ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A team of economists at the Reserve Bank are trying to predict what the nation might look like when the property price crashes through the floor, which at the moment seems all but inevitable.
Now that there’s no real professional reason for office workers to live in the city, now that the government has earmarked billions to rebuild the NBN so workers can decentralise, economists are beginning to get nervous.
Especially Graden Costigan from the Reserve Bank, who spoke candidly to The Advocate today about where the nation is heading.
“Our economic growth in the past ten years has been underpinned by our property market. People who couldn’t really afford to buy property were given the chance to do so in order to keep the party going,”
“Now that the music has stopped, things are about to go to the wall. People don’t need to live in the inner city anymore. People don’t need to sit on a train for two hours each way to go to the office. The government is actively investing in technology that keeps workers away from each other,”
“There’s going to be a huge crash. The government needs to find a methadone for this property bubble heroin. If they don’t, it’s going to be the fall of the Celtic Tiger all over again, we’re in the same spot,”
“In saying that, it’s not time to dig up the poly pipe in the front garden with your guns in it. Society won’t collapse but it might as well for some.”
More to come.
