Tag: The Conversation

States drag feet on affordable housing, with Victoria the worst

From The Conversation.

Moral panic over recent increases in visibly homeless people in central Melbourne has brought to the fore the critical shortage of affordable housing across the metropolitan areas of Australia’s wealthiest cities. But living on the street is only the tip of the iceberg. Many more households are living in insecure and/or overpriced accommodation. Their plight is due to an undersupply of appropriately priced, sized and situated rental housing.

The Commonwealth government is reportedly planning to scrap the National Affordable Housing Agreement with the states. Without a clear alternative, the weakness of state policies, which lack clear targets and mechanisms for providing more and better affordable housing, adds to the problem. One state, Victoria, still doesn’t have an affordable housing strategy.

South Australia’s strategy has 15% inclusionary zoning as one of several mechanisms to achieve affordable housing targets. Western Australia provides regular progress updates on the regional targets of its Affordable Housing Strategy 2010-2020. Tasmania adopted a ten-year strategy in 2015.

New South Wales has had affordable housing policies in place since 2009. The NSW government has a new plan to build more social housing and improve existing stock. Queensland released a draft strategy in March 2016.

While these state policies vary in their success, Victoria does not even have a strategy to critique.

Victoria’s toxic planning legacy

No doubt Premier Daniel Andrews inherited several industrial-strength cans of toxic planning waste when Victorian Labor won office in November 2014. This legacy came not only from the Liberals, but from the earlier Bracks-Brumby Labor government.

Under the 2000s Labor government, the fourth new metropolitan strategy in four decades, Melbourne 2030, largely failed to stop sprawl. The main excuse for sprawl – that increased and largely unregulated housing supply would magically enable affordability – had become a sad joke.

As former Labor adviser Joel Deane’s book Catch and Kill shows, inability to respond to basic public concerns about planning and transport was perhaps the most significant factor in Labor’s 2010 election defeat.

If Labor had been ineffective in creating new affordable housing, the Liberals’ planning decisions between 2010 and 2014 were disastrous. Australia’s largest urban renewal site – Fishermans Bend – was drastically up-zoned from Industrial to Capital City (also known as “Anything Goes”). They did this without extracting a cent in added value from landowners towards affordable housing – or any other infrastructure.

Huge parts of the southeastern suburbs – Liberal strongholds – were essentially walled off from new housing, even though these had some of the best school and transport infrastructure to serve a rapidly growing population. Hundreds of job cuts meant the civil service lost experience and capacity to do better.

A long wait for action on affordable housing

The Victorian Labor 2014 election platform stated:

All Victorians have a right to safe, affordable and secure housing.

Yet in more than two years since its election, the Labor government has not completed any of the major reforms that would enable affordable housing.

Plan Melbourne’s “refresh” has not been published in its final form. The Residential Tenancies Act still has to be strengthened. The residential zone review hasn’t been completed.

Perhaps most disturbingly, we are still waiting for the results of the early announcement that the state treasurer was going to work with the planning and housing ministers to develop an integrated affordable housing strategy.

A new advisory body, Infrastructure Victoria, published a 30-Year Infrastructure Strategy in December 2016. “Social housing” (public and non-profit) was one of its top three priorities. However, compared with principles of “a good plan”, the affordable housing section of this strategy does not pass the test.

According to the literature on plan analysis, good plans should have seven elements: a clear vision; specific goals; a fact base informing alternatives; a spatialised sense of what goes where; a very specific implementation plan, with costs, timelines and responsible authorities; a monitoring and evaluation plan; and specific horizontal (across all parts of government, the private sector and civil society) and vertical (alignment between national, state and local government) integration.

Vancouver shows how to do it

The City of Vancouver’s Housing and Homelessness Strategy 2012-2021 is an example of an affordable housing plan that ticks the boxes. It has a clear vision embodied in the strategy’s subtitle:

A home for everyone.

The strategy sets specific numeric housing targets. These cover everything from supportive housing for homeless people with mental disabilities, to social housing, market rental and home-ownership options.

These targets are based on a robust and transparent analysis of housing trends across the city. While all subsequent neighbourhood plans are intended to achieve a mix of dwelling cost and size, there is a particular emphasis on locating supportive housing near areas with significant homeless populations.

Vancouver has shown what a comprehensive affordable housing strategy can achieve. Kenny Louie/flickr, CC BY

The partnerships with other levels of government, private developers and non-profit providers are comprehensive. A new Vancouver Affordable Housing Authority has been established to coordinate these efforts. Since the report’s adoption, further mechanisms such as a community land trust have been established. Annual reporting against the targets is available on the City of Vancouver’s website.

In contrast, Infrastructure Victoria is an advisory body to state government, not an implementation agency. Its vision of a “thriving, connected and sustainable Victoria where everyone can access good jobs, education and services” begs the question of how progress towards these attributes would be measured.

Infrastructure Victoria does estimate an extra 30,000 affordable homes are needed over the next ten years. But it admits this figure is not well justified, due to a lack of good information on affordable housing deficits.

It recommends further work on an affordable housing plan with specific funding streams. However, this cannot really be expected to be the plan that “tackles [the] affordable housing shortage”, as its own website boasted of the draft report.

At best, Infrastructure Victoria’s plan is a baby step. It does clearly state the importance of social housing as critical infrastructure. It also begins to justify mechanisms that could achieve some scaling up of affordable housing outcomes.

But the public housing waiting list now has more than 35,000 names. About 120,000 households receiving Commonwealth Rent Assistance are still unable to afford living where they do. That includes 50,000 households in the lowest income bracket. And another one million new households are expected to move into Victoria within the 30-year timeframe of the infrastructure strategy.

This all means that baby steps will not be enough to prevent rapidly increasing homelessness.

Author: Carolyn Whitzman , Professor of Urban Planning, University of Melbourne

Moving on from home ownership for ‘Generation Rent’

From The Conversation.

The inequalities and inequities that housing markets generate have become a cross-national issue in the last decade or so. In Australia, the UK and the US, discussions of “Generation Rent” have taken centre stage.

