For the Working Class

An exposé of the real anti-working-class agenda by

Michael Thompson, the author of Labor Without Class ... more

The Urbanist's Guide to Kevin Rudd's Downfall

by John Muscat ... read it on New Geography

Ruining our cities to save them

Green city planning will make our

 urban problems worse, not better ... [more]

[38] 18 May 2010 / Mr Rudd's unproductive ideas on urban productivity

Kevin Rudd's compact city delusions shape his flawed

pronouncements on urban  productivity, which focus on transport costs to the exclusion of many other pressing cost inputs ... [more]

Republished by New Geography

Why is urban sprawl bad?:

Ross Elliott demolishes each of the flawed, though constantly repeated,

arguments against urban sprawl ... [more]

[37] 14 March 2010 / Ruining our cities to save them

Green urban planners and politicians are ramping up their campaign for more compact cities, but if they succeed the outcome will be less affordable housing, fewer jobs and horrendous traffic congestion ... [more]                                                   Republished by New Geography

 The Not-So-Lucky Country:

Writing in Forbes.com, Joel Kotkin backs The New City while nailing

Kevin Rudd as a darling of tertiary educated progressives ... [more]

 [36] 12 March 2010 / Sydney: choking in its own density  

Wendell Cox explains how Sydney's air quality is deteriorating due to flawed urban consolidation policies ... [more]

The trouble with George Street: While Sydney's Lord Mayor indulges her green fantasies, the CBD's main street shows worsening signs of blight, writes Miranda Devine ...

[more] and [more].

[35] 12 January 2010 / Copenhagen: the fall of Green Statism

Now we have the Copenhagen deniers. These are people who won't accept that the UN's climate change process has been derailed ... [more]                                                Republished by New Geography

The suburbs are sexy: Wendell Cox demolishes the flawed thinking behind the Obama administration's anti-suburban agenda ... [more]

 [34]  4 October 2009 / Toward the Great Australian Nightmare: a quarter floor in a high-rise block?

Wendell Cox demonstrates how home ownership is slipping away from essential workers like nurses, teachers and police and ambulance officers ... [more]

It's time for the burbs to be heard: We must listen to the silent majority who live in the suburban heartland, argues Bernard Salt ... [more]

 [33] 10 September 2009 / The crisis of academic urban planning

A wide gulf has opened up between mainstream Australian values and the prescriptions of our urban planning academics ... [more]

Forcing density in Australia's suburbs: Tony Recsei explains why there should be little support for higher density Smart Growth ideologies in the Australian context ... [more]

Planning Never Never Land?: Trying to contain future sprawl in South East Queensland is a physical impossibility: the numbers don't add up, writes Ross Eliott ... [more]

The green school of journalism plays fast and loose with the evidence in its rush to report the decline and fall of suburbia ... [more]

[31]  30 March 2009 / Suburbs and climate change: a  homegrown brawl

A war of words has erupted over research suggesting that low-density suburbs may not be as bad for climate change as environmentalists and planners so often insist ... [more]

Humanity can't power progress with green faith: Environmentalists who oppose everything but renewable energy are condemning billions to poverty, writes Martin Ferguson ... [more]

[30]  2 November 2008 / Stay rational on climate change

Labels like "climate sceptic" don't make for sound decision-making ... [more]

[29]  28 September 2008 / Surging Greens peddle hypocrisy

Presenting themselves as high-minded crusaders, the Greens appeal to the narrowest of narrow self-interest ... [more]

[28]  14 August 2008 / On the Australian housing shortage

Wendell Cox delivers the plain truth that housing shortages are the product of deliberate policy ... [more]

[27]  1 July 2008 / Why carbon trading and why now? 

The government should rethink its commitment to, or timetable for, an emissions trading scheme ... [more]

Liberate shopping centres: Ease planning restrictions on shopping centres and retail prices will fall, argues Professor Allan Fels ... [more]

[26]  22 March 2008 / Here comes Sydney's yuppie carousel

Morris Iemma's North West Metro is fine as an infrastructure project but fares less well as a strategic investment ... [more]

[25]  January 2008 / Green Labor or blue-collar betrayal?

That Labor’s return to office would be framed in grandiose terms, as a watershed shift from social conservatism to progressivism, was easy to predict ... [continue] 

[24]  Nov-Dec 2007 / Howard: enter stage dry, exit stage wet

Unlike many commentators, ranging from Alan Ramsey to Imre Saluszinsky, we don’t think Saturday’s election result is a foregone conclusion ... [continue]

Dark green barbarians: Green superstition and mysticism are prevailing over rational thinking, argues Craig Emerson ... [more]

[23]  Sep-Oct 2007 / Skills and collaboration, not WorkChoices, deliver economic success

In our March 2007 editorial, we said that compared to the prime years of economic reform and responsibility under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Howard Government’s economic record has been patchy at best ... [continue]

Orbital is the way to go: In a city where jobs are scattered, Sydney's tollways are doing a good job, writes Michael Duffy. We need more of them ... [more]

[22]  August 2007 / If housing depends on a vision for our cities, try ‘opportunity urbanism’

A much quoted assertion in the housing debate came from Rory Robertson, financial analyst at Macquarie Bank ... [continue]

The fourth Demographia housing affordability survey: The latest Demographia survey confirms that Australian houses are still amongst

 the least affordable in the English-speaking world ... [more]

[21]  June - July 2007 / Value judgements, conflicting assumptions undermine Climate Institute ‘research’

On 28 May, ABC radio bulletins were abuzz with news of new research ... [continue]

London: still stuck in a jam: Nico McDonald explains why London's congestion charge has not been as useful as its advocates claim.

