Events
Housing Crisis and A Difference to a Difference of Opinion
Friday 3 August 2007
Last night the ABC program 'A Difference of Opinion' looked at the issues of the housing affordability ciris. The panel provided some quality perspectives as to what was causing the challenge and what kind of actions might need to occur in order to address the issue with Ross Gittins' early observation that the debate completely ignored one of the most significant affected groups, 'the renters' as worth the admission price to the debate. And I was left wondering if the assorted suggestions were failing to address a more basic question - 'why exactly do Australian's believe that owning their own home is so important?' It is a question that Sohail Inayatullah's Causal Layererd Analaysis might provide insight to as the 'mythology of home ownership' is placed under the spotlight. A recent Hudson Institute report showed that over the past 30 years in Australia, the capital growth of the average home worth $100,000 in 1970 was about 6.5% per annum. Not much above bank interest on a $100k cash investment. The issue of housing afforability requires more assessment by the futures community. If not, the economists, social advocates and builders might end up debating the wrong issue
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Events
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Have just spent a few hours discussing the Future of Money, hosted by James Bibby at Microsoft in Sydney and facilitated by Peter Vander Auwera from SWIFT/Innotribe. I'd like to flag that everyone understood that the session was way too short for such a big topic and everyone would agree that we just scratched the surface (not that the scratch would leave too much of a mark just yet). The session was a kick start for a group from a wide variety of interests: banks, payment providers' IT specialists and some specialty consultancies.
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Ernst & Young and GreenBiz have completed a survey of business executives looking at the development of Corporate Sustainability around the world. The report shows that there has been a clear rise in awareness; that employees are a core source driving sustainability actions; that reduction of costs is a core appeal and that return on investment in sustainability actions is required to be judged in the same way as other corporate investments. For me this poses a dichotomy of thinking - the environment was built up over millennia and our use of it has taken just a couple of centuries yet we judge sustainability actions at the same 'speed of delivery' criteria. That poses a challenge and is perhaps an unrealistic set of expectations.
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Tuesday 24 April 2012
On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin's Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war - what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought
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