In the generational debate, older, asset-wealthy owner-occupiers advantaged by previously more stable lending conditions and historic house price trends have been pitted against younger cohorts. The latter have been priced out of the home buyers’ market and pushed into rental housing in ostensible perpetuity.

Evidence of just what “Generation Rent” is and, more importantly, why it matters have, however, been somewhat fuzzier.

Economies and security built on housing

One reason declining access to home ownership for younger people is of such concern is that housing is much more than housing. The wealth accumulated in our homes over our lifetimes has come to represent economic security and a means to live more comfortably in old age. It’s seen as a buffer in times of hardship – buying a home is an implicit part of the welfare system in many contexts.

Declining home ownership is contributing to inequality.

Governments have largely nurtured this. They often support or even fund the growth of home ownership and protect property value increases. It has become increasingly evident, however, that this approach to housing markets as a kind of welfare policy has fundamental limitations.

For one thing, the global financial crisis of almost a decade ago demonstrated how deeply rooted and transnational housing finance has become. A welfare system that relies on home ownership in a globalised era is thus critically vulnerable.

Although property markets work at a local level, global capital has become increasingly intrusive. Investment purchases are financed from around the world. While our homes function as our family savings accounts, housing now also serves as safety deposit boxes for transnational middle classes and wealthy elites.

The global financial crisis also illustrated that the very conditions that may require home owners to draw on their property assets as an economic buffer are likely to undermine their value and make them difficult to access when needed.

Since the crisis, housing has again become an overwhelming focus of investment, sustained by quantitative easing, weaker financial markets, and low interest rates. This is driving renewed inflation in house prices, especially in global cities, with overflows downwards and outwards.

Divide grows between owners and renters

Buying a home is now well beyond the capacity of many among the increasingly vulnerable cohorts of younger people. They have also faced reduced job security, subdued wage rises, and diminishing access to credit.

As a result, home ownership rates across English-speaking societies, but also elsewhere, have fallen significantly, driven by the collapse in home buying among millennials.

While it is easy to blame globalisation (especially foreign investors) and dwell on the historic advantages baby boomers enjoyed, much of the problem lies with our housing systems and especially with our approaches to fixing them. Critically, by relying on home ownership and making homes default savings accounts essential to our long-term welfare security (in the context of austerity or welfare state retrenchment), we have come to depend on them for much more than housing.

This is why Generation Rent represents so much of a challenge. It requires more than dealing with the supply and distribution of home ownership. It may require a complete rethinking of home ownership as a basis of our housing systems.

The term “Generation Rent” is not particularly useful as it implies direct conflict between cohorts. In fact, the opposite is true. In recent years different generations within families have increasingly mobilised around their collective property wealth in the face of diminishing economic security.

In the UK, around one in ten first-time home-buyers were getting help from parents in the mid-1990s. By 2005 this was up to 25%. And since the GFC the figure has soared to as high as 75%.

The family assets invested in housing are undergoing profound shifts.

At the same time, has been a remarkable shift in family deployment of assets. Numbers of private landlords increased from just over half a million in the early 1990s to around 2.2 million by 2015 (equivalent to almost one in ten households). This represents a remarkable boom in new landlords, owning just one or two extra properties, since the beginning of the century.

Various studies suggest that house hoarding and “landlording” have become an extension of the home-ownership welfare strategy. Buying and then renting out an extra home represents an effective means of ensuring long-term security. It’s also something that can be drawn upon to help out, or even pass onto the kids.

Generations, then, are not necessarily at odds with each other. There is little evidence that younger people directly blame their elders for their housing situation. In fact, it is older people that are most likely to help them out.

Problem is deeper than Generation Rent

Underlying Generation Rent is essentially a wider problem derived from the maturation of home-ownership systems in a diverse numbers of contexts, from Ireland to Japan.

In the past, home-ownership rates and property prices boomed, supporting asset accumulation for particular cohorts. However, this created conditions for tighter access, which has undermined the tenure and reinvigorated low-level rent-seeking in the longer term.

The outcome is not so much a polarisation between generations, but between younger people based on the housing market position, or strategy, of their parents, or even grandparents. The children of secure home owners are likely to eventually be helped out or inherit. The children of renters, over-leveraged mortgage-holders or ageing households who rely on their unmortgaged property to meet their own needs are likely to remain locked out unless they have a considerable income.

In the context of continued flows of global capital and the normalisation of property investment as family welfare strategy, we cannot realistically expect that socioeconomic inequalities derived from housing or problems of access among younger people are going to be reversed.

Governments have largely responded to declining home ownership by sponsoring access to credit or providing extra cash for potential home buyers. This has done little other than revive house price inflation and thus aggravate the affordability issue.

Rental housing careers are likely then to become more common and last for longer. We therefore need better means to reconcile tenants’ needs with both housing and welfare practices. This will involve policymakers and politicians imaging other ways of “doing” housing that consider different types of households and life courses, tenures and housing ladders.

Younger people themselves seem to be adapting to a post-homeownership landscape. While owner-occupation remains deeply normalised, household situations have become increasingly diverse. Sharing with friends or strangers has become much more common.

In cities, this shift has started to stimulate private-sector responses, including large-scale purpose-built developments expressly tailored to the needs of Generation Rent.

Author: Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam

Why housing supply shouldn’t be the only policy tool politicians cling to

From The Conversation.

The most popular government policy at the moment for solving housing affordability continues to be increasing housing supply. After a visit to the UK to look at this very problem, Treasurer Scott Morrison said:

The issue here fundamentally is about supply.

And it’s little wonder the government dwells so much on this argument. Rising house prices are very popular amongst Australian households, the majority of which are owners. And stamp duties on housing transactions are key sources of income for state governments. Our research found the default position for politicians is to sound concerned about housing affordability, but do nothing.

The supply refrain has all the hallmarks of a good policy for a politician. Increasing housing supply – rather than reducing the tax breaks that stimulate excessive demand – is a popular policy with peak property groups. The Property Council has been saying the same thing for years, so the supply solution has come to sound like fact.

