God save me from the ABC + Grattan Institute corruption nexus.
I have written extensively about how the ABC quotes former gas executive Tony Wood without ever mentioning the Grattan Institute’s huge conflict of interest in its sponsorship from Origin Energy.
This has turned the ABC into a near cypher of gas cartel propaganda.
But it does not stop there.
Grattan’s conflicts of interest are even larger in the housing debate.
LVO last week noted the appalling nexus of the property developer-funded Scanlon Foundation and Grattan Institute research.
Perhaps even worse are the Grattan Institute’s links with Melbourne University, which depends on the foreign student trade.
This leads to incredibly one-eyed research that the ABC laps up because it fits perfectly with an ideology that immigration can only ever be good.
Hence, we get roving packs of ABC journalist children writing angrily about the rental crisis that is the result almost exclusively of Albo’s immigration surge without once mentioning…the immigration surge.
The latest data shows how fundamental housing has become in determining wealth and poverty in Australia, according to Grattan Institute economist Brendan Coates.
“Historically, we’ve been worried about people’s ability to … become home-owners and participate in that Great Australian Dream,” Coates says.
“Now I think we’re having a different conversation about ‘can people afford to literally keep a roof over their heads?’”
…Grattan’s Coates says the most important thing is “to build as much housing as possible, as quickly as we can”.
“Unaffordable housing has all sorts of cascading impacts on people’s lives. It erodes their sense of personal security and their sense of sort of social cohesion,” he says.
“It’s also not a good thing for our labour markets … our economy is not going to be as productive if people can’t afford to live close to where they work.”
This is not journalism. It is propaganda.
The best thing Australia could do to improve housing availability for all is to slash immigration to zero.
The economy would slow for a while, rents would crater, the cost of building would fall with land prices, and interest rates would collapse, delivering instant, dramatic improvements in affordability to rent or buy.
Wages might firm, too!
It is that simple, and the fact that neither Grattan nor the ABC will mention it only proves how corrupt and brainwashed they are.
