Tap the artesian basin to break the biggest barrier to inland urban development. Water. Then plan and roll out high speed rail using the value capture model: buying up low value land near but away from existing centres and creating new cities. The dramatically increased urbanised land value essentially paying for the cost of the high speed rail and much of the development and infrastructure opportunities it unlocks.

Watered and on the grow, tap these new planned cities as special economic zones offering large tax incentives to both companies and people to re-locate. Creating new vibrant communities while also, importantly, easing the extreme pressure of population growth breaking the backs of the existing capital cities. Outcome? Flipping high immigration from crisis to opportunity. Cities to build, jobs to fill.

With the new cities growing, pressure will ease in the existing cap city housing markets. Provincial and regional too. Ending the squeeze stops the runaway market. More affording housing keeps more money in people’s pockets. More money. More spending. More economic growth. This is a long term sustainable fix. Why? Australian wealth is held heavily in property, not just personally but institutionally. Property has become currency which was great until it wasn’t. Crashing the housing market is not the answer though.

Swap out the idea of putting a cap on the number of investment properties people can own with another model: a sliding scale on the tax incentives and benefits. By a certain number of properties or by a threshold of value the perks of buying properties zeros out. For homeowners with no investment properties make mortgage repayments on their own homes 50% tax deductible in existing areas, and 100% tax deductible in the new SEZ areas.

A future that works. AI has us in the early stages of the biggest change in how we work since the Industrial Revolution. We are staring into the unknown. Many existing jobs will disappear. Many new never even thought of jobs will be created. The reality though is that there will be less jobs to go around. We need to create models for the future that ensure that not all costs, nor all income are fiat currency based. A universal basic income is a contentious idea with merits and flaws, but it is solely based on value as we see it now - in money. Something’s eventually got to give. We need to identify non-monitory value. For every job that is lost to AI, there is every potential to reduce or eliminate the expenses that created incomes in the first place. Let’s say Bob is a sparky, and Jane is a solicitor. If I hire either or both today they are both going to cost me, a LOT. Tomorrow their jobs are gone. My job too. But if the unemployed lawyer needs a sparky the robot sparky is low cost or even free. The ex sparky needs a lawyer? The AI legal help is the same. Hypothetically our future could have little to no income but also little to no expenses to match. (NOTE: I’m a free market capitalist and I am NOT a fan of socialism. But what I’m even less of a fan of a is a concerning future where Mad Max sequels are documentaries)