If the supply doesn’t flow or, as is occurring now, doesn’t cool prices, the federal government can blame the states for sluggish planning and land supply without having to put their money where their mouth is. States in turn can blame recalcitrant local governments for blocking housing development and “gold-plating” infrastructure requirements. Since the private sector almost wholly funds and delivers new housing, calling for more of it has been a pretty cheap strategy for government.

It’s true that increasing the supply of new homes in line with population and economic growth is a fundamental part of maintaining a healthy housing system. But to tout new housing production as the only policy lever without examining the question of demand is clearly an ineffective policy position.

The supply argument sounds believable – increasing supply will actually reduce prices in markets for most types of goods, like bananas, cars or televisions. Unfortunately, the housing market is different.

Why are housing markets different?

So why is it that despite record supply levels in Australia in recent years, prices have continued to rise in Sydney and Melbourne? We think there are a number of reasons.

New supply is a small fraction of the total stock of dwellings (about 2% in Australia). Prices are set by the total housing market – most of which already exists in the form of established homes.

Also housing is an unusual good in that as prices increase, demand in the short term actually increases (it’s an asset market). This makes it much more difficult for supply increases to reduce prices.

Increasing prices feeds demand

In most other markets increasing prices both encourage extra supply and reduce demand, so these two key forces are working together – prices in these markets come down sharply when supply increases. In housing markets these two forces are working against each other – the growth of investor demand is simply swamping new supply.

The very low interest rates on offer at the moment are exacerbating this trend.

Developers manage supply

Developers, and the banks that fund development, simply won’t allow supply to get ahead of demand in a way that would put significant downward pressure on prices. Dwelling approvals in Sydney and Melbourne are running way ahead of building starts, but housing projects are released in stages to avoid swamping the market. Since our major banks have the majority of their loan books in retail mortgages, it’s no wonder they avoid funding enough supply to increase their own risk levels.

How much new supply would improve affordability anyway?

Even if Australia’s developers and financiers were less cautious, it’s probably not feasible to produce enough supply to really knock prices around when demand is very strong.

For example, prior to the global financial crisis, Ireland – which is about the same size as Sydney, increased supply to 90,000 dwellings per year (Sydney does about 30,000 dwellings per year) and prices still kept rising. It wasn’t the over-supply of homes that caused Irish house prices to fall dramatically but rather the sudden contraction of demand when the global financial crisis hit.

Under more stable conditions, the problem of generating additional housing supply remains. Australia’s prime minister has encouraged the states to fix their planning laws to make it easier get housing approvals and building to flow.

But there has been a continuous wave of planning reform over the last 10 years in Australia, and Sydney and Melbourne dwelling approvals are at long-term highs. For example, in 2015-16, Sydney recorded over 56,000 new dwelling approvals and Melbourne over 57,000.

In fact, approvals are running at about double the actual dwelling construction levels, so “fixing” the planning system is unlikely to have much impact on dwelling supply levels.

High-density supply fuels land speculation

Much new supply is in apartments. In the rush to create new supply, some local councils and state governments have provided bonuses to developers by allowing, at no charge, more apartments on a site. Land owners have seen this behaviour and are likely to increase land prices on the assumption that this will always happen. So, in this case, more supply (through additional apartments) may have actually increased prices not reduced them.

The global ‘financialisation’ of housing

Demand has increased because the focus for many housing investors is now not the cash flow generated by rents but the value of a house as a financial product. For example, at the moment there is continued strong demand for housing by investors despite the fact that apartment rents have started to decrease in Sydney and are flat in Melbourne.

The internet, and the global real estate market it helps support, enables national and international investors to be an increasingly important part of the market. They increase demand pressures in the best-performing (in terms of price growth) cities of Sydney and Melbourne by “soaking” up the new supply.

If politicians were serious about the affordability crisis, they would be trying to support the important but underfunded affordable housing sector. Better targeting tax breaks towards new and affordable rental housing, rather than fuelling demand for existing homes, would also help. But until our politicians can see past supply slogans we can expect very little policy change.

Authors: Chair of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Sydney;Professor – Urban and Regional Planning, University of Sydney

 

Increased private health insurance premiums don’t mean increased value

From The Conversation.

A topic of discussion at many barbecues this summer will inevitably be private health insurance. Is it worth it? Do we need it? Every year it gets more expensive. The average 4.8% increase in premiums just announced will have more Australians raising these questions, and debating with their friends how much they value choice of doctor, reduced waiting times for elective surgery, and having a private room when in hospital.

Private health insurance is mostly a private industry, but governments play a key role in ensuring private health insurance companies remain profitable and viable. Government policies encourage us all to have private health insurance by providing incentives for people to take out health insurance and imposing tax penalties for those on high incomes who do not have private health insurance.

Government makes decisions about pricing and funds the 30% rebate for many consumers with private health insurance. This is costing tax payers an estimated A$6 billion each year; money many economists argue is not justified and would be better spent in the public system.

Should the government have allowed this premium rise?

Each year private health insurance funds lobby the government to increase premiums. They claim increases are warranted because of an ageing population, increasing costs of health services and technologies, and decreasing government subsidies to consumers.

New federal health minister Greg Hunt has approved an average increase in premiums of 4.8%, with actual price hikes ranging from 2.9% up to 8.5%. This will mean families will pay up to $200 more per year, and singles up to $100 more each year.

The government argues this is the lowest premium increase in a decade. But this ignores the cumulative increase of 28% since 2012.

A premium that was $2000 in 2010 now costs about $3000. Many economists believe current premium increases, which are well over inflation rates, can’t be justified.

At a time when health insurance funds have increased profits, people are wondering about the value for money they get when they sign up for private health insurance.

Dissatisfaction on the issue was clearly on the political agenda in 2016, when previous health minister Sussan Ley announced a public consultation on private health insurance. This consultation made clear the concerns people have about poor value for money, high out of pocket costs, and complex regulations.

