Coverage of Peter Tulip's paper on heritage laws, Robert Carling on CGT, and more - The Centre for Independent Studies
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Coverage of Peter Tulip’s paper on heritage laws, Robert Carling on CGT, and more

Australian Land Locked by Heritage Law Amplifies Housing Crisis — Bloomberg

Australia’s heritage laws are worsening the country’s housing affordability crisis by protecting hundreds of thousands of low-value buildings without weighing the economic cost, according to the Centre for Independent Studies.

Vast tracts of inner-city areas are locked up by heritage restrictions, the CIS said in a report released Thursday. It reckons more than 20% of residential land within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of Sydney’s CBD is heritage protected and almost 30% of the equivalent area in Melbourne.

Current laws fail a basic public policy test and need to be overhauled as they do not compare the costs of heritage listing with their benefits, author Peter Tulip said in the report. Some users of the heritage system consider it “just a convenient tool” for obstructing housing development, he added.

“The result is that heritage controls lock away large areas of unremarkable suburban houses,” Tulip said. “This blocks higher-value uses of land and worsens housing affordability.”

Tulip gave the example of the Sydney suburb of Gordon where heritage-listed houses have a market value of about A$4 million ($2.8 million). He argues that if they were not heritage covered, the sites would be sold for apartments, with a value of about A$10 million.

The CIS paper also found:

  •                 Community willingness to pay to preserve ordinary buildings is modest, suggesting benefits are frequently dwarfed by costs
  •                 Heritage delisting is costly, slow and procedurally onerous, even where circumstances have clearly changed.
  •                 The burden of proof falls unfairly on property owners, even when the original heritage listing was supported by minimal evidence

“The inability to increase density on heritage sites exacerbates this shortage, increasing housing costs,” Tulip said. “Again, legislation provides no mechanism for comparing benefits of preservation with the effect on affordability.”

Australia’s Heritage Laws Impact Housing Affordability — Binance

Australia’s heritage laws are exacerbating the housing affordability crisis by safeguarding numerous low-value buildings without considering the economic implications, according to the Centre for Independent Studies. The Centre for Independent Studies argues that the preservation of such structures often leads to increased costs and reduced availability of housing, further straining the market. The organization suggests that a reassessment of heritage protection policies could alleviate some of the pressure on housing affordability by allowing for more efficient use of land and resources. As the housing crisis continues to affect many Australians, the debate over heritage laws and their impact on the economy remains a critical issue.

Federal Government urged to dilute capital gain tax discount immediately ahead of May Budget announcement — The Nightly

The conservative Centre for Independent Studies’ Robert Carling argued that halving the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount would “result in a more burdensome CGT than Australia had before the 50 per cent discount replaced cost base indexation in 1999”.

“In many cases, the 25 per cent discount system would impose tax on purely inflationary gains as well as real gains,” it said.

Treasury Says Investor Tax Cuts Won’t Slash Prices — Australia by Aussie

Treasury officials are relying on established modelling, including analysis by Robert Carling at the Centre for Independent Studies, which estimates modest price effects from winding back concessions.

Silence Has a Cost – and Right Now Australian Jews are Paying the Price — Never Again Is Now

For 50 years we have been largely silent about Islamic antisemitism.  Even today I received the latest paper from the Centre for Independent Studies (Overcoming Enmity and Restoring Tolerance: Antisemitism’s challenge to our civic compact by Damien Freeman) and in 15 pages of discussion about antisemitism, there was only one reference to Islamic antisemitism, and that referred to it as “a different form of antisemitism associated with Islamicism in parts of the Muslim community that have been exposed to radicalisation”.