The Reserve Bank has announced further interest rate rises. I heard on the news that up to 25% of people will lose their homes this year.

Rudd still seems intent on going ahead with tax cuts, which doesn't seem logical to me.

At the same time there is a shortage in housing pushing up prices and rent. The government is considering bringing in 15,000 migrant workers to help build more housing.

Sounds like a catch-22 situation as they will also need to be housed. Increases in interest rates makes it difficult for people to decide to build their own home.

I can imagine there is a problem with labour shortages in the country but I wonder about in the cities. There doesn't seem to be any long-term planning taking place.

it sucks isn't it ?? just got a mail yesterday, guess what my interest for the home loan has been raised by 0.5% = $200 a month, great news isn't it...

I wouldn't take anything that those politician say, I'm hoping my boss will give me a pay rise now

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0.5 per cent doesn't sound a lot but when you put it into dollar terms like that, it has got to eat into any budget.

It's certainly a viscous merry go round or pendulum of economics and it is not just housing costs that go up either for companies have loans too and their costs go up and along with drought conditions biting on all manner of food produces and then Oil price flow on in fuel and transport costs, everything ends up dearer.

This is then reflected in inflation figures and that is the main indicator the reserve bank looks at in setting interest rates. On top of that you have the banks doing their own adjustments supposedly because of the US prime mortage melt-down.
The interesting thing to me is that the US have had interest rates bordering on about the lowest they can feasibly go for sometime now and yet their prime or low-start mortagees have still managed to get into trouble, and then the US approach tio the issue seems to be to keep interest rates as low as possible rather than raise them like the Reserve Bank does here.

That to me is completely out of whack for it is usually the house buyers who can no longer tighten their belts any further and fail to meet repayments who will end up in strife, and big strife like destroying family unit hopes for the future, end result possibly being more people welfare reliant and kids getting into that other viscous cycle of parents on welfare and so good enough for us too.

And then on the other side of the coin there is the old story of young couples both working and sometimes more than one job, and mortaging themselves to the hilt to have a multi room McMansion that can be an empty shell rather than a home.
Meanwhile the government will be full of great housing project ideas for indigenous people and also trying to get superannuation funds and the like investing in residential projects.

I read an article in weekend newspaper where police in some remoter locations are hosed in fitted out shipping containers, and then Rudd has this concept of thousands of health workers to be employed in indigenous communities and when you see the general environment, read of nurses being raped, well there will then be security people needed and they will all need to be housed too.

I don't know what the answer is going to be but I suspect times are going to get a lot tougher and the good ol days will be exactly that.