These issues have all been raised in our own research with consumers, and have been repeatedly raised by consumer organisations such as the Consumer Health Forum. Despite this consultation, it appears little has changed.

It is claimed Australians are paying more than ever for their private health insurance but are getting less and less. There are concerns about lack of transparency about what is covered, waiting periods and exclusions, and unexpected out-of-pocket costs.

Shifting responsibility to consumers

Each year when we discuss the premium price hikes, the concern is focused on how consumers, not industry, will react. The onus is often on consumers to be more aware, more active, and lobby for their needs. There are a range of sites dedicated to helping consumers make the best choice.

There is alarm that some people will drop their cover completely. But given the fear people have about needing private health insurance, there seems to be more consensus that people will reduce their level of cover rather than dropping it.

However, the risks of doing so are often not explored. Exposure to large and unexpected out of pocket costs, and as found in our research, the realisation (too late) that some procedures are not covered. When people do use their private health insurance they are likely to pay a gap, but these expenses are not clearly defined.

While there is a focus on people questioning the value of private health insurance, and whether these increased premiums are justified, there is very little questioning of how we might maximise the value of the public health care system.

For example, the outrage is not extended to the need to lobby government about strengthening the public health system, which is where most people, especially those who are poor and with complex health needs, end up.

Lots of arguments are made that the private health sector is important for a strong public system. In our research, it was evident some people view having private health insurance as helping out the health care system, and making space in the public system for people who cannot afford health insurance.

We know many Australians take out health insurance simply to avoid paying more tax through the Medicare levy surcharge. Some question whether they would rather be putting their money into Medicare than an industry they may choose never to use.

The federal government needs to implement greater protections for those who purchase private health insurance and ensure better value for the substantial funds taxpayers invest in private health insurance, directly and indirectly, through the private health insurance rebate, premiums, Medicare reimbursements and out-of-pocket costs.

Author: Karen Willis,Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching), Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University; Sophie Lewis, Lecturer, University of Sydney

 

Australia Post salary scandal highlights our nation’s growing wage inequality

From The Conversation.

How much more than an average worker should a CEO earn? Research shows Australians believe CEOs should earn eight times more. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that revelations about the salary of Australia Posts CEO Ahmed Fahour have caused a public furore this week.

Fahour’s pay is estimated at up to 119 times that of a postal worker, and 73.5 times that of the average earnings in the transport, postal and warehousing industry.

In 2015-16, he earned A$5.6 million – made up of A$4.4 million in salary and superannuation, and a A$1.2 million bonus. This has – at least for now – rightly put wage inequality on the national political agenda.

Questions of transparency

It’s not just that it’s a lot of money. Australia Post has, until this week, been able to keep Fahour’s salary top secret. It adamantly did not want us to know, even trying to gag the Senate committee it was required submit the information to in 2016.

Australia Post protested that revealing the size of the managerial swag-bag might mean people would “become targets for unwarranted media attention”. It also griped that making the bulging pay packets public could “lead to brand damage for Australia Post”.

This is corporate double-speak writ large. Brand damage for sure. But the reason is that the top-six Australia Post executives earn the same as half of the business’ total profits. Customers and citizens might rightly think this is just wrong – and, in the end, the customer is the one who is paying.

Executive pay comparisons

There is a rule of thumb in business ethics called the “New York Times Test”. It states that a business should not do anything that it would not want to see reported on the front page of the newspaper. Australia Post has not only failed this test, but it has deliberately tried to avoid being subject to it by its insistence on secrecy.

Australia Post is especially sensitive because it is a government-owned corporation. So, while it can still earn profits, there are no shareholders it is accountable to. Ultimately, Australia Post is answerable to the government.

Overindulgent executive salaries are usually rationalised with vague arguments that eschew responsibility. Managers and their PR minions harp on about the need to compete for global talent. Australia Post joined the chorus, very specifically defending the salaries of its chiefs because they were “in line with market practice”.

The poverty of this argument is palpable. Australia is leading the way internationally on this executive salary creep. And top postal executives in other countries earn a fraction of what is paid here. Britain’s postal boss does well, earning the equivalent of A$2.5 million. Fahour’s US counterpart takes home just A$543,616. In Canada, the salary is A$497,000.

The public has responded to news of Fahour’s salary with justified indignation. Even Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull chimed in, saying he thinks Fahour’s salary is excessive.

As exorbitant as Fahour’s salary might be, it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to executive pay in Australia. It even looks relatively modest when compared to the sums taken home by CEOs in the corporate sector.

Peter and Steven Lowy at Westfield share A$25 million in realised pay. Seek’s Andrew Bassat yields just under A$20 million, and Nick Moore at Macquarie Group scrapes in over A$16 million.

These salary extravagances seem tame if you think that the top 1% of Australians have as much wealth as the bottom 70%. Gina Rinehart and Harry Triguboff alone own more that the bottom 20%.

Missing the broader point

The real point of all of this has been totally missed in the rush to side-step political accountability.

For Turnbull, it was just another “not my job” moment. The Australia Post board responded in a similarly dismissive way, with a promise to have “a discussion” the best it could muster.

At least the Senate had the nerve to call Australia Post chairman John Stanhope to publicly justify its executive wage bill at Senate Estimates later this month.

Meanwhile, the cost of living for average Australians and its relationship to wages and penalty rates remain key political issues. This is quite right, given the way that people are rewarded by corporations is a key determinant of income inequality.

No doubt the earnings of Australia Post’s top brass will fade from the headlines. What won’t fade so quickly is the way the gaps between the earning of those executives and rest of the Australian population keeps getting bigger.

This cannot be dismissed with facile arguments about the “politics of envy”. Instead, we need to take heed of research that clearly shows inequality is continuing to widen in Australia, and that this rising inequality is harmful to economic and social stability.

Author: Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydne

Consumers won’t react the same to higher interest rates

From The Conversation.

