paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale between parishes in the 1980s, when he was a junior priest in Ballarat under Bishop Mulkearns. However, as Father Eric Bryant has testified to the commission, at a 1982 meeting he attended with Pell, Mulkearns simply said Ridsdale was being moved because he had a “problem with homosexuality”.

Bryant said he didn’t link homosexuality with paedophilia and was offended by the suggestion put to him: “I know a number of clergy who are homosexual and who are the most decent people in the world... who have lived their celibacy to the letter. There’s others who have fallen weak and make mistakes but they don’t abuse children.”

Pell’s accusers must expect that he should have made that terrible link, which is ironic, because the central reason for his unpopularity is that he is a conservative priest who upholds the teaching of the Church and raised the eternal ire of homosexual ­activists by refusing to give them communion.

So he is fair game. But the indifference of much of the media to any semblance of fairness or legal restraint is astonishing.

The ABC has illustrated stories about Pell with images of a red toy truck, a cutout of his face glued into the driver’s side, and festooned with rocks and spiders, a blatant reference to “rock spiders”, slang for paedophiles.

On Channel 10’s the Project, Minchin debuted his vicious song in full, along with an illustration of a hollow cross with Pell inside with two altar boys.

There is no justification for this abuse of Pell in anything before the royal commission.

Pell denies the accusation that he tried to “buy” the silence of Ridsdale’s nephew and victim David Ridsdale, and at the time police were already investigating the paedophile, so there is no logic to the claim.

Anthony and Chrissie Foster, who have received $750,000 compensation from the church, accuse Pell of a “sociopathic lack of empathy” when he met them as the new Archbishop of Melbourne, to discuss the abuse of their two daughters by a priest a decade earlier.

But Pell was the most senior churchman to meet them and the first to respond with a plan to help victims, his Melbourne Response.

This is the profound unfairness of the attacks on Pell. He alone of any church leader in Australia responded to the crisis of child sexual abuse and set up a system in which claims would be investigated, counselling and compensation offered and victims would be directed to police.

He became Archbishop of Melbourne on 16 June 1996. Sick of the dithering inaction of his fellow bishops, within a month he had instructed Corrs lawyers to come up with a plan. By mid-October Peter O’Callaghan QC had been appointed the first Independent Commissioner, who went on to investigate 351 complaints of abuse, of which 97 per cent were upheld.

Pell acted with his usual decisiveness and efficiency, qualities invaluable to the Pope now as the Vatican’s top financial official, bringing integrity and transparency to Church finances.

Yet he has become the whipping boy, and even on the eve of his testimony this week, was betrayed by Victoria police who leaked vague allegations that Pell himself had sexually abused boys in the past.

This was an appalling intervention by police who are in the firing line themselves for failing to investigate complaints of child sexual abuse and for telling untruths about the church to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry.

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton claimed 43 suicides related to child sexual abuse in the Victorian Church, but, after an internal investigation, only one could be confirmed. That’s one too many, of course, but the exaggeration cast doubt on the motives of police. Ashton also claimed police had not “had a single referral of a child sexual abuse allegation by the Catholic Church’’.

Wrong. As O’Callaghan has testified, of 304 complaints, 97 were reported to police, and 76 victims he encouraged to go to police.

So pleased were Victoria police at Pell’s initiative in 1996 that they issued a press release praising the Melbourne response, and NSW police royal commissioner Justice James Wood also lauded the Catholic Church’s response then as a “model” for other institutions to follow.

For its time, Pell’s response to the child sexual abuse plaguing the church was groundbreaking. Not perfect, but it acknowledged a problem, helped victims and referred offenders to police if possible.

There is evidence, however, that Victoria police seemed to drop the ball, whether because prosecutions in those days were too difficult or for some other reason, we don’t know.

Last week, for instance, former priest and psychiatrist Dr Peter Evans told the commission he was contacted by police in 1975 about the paedophile Ridsdale, who Bishop Mulkearns had asked him to assess after an allegation of child sexual abuse had been made against him.

“The police were certainly investigating it and knew about it. The police informed me that they would not be pressing charges. However, the policeman added that they … thought, he was guilty.”

So what you have today is one potential scapegoat accusing another of covering up paedophilia, and leaking untested allegations to bolster their case.

If all the abuse heaped on him would ensure that children never again suffered sexual abuse, perhaps even Pell would say it is a cross worth bearing.

But it does the opposite. By targeting the one man who tried to do the right thing it ensures that no future church leader in their right mind would take decisive action again.

To save his own skin, Pell would have been better to leave it to the hopeless cowards and naive bumblers who had presided over the evil in the Church for so long.