There’s a thing in quantum mechanics called entanglement – where “two particles can retain a sort of telepathic tether even if they are on opposite sides of the lab (or indeed, the galaxy”). While the Sydney market increasingly veers into a similar nether region, Melbourne’s actually made housing way more affordable. No dramatic changes to planning regulations required. Just a few old fashioned tax jigs.
The most important news headline you need to know right now is that Trump is more unpopular than ever.
This, according to The Economist, which says he’s down by -19 points. But you really only need to read the headline to remember that sense of peace and stability that feels like a long lost friend these days.
A more recent friend turns out to be Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney who called out the nasty president at the World Economic Forum this week, saying we’re in the midst of a rupture, not a transition thanks to him.
We like Carney because of his wake up call to markets several years ago that climate risk is a financial risk. It stimulated, if not initiated, the climate investment momentum to come.
His new call is equally relevant today because we know how fragile our planet is already and how aligned it needs to be to fight the climate battle and deal with water, food and housing insecurities.
French President Emmanuel Macron also spat the dummy and said Europe would stand its ground on Trump threats on Greenland.
Another big signal that the worm has turned is European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde who dramatically walked out from an exclusive dinner at Davos when US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick started insulting Europe.
It was good to hear that BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink was in the room – maybe he’ll think twice before attacking climate imperatives again, doing a massive about face on his call to investors to get sustainable, the minute the new US administration took over.
Fink needs to be cognisant that a whiplash, the size of Zohran Mamdani, could be crouching in wait just around the political corner.
Trump seems to have backed down on his threats to invade Greenland but it looks like it’s too late and the markets are getting out of the US. Certainly Denmark’s Akademiker Pension fund said on Tuesday it would sell off its US Treasury bonds “due to poor management of public finance in the United States”.
Volatile times have reached a powder keg crescendo in Aus too.
Right on cue, the Coalition in Australia fractured (again), almost as a response to global signals that everything now needs to be broken, and right on cue to calls for “that woman” in charge of the Libs to be put back in her place.
Right on cue too is that the yawning gap left by the conservative agenda is rapidly being filled by the counter-evolutionary forces of One Nation, busily filling the space with all the rocks it can find to return us to the Stone Age.
This will have implications for our climate battle. Again.
Development entanglement
Closer to home the evidence of global craziness continues to show up, unabashed.
On the development front there’s the cry for more affordable housing versus the cry to keep things as they are.
We’ve got greenie/lefties digging in to stop their backyards becoming concrete bunkers, while still wanting affordable housing. They’re joined by heritage loving people from genteel suburbs who see government moves to densify housing as a gross infringement of what they paid for.
It feels like a kind of weird political entanglement. Is this what quantum physics means when it says that “two particles can retain a sort of telepathic tether even if they are on opposite sides of the lab (or indeed, the galaxy”)?
NSW underwrites development
In another twist on the regular state of things, the NSW state government is making good on its promise to help development. It’s starting with Balmain Leagues Club site in Rozelle in the inner west owned by Fabrizio Perilli’s PERIFA.
The deal, part of a $1 billion fund, is for 225 apartments including 59 affordable homes.
Planning Minister Paul Scully said, “The guarantee is supporting 32 affordable homes off the plan, giving developer PERIFA confidence to secure construction finance and deliver much-needed homes in the inner west.”
Can we stand in line too?
Melbourne’s tilt at affordable housing actually works! Take note premiers
Meanwhile NSW Premier Chris Minns and all other state premiers and outfits like the Grattan Institute might do well to take a look at Melbourne, which is currently shocking the nation with affordable housing.
All it took is a few tweaks to its tax landscape.
Yes investors have been slugged with a bit of stick such as higher taxes on vacant property (what’s wrong with that?) and higher land tax.
But suddenly there’s a massive $600,000 gap between the median prices of Sydney and Melbourne, according to Tim Lawless of Cotality.
No big changes in planning, no dramatic help for buyers that only sends prices skyward, just simple maths of stick versus carrot. Stick for investors, carrot for owner occupiers.
And please can everyone please recall that after Covid there were no big dramatic changes in planning regs -anywhere that we can think of – all kudos to making planning smoother, always – but what did dramatically change is financial incentive.
Interest rates went from nearly zero to more regular levels and the supply chain chokes.
The irony is that while investors in Melbourne sell, renters are buying, so there’s less stock on the market.
So yes, we hear Melbourne is again on its knees financially and that the development world is particularly under pressure, but let’s stick our necks out and say it will bounce back better and stronger than ever – just like it’s done before.
And the lower housing prices will be just the start.
Keeping the houses we’ve got
The federal government is considering implementing mandatory star ratings for fire resilience after wild bushfires in Victoria wiped out more than 200 homes – and that before the random floods that suddenly hit the Great Ocean Road.
Kate Cotter, chief executive of the Resilient Building Council said, most houses don’t have a resilient rating. And at Harcourt in regional Victoria which lost 47 homes, a 2025 research project found 90 per cent of houses had a fire resilient of just one star.
Decarbonising at speed
In commercial news the Clean Energy Finance Corporation has stumped up $70 million by way of investment for the QIC Global Infrastructure Fund II.
CEFC head of infrastructure, Julia Hinwood said the investment will help it gain traction on decarbonisation with hard to abate sectors such as the infrastructure that underpins energy and transport systems.
We’re stepping off the gas
The big story of the century is that we’re stepping off the gas. For the first time, the number of households using gas for heating and cooking in some eastern states has declined for two consecutive quarters
NSW set the pace with 8000 beautiful customers lost to the gas lords and come over our side.
But ACT’s ban on gas in new homes is something that NSW could learn from.
The comments are that a barrier is the investment in stop tops for instance. So for the uninitiated, you can buy a simple one ring cook top from Ikea for about $70 and save a lot of fumes in your kitchen.
Rewiring Australia says the average home owner can save around $4100 a year if they go full electric.
Commerical property plugs in too energy
New research from the Energy Efficiency Council and the Property Council of Australia has found evidence for what we all know to be true – we need more renewable electric energy in our commercial buildings as well.
According to Jeremy Sung, head of policy for the EEC, “to get to net zero by 2050 we need to triple the current rate of electrification.”
Check out the Commercial Buildings Electrification Roadmap.
There’s gold in them thar mountains of old solar panels
But what to do with redundant renewable energy kits. The federal government is concerned we’re not harvesting the enormous value in critical minerals currently lost when we throw out our solar panels and related renewable energy tech.
It’s setting up around 100 sites at the cost of about $24.7 million to mine for goodies such as silver, copper, aluminium, silicon and high-grade glass,
There’s a lot of money in cleaning.
According to FM magazine Ventia Services Group has been awarded a NSW “whole-of-government” cleaning services contract for the Western Sydney Region, worth about $100 million for the first 18 month term.
This comes on top of another contract for about the same amount for an extension of facilities management contract with the City of Sydney’s 251 assets.