The Reserve Bank today kept interest rates at a record low of 1.5%. Such low rates create economic uncertainty – and if Australia’s historical GDP growth is anything to go by, consumers face more uncertainty than the bottoming out of interest rates would usually suggest.

This is because high house prices lead home-owners to feel wealthy, yet the economy as a whole does not convey a message of wealth to all consumers.

Boom and bust come and go, and sometimes you can be forgiven for feeling economic déjà vu. But how might Australians react to record low rates this time around? Business moves in cycles over time, so economists sometimes look to history as a guide to what might happen next.

A flattening out of interest rates can mean many possibilities for consumers and businesses. Historical GDP growth rates would indicate that the business cycle is at the same stage as in 2011. But what this means for consumers depends on how the other economic “stars” align. The indicators from 2011 are able to provide a model of how consumers may react over the coming years.

Does 2011 provide a model?

The relationship between interest rates and unemployment has been of interest since target interest rates were introduced in 1990.

The rise in unemployment from 4% to 6% between July 2008 and May 2009 occurred at the same time as the Reserve Bank rapidly slashed the target interest rates.

However, with the Reserve Bank now unlikely to reduce interest rates any further, the impact on unemployment and other pointers for consumer behaviour may be different this time compared to 2011.

To predict consumer behaviour in the current uncertain conditions, the most appropriate method would be to consider past situations where GDP has gone up, and reflect on changes to key consumer indicators.

Based on Australia’s current GDP growth rates, and those of the last few decades, we are most likely at the “February 2011” stage of the business cycle – when growth was at 1.9%.

Based on the business cycle method of anticipating future consumer indicators, we would expect the trend to continue. Consumers would save the same or less of their income. And consumer sentiment would remain flat.

However, with property prices at all-time highs in capital cities, it is possible this will counteract rising interest rates when it comes to consumer expectations because there are conflicting messages. On the one hand, consumers feel wealthy because of property prices. However, they are expecting their mortgage repayments to increase when interest rates start to tick up.

In this environment it is expected that unemployment remains steady, as it has since 2009, with the sharemarket remaining flat. It is expected that as the sharemarket remains flat (or modestly increases) across developed countries, the price of gold continues to rise.

We can make these sorts of predictions, if 2011 is a guide to what will happen in the coming years.

ASX

But using 2011 as a benchmark to help predict future trends relies on the basic academic assumption that the points of reference (2011 and 2017) are identical. The world of 2011 was vastly different from the world today – it was almost naively uncomplicated.

Further dampening effects?

The differences between 2011 and 2017 will likely result in further dampening effects on the economic recovery. One of the major potential dampeners is Australia’s relatively high level of government debt.

The reduction in government debt in 2007 occurred almost simultaneously with the global financial crisis, higher consumer saving rates and a steady decline in GDP growth each quarter.

Hence, core economic fundamentals (such as how cutting government spending when the economy is already shaky will likely result in a greater negative GDP impact than when the economy is strong) deem that if the current government takes steps to reduce debt, this could have further dampening effects on the economy. This is despite a bottoming out of interest rates, which indicates the economy is projected to be on the way up.

Today’s world poses many challenges to forecasting how consumers will behave. One of the primary issues is high levels of debt (both for consumption and for property), which means a rise in interest rates will directly impact Australians. However, high property markets give consumers a feeling of wealth, despite the extreme lack of diversification across asset classes, and property that is hard to sell.

These competing forces mean consumers are likely to view formal government announcements with more scrutiny. As statements are made about improving economic prospects, individual consumers are feeling financial strain.

Combine these forces with increasing market complexity, product advances, geopolitical issues and climate change, and a certain level of unease is weighing on Australian minds, which goes over and above the likely increase in mortgage repayments.

A lot has changed since 2011

Technology disruptions are likely to further reduce trust in institutions, particularly banks, but may ultimately give consumers a greater feeling of empowerment and control.

In 2011, technological financial disruption was just a sparkle in Bitcoin’s eye. Now, technological disruption covers every sector imaginable. Many consider the future economy will be the collaborative economy.

The collaborative economy is one in which consumers and businesses share their resources (for a fee). This increases efficiency and saves cost to the end consumer.

For example, AirBnB (the largest accommodation provider in the world, which owns no accommodation) connects people who have extra space with travellers who are seeking an authentic, low-cost experience while travelling.

If the shift toward the collaborative economy continues, large institutions – particularly banks – will find it more difficult to make the significant profits they are used to.

Since 2011, consumers across the world have shifted to more community-based banking systems and have lent directly to others to achieve higher interest rates than bank deposits – particularly in a low-interest-rate environment. This trend is likely to continue.

Coupled with decreasing trust in institutions, it makes it unlikely that the predicted trends will be identical to those in 2011.

Author: Lecturer in Accounting, Finance and Economics, Griffith University

If scandals don’t make us switch banks, financial technology might

From The Conversation.

An efficient market relies on rational customers being willing to change suppliers when there’s good reason to do so. But what happens when customers stay put regardless? This issue is particularly acute in the banking industry.

Even when bank customers have a very good reason to switch, behavioural economics research shows they’re often reluctant to make the move. For example, big scandals that affect banks have a weak impact on consumer behaviour. However, there is a greater propensity to act among customers who are directly impacted.

Behavioural economics also shows bank customers are often slow to switch to take advantage of better offers from competitors. In 2016, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority lamented that only “3% of personal and 4% of business customers switch to a different bank in any year” in the country. In 2013, Canstar suggested the figure is slightly higher in Australia at 5%.

Despite the slightly higher propensity to switch banks among Australian consumers, there’s much we can learn from the UK’s use of behavioural economics to nudge customers to act in their own best interests. In particular, financial technology companies can provide information platforms to make it easier for customers to switch.

Why bank customers don’t change

Behavioural economists have shown that consumer decisions are not rational. In particular, there is a “sunk cost bias” that affects consumer decisions. That is, consumers tend to place more value on any previous effort or expenditure they’ve made rather than judging economic value when they make decisions.

