Another Getup idea–direct attack on the FHOS

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Reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog would know that I am a staunch crit­ic of what I pre­fer to call the “First Home Ven­dors Grant”, which is why I quick­ly sup­port­ed the pro­pos­al on GetUp’s sug­ges­tion box for a boy­cott cam­paign by first home buy­ers.

That sug­ges­tion has become a suc­cess in its own right even before Get­Up decides whether to pur­sue it or not, with the cam­paign being report­ed in the Fair­fax media: see Online cam­paign tar­gets high cost of hous­ing. Chris Zap­pone’s arti­cle head­lines The Age and the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald’s home pages, and it had 364 com­ments as of 3.30pm today–a remark­able num­ber for a sin­gle sto­ry in less than six hours.

Now a blog mem­ber has added a third house price cam­paign sug­ges­tion with a direct attack on the First Home Own­ers Scheme:

Stop­ping the First Home Buy­ers grant

It only has 2 votes so far–and I can’t give any of my votes because I’ve exhaust­ed them on the First Home Buy­ers Strike, anti-Neg­a­tive Gear­ing, and a cou­ple of per­son­al inter­ests (defend­ing Wik­ileaks and cam­paign­ing in favour of asy­lum seek­ers). But if you’d like to add to the odds that Get­Up will mount a cam­paign on the gen­er­al issue of house prices in Aus­tralia, please log on and vote for this sug­ges­tion.

Also, have a read of Saul Eslake’s OpEd “Imag­ine a tax sys­tem that penalised work”, cri­tiquing Neg­a­tive Gear­ing. It’s an excel­lent piece.