u/tom3277

This isn’t a personal question as much as general finance question;

As we get into our late 40s it is not unusual to have say a 200k mortgage and a 400k value super fund.

Said super at this point might be 50pc cash and bonds versus 50pc equities.

That 50pc cash and bonds is likely paying about 4.5pc yield if it’s Australian bonds. Little less international unless you have gone corpo bonds.

Anyway why doesn’t the government set up an invest in your own mortgage fund… ie you invest 200k of your super into this fund the government runs and this fund is the new owner of the loan asset that is your mortgage. The gov holds your title deed and you pay off your mortgage at 6pc (varies but 2pc over rba rate say)

At present we are paying banks 2pc mortgage margin and getting 4pc odd on our super cash earnings at the same time. It seems pretty fucking stupid to me except for the banks.

Even if it had stupid tight guardrails like LVR no greater than 0.5, max 50pc of your fund etc that would still be billions in net margin saved over the economy that just gets swallowed by banks and would in stead be going into your super fund.

Why I think it’s an opportune time is equities are feeing a little dubious to me. I’d love to get a 6pc guaranteed return on my super and pay myself 6pc interest in stead of a bank. Not saying it’s for everyone but why not have this option?

About once a year the rest of the country piles onto WA around its GST deal.

Referendums enable the Australian people to change the constitution but then it appears the preamble and preliminary clauses that set out the states individual rights are not on the table in the same way as the rest of the constitution.

What is the possibility that WA can say sod off - taking more gst just because WA has more mineral royalties it’s not in the spirit of the constitution to take this in other ways via gst redistribution. Whats the point of the state having rights to administer minerals if the federal government can just take this with the other hand? It defeats the purpose of the term.

Or on the other hand what’s the chance the Australian people could pass an amendment taking state rights to mineral royalties. Ie all states would vote for this except wa and qld.

Aph (the Fed parliament) puts it in layman’s terms (for folk like me) there is contention around the limit to what can be changed by referendum but I would have thought the constitution is not an agreement at all if the other parties can “unilaterally” alter even the preamble that sets out the agreement / rights for each state? How can there be contention that they could do this. Picture it the states sign the constitution and a week later the rest of the commonwealth votes to take WAs shit?

https://www.aph.gov.au/About\\\_Parliament/House\\\_of\\\_Representatives/Powers\\\_practice\\\_and\\\_procedure/Practice7/HTML/Chapter1/Constitution\\\_alteration

I guess I want to know when I’m shit posting on Reddit whether I can just say - get fucked they are our minerals under the constitution and there is fuck all you can do about it. You are lucky we don’t fight to keep all our gst because we would win.

I am surprised at this move to prioritise on shore visa processing over off shore.

My issue with the migration system now is the hoops you have to jump through to bring an actual specialist in to the country even if you u want to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars but yet we have graduates coming out of every orifice.

Immigration is good for local workers on the basis you bring in very specialised highly paid people as it tightens the wage curve / reduces high earner wages. This improves the real wages / living standards of average wage earners.

And now it would seem Labor wants to lean even further into keeping those already here presumably mainly here on graduate visas and temp work visas post graduation.

Not sure if this is where I can post for this to be received by the Labor party but read the modelling on immi. Yes it’s good for workers but it’s not if you bring in bog standard workers or even graduates. It’s meant to be filling highly paid gaps. Don’t prioritise those here, prioritise those filling the most important gaps those gaps evidenced not by lobby groups but by the fucking pay people are prepared to pay them! It’s not rocket science.

Since Albos rise to Labor leadership I’ve been pretty comfortable with being a Labor supporter.

There are however two things in my view they are weak on; housing supply and smokes.

1. New supply of dwellings. They should have acted harder 3 years ago or any budget since as costs for dwelling supply got out of hand. Yes developers would cream any increase in new demand for new supply but at least when its developers it’s also contributing to qty supplied. Plus any increase in new supply just contributes to gst revenue. Ie a 20k grant on 5 homes comes back as a 90k gst take on 1 extra home built. In stead we have had lacklustre starts.

New supply / completions has been entirely shit. Ie the result is shit. Not labor’s fault but it’s about acting when you are in government not holding up excuses.

This becomes problematic now labor has introduced what is egalitarian tax policy in this space but as real rents continue to rise now the oppo has something to point to and say - you caused this. Even though those rent rises have happened labor’s entire first term and sadly will continue to happen with or without this tax policy unless they fix supply.

2. Vapes and smokes; my concern in this space is twofold. One the smoking rate is increasing and secondly it appears now we are selectively releasing data to paint a picture of success.

Where is the 2026 Roy Morgan smoking / vaping study? 20 odd years of continual data and the government decides after last years “controversial” publication we need to cut costs and cut this survey?

If that’s not bad enough it would seem the abs 3 yearly smoking vaping study that would otherwise be released at end this year early next hasn’t been collected for. This has gone on for decades and now we decide not to bother? Of all the times to stop gathering data now’s the time? Yet private studies continue and while butler etc can point to their outlandish data pointing in the opposite direction to the other data science / data will win out in the end…

There will be comms on these surveys and someone will get them via FOI and it’s not going to look great.

When the data does come out and for every hundred thousand extra smokers long term that’s 50,000 deaths due to a policy reducing safer alternatives. Like it can be painted as a massive fuck up (because it is) and if butler or his health department is caught with their hands in this then it’s not going to look good at all.

To see how the health department reacted to last years Roy Morgan research we have the FOI;

https://www.health.gov.au/resources/foi-disclosure-log/foi-26-1876-roy-morgan-research

For some more current feedback on all this watch the thoughts of the former border force boss and the former Victorian health lead at yesterday’s press club address.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WehVB57GO-s&ra=m

Maybe in a year maybe in 2 years this issue is going to take major skin off Labor. They cannot hide the data and lived experience.

Labor needs to change tack in both these spaces or when you are all breathless next year “how is it possible liberals are in a fighting position” it will be labor’s tin ear (and possibly worse in the smokes space) in these two spaces IMO.

It’s a long read…

I don’t agree with the premise this would be better than Labor’s tax reform of negative gearing and capital gains. This is great policy but there is risk…

I actually think this removal of gst from new homes is more important now than ever.

It has been 2 weeks since the new financial year and we already have punters blaming the tax changes for the last 3 months rent increases.

I’d say by next year they will be blaming the last 4 years of rent increases and here is the issue. They have been large in real and nominal terms.

Labor has to get starts climbing and I fear with what’s on the table now they will fall.

Just fucking send it labor. Even go the way Canada did which was only giving first home buyers gst free buying. There’s is only 5pc gst so not even as savage as ours.

The best time to have done this was when treasury looked at it after the post Covid cost increases I think it was 2024? The second best time is fucking asap or this chapter will go down in history as the second example of when neg gearing was abolished and rents increased..,

TLDR: if it’s not clear I am pro the tax changes but I am anxious that without reform rents are going to keep rising.

So I’ve bought a few cars and sold a few cars but Ive taken plates off a wreck recently and selling it. No graft here as it’s a true wreck sold for $2k.

But over the years I’ve spent 5k and more on stamp duty buying cars.

What stops you taking the plates in on a relatively new say 3 year old car then selling it unregistered and then new owner registering it fresh to avoid 5k or more in stamp duty?

Sure they have to take it over the weighbridge and get a mechanic to sign off road worthiness but it seems like a substantial saving?

Am I missing something?