If you have left a 20% deposit on an item in a store, you will probably buy it, even if you found the same item for sale at 75% of the price elsewhere. So, customers will tend to stick with the bank they’ve got, despite scandals.

Competition authorities, led by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, are increasingly trying the “nudge” options offered by behavioural economics as a way to help persuade an irrational consumer to do what is in their best interests. A nudge is simply a mechanism to encourage people. It might be a reminder as to the consequences of not taking the action or benefits of going ahead.

Regulators have examined ways in which nudges can be given without unintended consequences. For example, should the nudge be a carrot or a stick? And which works best? The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority’s chief economic advisor, Mike Walker, advises regulators to “test, learn and adapt”.

A critical part of any nudge is presenting information in a way that can be used easily by consumers. Intermediaries, comparison tools and other financial technology services can provide this information.

How financial technology businesses could help

One of the barriers at the moment to getting customers to switch in Australia is a lack of information on all bank products and financial technology businesses to manage this information.

Although the UK implemented services that make it easier to switch between retail bank accounts, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority found that this didn’t improve competition in the sector. To resolve this problem, it has ensured that customers have information on other banks and their account options as part of new account-switching regulation.

The way that this works is that customers can compare their existing offering with alternatives using an app that talks to an open electronic interface to the bank. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has mandated that the retail banks provide this interface, known as an applications programming interface, to both consumers and to financial technology businesses.

The effect is a space for new businesses to provide comparison tools. These new financial technology businesses will not impose a significant cost on the banks. Each of the UK banks has spent around £1 million each to create these open electronic interfaces, according to the UK Open Data Institute.

The open electronic interfaces will be associated with the European Union Second Payment Services Directive, which will be implemented before Brexit takes effect. This directive will help automate parts of the switching process.

The Australian banks and the Reserve Bank under the auspices of the Australian Payments Clearing Association are trialling a New Payments Platform to try to make it easier for customers to switch. But it’s not likely to have the same degree of flexibility and consistency as the approaches adopted in the UK, as it focuses on financial institution needs, rather than consumer ones.

Regulators in Australia should use behavioural economic analysis to learn more about how consumers use any new information on bank switching or services on this offered by financial technology businesses.

We’re still waiting on evidence on how these new financial technology companies will change consumer behaviour in the UK. But it is likely that in the very least it will increase the intensity of rivalry between the retail banks, this can only be a good outcome for consumers in the UK.

This could also inform a similar implementation in Australia, particularly after a parliamentary committee’s first report on the four major banks is released.

Author: Rob Nicholls, Lecturer in Business Law, UNSW

What interest rates will mean for your mortgage choices

From The Conversation.

For many of us, our home is the single most important investment we will make in our lifetime and mortgage payments can take up a huge chunk of our income. As politics and economics seem to deliver nothing but uncertainty, how should home owners or first-time buyers react?

Things still look tight for household budgets. One recent survey showed that the average mortgage payment for a three bedroom house in the UK is about £965 per month, more than half the average take-home wage.

That is with interest rates at historic lows. And they are staying put. The nine members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee have decided to keep the official interest rate in the UK, the Base Rate, at that ultra low level of 0.25%.

The fortified walls of the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street. Robert King/Flickr, CC BY

In various guises, this rate has been around since 1694. It is the rate at which high-street banks borrow from the central bank and its function in the economy is simple but effective. If banks can borrow money cheaply from the Bank of England then they tend to pass it on cheaply to us, the public. When their borrowing gets expensive, so does ours.

The Base Rate is only an overnight interest rate but it starts a domino effect with more long-term interest rates. If it is raised then the whole economy is soon paying more to borrow money.

But if that’s not happening now, what about when the MPC meets again on March 16?

Up, up and away

Let’s start with the bad news for those paying a mortgage or seeking one. Interest rates, and consequently our payments, will definitely increase in the future. The graph below shows the history of the Base Rate since 1970. With a historical average of more than 6% and years when the Base Rate stayed consistently over 12% to combat the spiralling inflation of the time, it becomes evident that a rate of 0.25% is abnormally low.

Bank of England, Author provided

The good news for home owners and house hunters is that interest rates could well stay low for a few more years. And all the signs are that when rates do rise, it will be in small increments of 0.25% or 0.50% every few months. A key aim of the Bank of England is not to surprise markets and to be as predictable as possible, particularly at a time when stability and certainty are rare commodities.

Most people will remember why we ended up with such low rates. In the response to the global financial crisis of 2008, central banks sought to make it cheaper for people to borrow money. A low interest rate makes it easier for consumers to afford not just mortgages but also cars, appliances or nights at the pub. Companies profit from our spending and get access to cheap money that helps them expand or stay afloat.

Debt as a driver. Thomas Hawk/Flickr, CC BY-NC

So, if they are so good for the economy, why do interest rates have to go up again? Mainstream economic theory views very low interest rates as harmful in the longer-term. They are a disincentive to healthy saving rates and when the economy is at full-throttle, they act as a boost to inflation which in turn erodes people’s real incomes. They also distort investment decisions and, particularly dangerously for the UK, add fuel to investment bubbles.

Market forces

Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump in the US, the two great causes of uncertainty these days, will probably save us some money, at least in the short to medium term. Brexit brings with it the prospect that businesses will lose full access to an EU market of 450m affluent Europeans. In a climate like this, it would be a foolhardy Bank of England which chose to make money more expensive in the UK.

Trump, meanwhile, is known to favour a cheap dollar and low interest rates in the US in an effort to make exports more competitive. The Bank of England, as ever, will keep a close eye on its US counterpart, and will likely avoid increasing UK interest rates for fear of pushing the pound higher and blocking out much needed investment from the US.

So how can you use this information?

First of all, I’d avoid taking a mortgage or any loan that I could only barely afford as rates will eventually rise. For those that already have a mortgage, most commentary on the real-estate market will advocate for a fixed-term mortgage but that is not necessarily a good idea. The most popular fixed-term products offered by high street banks are usually for a period of two years.

