It's the same for electronics too. For the price of some music gear here, I could get two - thee off eBay, including having to buy my own power adapters.

Given the state of our utilities (and I'm including public transport here) do we really want the government to open vast tracks of land of developers to go nuts on?

For once, I am going to support and defend Australian Government on some of these.

RE: bananas (and other AU agricultural products)
I actually prefer to pay more for bananas (and other products) and be assured they are grown here. If it makes makes farmers 'reacher' - that is only fair, IMHO.
as far as "lower-income Australians" - this a total B/S argument - just look around how much those "lower-income" spend on JUNK food!! - surely they can afford bananans instead even at the current prices...

(btw, besides purely economic reasons, there are valid quarantine reasons on importing stuff - Australia has a very long list of examples when some 'innocent' creatures ended up been a pest and 'plague' here... no need to risk the agriculture by introducing some crap that you will later need to 'neutralize' by generously spraying pesticides left sand right... )



RE: $360,000 and in Britain you could get the exact same car for $110,000. All I can say here - "Give me a break!" ;-))

Luckily, UN-like many other countries there are still locally assembled cars here - you can get a very decent brand-new Holden, Toyota and "Magnas" for a very reasonable price.



RE: house pricing
yes, these are artificially and unreasonably high... and Government did contribute to that (real estate & banking industry), especially during "GFC"...

BUT at least there is still employment and stability... (so far anyway)

also you need to give credit to the fact that regulatory framework (set up by Government) here has prevented a ridiculous US-style real estate ("sub-prime", "derivatives", etc) scams and subsequent crisis...


I am usually first one to 'whinge' and criticize (been really badly screwed by real estate story contributes to that), but nowadays when looking around (EU and US) I have to admit that AU is indeed a 'lucky country' still/... (so far anyway ;-)

+Oleg Kiorsak Good fight back Oleg! :-)

Regarding to car price, I remember I checked them in U.S when Aussie dollars high above parity. Basically, if you spend 50 grands, you can drive away an Audi TT; if you have A$ 70,000, you can buy a new Porsche.

U.S. doesn't have the high tax on import cars, even native three car giant almost bankrupted during GFC.

On the contrary, Australia is an extreme example of protectionism. Not only in its industry, agriculture, mining, banking, even in retailing.

Result of protectionism is there is no world famous brand like Coca-cola, Microsoft, Walmart in Australia. There is no such the richest person like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett from Australia.

Australian businesses are hard competing in world stage.

News Corp. is born here, but run on the bending of "ethics and integrity". The top 10 richest people in Australia are in mining, property development and casinos.

But I would argue (and I am not that wise, I heard it elsewhere - in fact on "Java Posse" podcast by vague memories ;)
that the reason US has great track record of business success stories startups/entrepreneurs - when compared with EU/AU - is the difference in industrial relationship / employment regulations... in US there's is very low risk&obligation if
you start a company and employ lots of people and it doesn't work
out quite as well as expected - you can just close the doors and say 'good bye' to all

not so easy here, and especially not in the "western socialism" EU countries...

this is why it's more risky to start and especially grow a business

(btw, I am not upset at all there are no reaches person coming out of Australia... (except Murdoch ;)...

In fact there are lots os insanely reach persons coming out of my "old country" - (ex-)USSR... but somehow that does not make me feel any better :(