Income management

Below is an article I submitted to South Sydney Herald, and that ended up published as a guest editorial in the October edition.

It was initially going to focus on how income management could effect residents in south Sydney, especially given the high concentration of disadvantage in parts of that community. However, during my research I realised that there would be significant impacts on tenancy rights coming out of the Bankstown trial, that I hadn’t seen raised elsewhere. So that’s where the focus went.

Superannuation and home ownership

Nicholas Gruen is right. In fact, I agree with him so much that I’ve had a half-finished blog post advocating the same idea for about six months (apparently I didn’t agree enough to finish it though…).

What he said was that if the Government is to increase compulsory superannuation contributions, in spite of evidence that they are not necessary and are likely to have negative social outcomes, then the least they can do is allow people to use a part of their savings as a housing deposit.

NSW election

The votes have been counted and the headline results are as predicted months ago. The only talking point of interest, at this stage, has been reflections on the Greens vote. Various commentators have called the Greens result a disappointment, given that they went into the election as favourites in Balmain and strong chances in Marrickville, and on current vote appear Labor appear to have held Marrickville and likely to hold Balmain (though it’s very close).

But was the Greens result really so disappointing? What were the positives for the progressive Left?