The trouble here is that you will normally pay a fee and a higher interest rate as the cost for fixing, during which time rates are unlikely to rise anyway. And so only fixed mortgages of five years or more start making sense – and you would still pay fees and a relatively higher interest rate for a couple of years before you started to benefit.

A good idea would be to make small but regular overpayments into your mortgage, and request that these payments are used to reduce your monthly instalments (rather than to bring closer the year that the loan will be repaid in full). So when the interest rate does increase in the future, the outstanding amount it will apply to will be reduced. Flexible mortgages typically accept unlimited overpayments and even the fixed deals usually allow overpayments of up to 10% each year.

Banks are not particularly happy with the overpayment approach. It reduces their profits and de-stabilises their portfolio a little. But reluctant banks are usually a sign that this might just be a good deal for you.

Sensible reform to finance affordable housing deserves cross-party support

From The Conversation.

Treasurer Scott Morrison’s visit to cold old London last week in the middle of the Australia summer was time well spent. Morrison made time in his hectic schedule for a lengthy meeting with the UK’s Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) to discuss an affordable housing financial intermediary with its chief executive, Piers Williamson.

Founded in 1987 to make up for the shortfall in public funding, THFC is a finance aggregator and intermediary that co-funds affordable housing for rent and ownership. And Williamson is no stranger to Australia’s housing problems. He has been a source of advice and advocate for policy reform in various Australian industry and government forums. He also has the ear of our largest superannuation funds.

And, much like Australia, the UK has a serious problem with housing affordability and supply, made worse by policy and market settings that fuel instability rental housing. In this context, channelling investment via a specialist financial intermediary towards newaffordable housing provided by landlords with a social purpose makes good sense.

The idea just needs an effective champion in Australia. In fact, it needs a bipartisan team of champions.

How does this financing model work?

Long identified as a glaring gap in Australia’s affordable housing system, bonds issued via a specialist intermediary would steer investment to where it is sorely needed. If combined with appropriate incentives and public programs, it would go a very long way towards producing more affordable housing choices, as in the UK.

International research found the UK’s Housing Finance Corporation to be one of the world’s leading examples of good practice. It funds not only affordable housing but also ensures that investment flows towards registered landlords meeting real accommodation needs.

Researchers have adapted this model in proposals for an Australian Affordable Housing Finance Corporation. Combined with a well-designed guarantee and revolving capital loans program, it’s a feasible approach, as a New South Wales government-funded study found in 2016.

In the UK, THFC combines the borrowing demands from small social landlords with committed public assistance to source the most favourable financing terms available from capital markets. With a guarantee, these enabled housing associations to borrow at a cheaper rate than the UK government.

THFC acts as the landlords’ principal. It issues mortgage bonds on their behalf, raising and passing on funds at a lower cost than would be individually possible.

Public funds on both the supply and demand side are also an important part of the equation. The NSW feasibility study makes it clear that a stable government co-investment strategy is required to ensure affordable supply.

Such a strategy was well established in the UK. But in recent years it has become less generous and stable, which has affected both supply and affordability. The UK experience demonstrates that the greater the share of public investment and stability of revenue settings, the lower the cost of private finance and the more affordable dwellings can be.

Over the past 30 years, THFC co-financed more than 2.4 million dwellings through well-regulated landlords with a commitment to secure affordable housing. These registered social landlords allocate dwellings on the basis of need rather than to the highest bidder. Renting affordable homes to those who need them is their business focus, not capital gains.

These landlords are well regulated for this purpose. In return, they have access to favourable public loans, tax incentives and direct revenue support via the UK’s Housing Benefit.

With detailed knowledge of providing sustainable social housing, THFC is able to assess the financing needs and credit risks of the housing assistance sector. Large institutional investors have little time for this. THFC’s hands-on scrutiny has ensured a zero-default record and stable A credit rating from Standard and Poor’s.

When an intermediary like THFC is combined with a government guarantee it can be even more effective in reducing perceived risks and thus financing costs, as our international research shows. Since 1991, the Swiss government helped to build, then backed, a thriving bond-issuing co-operative. This created a new market for bonds and drove down mortgage interest rates for affordable rental housing.

The UK’s Affordable Housing Guarantee delivered A$4.15 billion at or below the rate of government bonds in its three-year existence. The not-for-profit Housing Finance Corporation was licensed to manage this scheme. With the UK Treasury guarantee, it was able to obtain and pass through funds from the European Investment Bank below government gilts.

What conditions are needed for success?

The longest-term and lowest-cost investment flows to where the risks are known and predictable. In the UK, these risks have been reduced by four key conditions:

  • On the revenue side, rents have been underpinned by adequate levels of assistance for those who need it.
  • Landlords are registered and regulated in England and Scotland to ensure they are not only financially sound but also socially responsible and thus eligible for government support and tax incentives.
  • On the supply side, government funding instruments provides subordinated loans, guarantees and equity.
  • Planning mechanisms provided well-located land for affordable housing development.

These conditions have been in place throughout successive governments, Conservative and Labour. More recently, the emphasis has shifted from social rental dwellings towards affordable home ownership.

The situation in Australia is different. The small community housing sector offers long-term tenancies and shared-ownership housing in a supportive context. However, the sector needs a more sustainable business model to grow.

Current policy settings affecting supply (capital investment, planning provisions) and rent assistance are too weak and uncertain. This can change; it’s all a matter for policy reform. Other countries have moved ahead and Australia needs to catch up.

With an intermediary and appropriate government support behind them, Australian community housing organisations will have the potential to grow, as they have in the UK, US, Switzerland and Austria.

By now Morrison and his team should be well informed, having spoken to the UK experts, boned up on international evidence and consulted Australian industry.

Following the recommendations of the Senate inquiry into affordable housing and Treasury’s own Affordable Housing Working Group, sensible policy reforms such as these are likely to attract cross-party support. They not only draw on proven best practice elsewhere but can be adapted to Australian market conditions and growing needs.

