THE AGE editorial today in support of Economics Editor Tim Colebatch’s article (opposite) is well worth the read.

The question, as ever, is why 90% of Australian taxpayers should support the other 10% for investing in residential real estate and making housing unaffordable for our kids?

Oh, I forgot!  They deserve these privileges for building houses for renters?  No, David Collyer’s letter to the editor (below) deals with that old canard!

You’ve got to pray that Ken Henry’s review of the tax system gets to grips with this aberration, and that treasurer Wayne Swan has the guts to act upon it in the face of the selfish fury of lobbyists for higher and higher real estate prices.

Such action would, of course, offend the REIV/REIA who’ll always favour higher prices as long as their agent’s fees are tied to sales prices.  (Fee for service?  What’s that?)

The sooner people wake up to the fact that the REIA’s and HIA’s attachment to skyrocketing land prices is misguided and wrong and can only end up in a depression-inducing property crash, the better.

Meanwhile, the data-sellers to the real estate industry are quite comfortable with escalating real estate prices, too, even managing to deny that we are in a property bubble!

Their justificatory spiel is that prices are the market in action, simply reflecting our increased population and “a lack of supply”.

Oh? This still looks very much like an enormous bubble to me!

The idea of ‘supply and demand’ has never been so misused and abused as during the now 11 years of the current Australian real estate bubble.

We are bound to pay heavily for that misrepresentation.