Hey, Prime Minister Turnbull!  You’re sounding a lot like Hank Paulson to Wayne Swan (6:30 am on 10 January 2008): “Look … if we can avoid a meltdown in house prices, then we might be able to see a way through this” (in Wayne Swan’s ‘The Good Fight: Six years, two prime ministers and staring down the Great Recession’, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2014).

It didn’t work for the US and it can’t work for us, so what you’re saying is Australia shouldn’t try to manage our way out of this deflation: we’ll wait until the residential bubble actually bursts?

So, you’re wanting to kick the can down the road, the way Wayne Swan did, too, instead of managing Australia’s residential house price bubble, i.e. taking land values down gradually by abolishing taxes on productivity and raising land taxes? If you’re lost on this, Malcolm, you might ask Lucy how to do it.  She understands the great benefits and the equity of land-based revenues.