Author: Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, RMIT University

What economists and tax experts think of the company tax cut

From The Conversation.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the Treasurer Scott Morrison are still trying to sell their plan to cut the company tax rate to 25% by 2026-27. The current rate is 30% and has been since 2001.

The tax cut was introduced in the 2016 federal budget. The government indicated small to medium businesses turning over less than A$10 million would pay a company tax of 27.5% initially. The company turnover threshold for the tax cut would then increase over time from A$10 to $25 million in 2017-18 to A$50 million in 2018-19 and finally A$100 million in 2019-20.

But before any of this happens, the government needs to convince the senate crossbenchers to pass the legislation. It seems the government hasn’t won over tax experts and economists with this policy, here’s some articles that explain why.

Don’t expect an instant wage increase

In a national press club address Malcolm Turnbull justified the tax cut by saying, “company tax is overwhelmingly a tax on workers and their salaries.” It follows that cutting it would increase salaries right?

However there’s a whole lot of decisions businesses need to make before they even consider raising wages. It’s not just as simple as the government makes out, as professor John Freebairn from the University of Melbourne notes:

Individuals benefit from lower corporate tax rates with higher market wages. But the higher wage rates will take some years to materialise, and the magnitude of increase attributed to the lower corporate tax rate, versus other factors, is open to debate.

Businesses would need to consider the savings of international investors, what resources the business might need, what the return for investors would be on these. All of this before it would consider a wage increase for its workers.

The enlarged stock of capital, technology and expertise per worker becomes a key driver of increased worker productivity. In time, more productive workers are able to negotiate higher wages. Via this chain of decision changes, employees benefit from the lower corporate tax rate.

Any modelling on how much a tax cut could be worth to our economy is up for debate

Modelling is sensitive to whatever assumptions the government makes and these assumptions can be oversimplified. ANU principal research fellow Ben Phillips points out that tax reform like this inevitably has winners and losers and is influenced by powerful lobby groups.

In thinking about tax reform it is important to keep in mind that the gains from modest tax reform are not likely to be a revolution in Australia. The models themselves only estimate relatively small gains from tax reform.

Here’s a little something to bear in mind when hearing any figures thrown around on how much a company tax cut could be worth:

Over the past 25 years Australia’s living standards have increased by around 60% whereas the sorts of gains estimated from tax reform are expected to be little more than 1 or 2%. It remains important that in securing such modest gains we don’t ignore fairness.

The benefit to the domestic economy won’t be that big

The idea behind the cut is that companies will be motivated to provide jobs and other economic benefits because they are receiving a tax break. In theory this kind of tax should boost the economy in the long term, but as John Daley and Brendan Coates from the Grattan Institute explain it’s not that simple.

In Australia, the shares of Australian residents in company profits are effectively only taxed once. Investors get franking credits for whatever tax a company has paid, and these credits reduce their personal income tax. Consequently, for Australian investors, the company tax rate doesn’t matter much: they effectively pay tax on corporate profits at their personal rate of income tax.

The Grattan researchers point out that if companies pay less tax then they might reinvest what they save, but in practise most profits are paid out to shareholders. So the tax cut won’t have much of an impact on domestic investment.

They also pick holes in the Treasury’s modelling on the tax cut’s boost to Gross National Income (GNI).

Treasury expects that cutting corporate tax rates to 25% will only increase the incomes of Australians – GNI – by 0.8%. In other words, about a third of the increase in GDP flows out of the country to foreigners as they pay less tax in Australia. And because most of the additional economic activity is financed by foreigners, the profits on much of the additional activity will also tend to flow out of Australia.

It doesn’t make much of a difference

Another argument for cutting Australia’s company tax rate is to deter companies from shifting their profits to other countries where the tax rate is lower. Recently President Trump promised to cut the United States federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%.

Antony Ting, associate professor at the University of Sydney notes most countries have been reducing their company tax rates over the past two decades. This hasn’t changed the incentive for multinationals to avoid taxes.

The tax-avoidance “success” stories of multinational enterprises such as Apple, Google and Microsoft suggest this argument is weak. The fact is that the profits these multinationals shift offshore often end up totally tax-free.

A FactCheck by Kevin Davis, research director at the Australian Centre for Financial Studies, reviewed by economist Warwick Smith, says there’s no point to comparing Australia’s company tax rate with other countries anyway.

Australia’s dividend imputation tax system means that any comparison of our current 30% rate with statutory corporate tax rates elsewhere is like comparing apples and oranges.

Small and medium businesses actually lose out

Due to the way the proposed company tax cut is structured, foreign investors get a windfall while local employers including small and medium businesses cop a cost because they remain uncompensated.

Economist Janine Dixon from Victoria University modelled how the cut would play out.

Local owners of unincorporated businesses are taxed at their personal tax rate. Because of Australia’s dividend imputation system, Australian shareholders in incorporated business are also taxed at their personal rate, not the company tax rate.

She explains that 98% of small businesses (employing four or fewer people) are wholly Australian owned and because of this are indifferent to the cut, but 30% of large businesses (employing more than 200 people) have some component of foreign ownership.

An increase in foreign investment is generally understood to be a driver of wage growth. This is the basis for the argument that at least half of the benefit of a cut to company tax flows to workers… We find that benefit to foreign investors will exceed the total increase in GDP. In the domestic economy, benefits to workers will be more than offset with a negative impact on domestic investors and the need to address additional government deficit.

Other things are just as important

Even if some businesses are keen for a tax cut, meaning more money in the kitty, it’s how these businesses spend this money that counts.

Jana Matthews from the Centre for Business Growth at the University of South Australia says many CEOs are uncertain about what to do in order to grow their business and are fearful of making the wrong decisions.

We need to focus as much attention on the management education of founders, CEOs and MDs [managing directors] of medium-sized companies as we do on providing them with more money. Once they learn how to grow their companies, they will definitely need money to become the engines of growth, and they will certainly hire more people, creating the jobs we all want.

Author: Jenni Henderson , Editor, Business and Economy, The Conversation