‘Not all jobs are good’, says former Liberal Party leader John Hewson ... [continue]
 

We'll never get to Kyoto by transit: Proposals to replace cars with public transport will fail, argues Wendell Cox. They will never be an answer to greenhouse-gas emissions.

[19]  April 2007 / Carbon trading hasn't worked - mandate clean technologies

A delusional fog seems to have descended on climate change policymaking in Australia ... [continue]     

In praise of big cities: James Woudhuysen demolishes The Urban Environment, a recent UK report that says cities make us sick. 

[18]  March  2007 /  Labor can relive its economic glory days

With Labor under Kevin Rudd currently enjoying a stratospheric lead in the opinion polls, there are no doubt many who think the election is done and dusted ... [continue]

In praise of chain stores: Chain stores aren't destroying local flavour, says Virginia Postrel, they're providing variety and comfort.

[17]  February 2007 / Workers flee Sydney's unaffordable housing

‘Sydney must stop growing sooner or later’, demanded Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute recently ... [continue]

The public transport myth: Despite the urgings of elite opinion makers, observes Alan Moran, public transport has never been less relevant or popular.

[16]  Dec 06- Jan 07 / Green judiciary a looming menace to workers

If you believe judges should decide every case on its merits, if you believe this is an essential feature of the judicial function, be concerned ... [continue] 

ABC's Counterpoint tackles urban consolidation: ABC Radio National's Counterpoint program presents Michael Warby and Wendell Cox on the negative consequences of land rationing and urban consolidation.

[15]  November 2006 /  Don't sacrifice workers on altar of climate change

According to a recent Climate Institute survey, 54 per cent of rural Australians believe the government should do more to reduce climate change ... [continue]

Why Perth is booming: Joel Kotkin explains that the culturally savvy, 'hip' cities of the dot com era such as Sydney are losing ground to the new boomtowns fueled by high energy prices, like Perth.

[14]  October 2006 / Progressivism now a preserve of the privileged

There are two more books on a familiar theme: growing numbers of the upper middle-class are turning progressive ... [continue]  

How the suburbs made us rich: Without the suburbs, our parents and grandparents would have paid rent most of their lives, and the equity that so many aspirations depend on would not have developed, suggests Wendell Cox.

[13] September 2006 / Labor’s presidency hijacked by activists

‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’. That proverb readily came to mind when Senator John Faulkner announced his intention to stand for Labor’s national presidency ... [continue]

The dead-weight of planning restraints: In Australia and elsewhere, urban planning has ceased to respond to individual needs and preferences but follows a central plan instead, writes Alan Moran.

[12]   August 2006 /  Blogosphere has little to offer Labor

It took a while – going on a year – but The New City is finally being noticed by the ’blogs ... [continue]

How sprawl got a bad name: Robert Bruegmann believes that worries about sprawl have become so vivid not because conditions are so good. Soaring expectations are the real cause.

[11]  July 2006 / Farewell to the tree-hugging premiers: state Labor’s new course

Interviewed recently about a book on his term as premier of New South Wales from 1976 to 1986, Neville Wran was asked to nominate his greatest achievement ... [continue]

[10]  June 2006 / The suburban economy and its enemies

Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s recent address to business economists was an apt prism through which to survey Sydney’s immediate past and distant future ... [continue]

[9]  May 2006 / Exposing the left’s strange economic hyper-rationalism

‘Bourgeois bohemians’ is how American writer David Brooks describes the new elite “of highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another in the bourgeois realm of ambition and worldly success”... [continue]

[8]  April 2006 / A caucus of Carmens? Some thoughts on Labor’s  ‘insoluble’ problem

Most Labor supporters are happy to consign The Latham Diaries to the dustbin of history... [continue]

[7]  March 2006 / Is environmental sustainability socially unsustainable? 

Save-Our-Suburbs is the umbrella group for a small army of resident action groups across Sydney ... [continue]

[6]  January 2006 /  “Rocky” Iemma dodges the green corner

Shortly before Bob Carr's retirement, an unnamed infrastructure consultant was quoted in the Australian Financial Review as follows: "Sydney is dying of NIMBYISM (not in my backyard)"... [continue]

[5]  October 2005 /  The final repudiation of Ben Chifley

“Indeed a better question for tonight's discussion might have been ‘would Ben Chifley be a train driver today?’" ...  [continue]

[4]  August 2005 / Nuclear energy power for the people?

We do not pretend to any particular expertise on nuclear energy (although we think it a pity that other outspoken commentators are not similarly candid) ... [continue]

[3]  June 2005 / Labor and refugees - clear vision in the eye of the storm

The shadow Minister for Immigration, Laurie Ferguson, deserves great credit for his efforts to find the space to honour Australia’s, and Labor’s, international legal and moral obligations ... [continue]

[2]  March 2005 / Tax dollars keep the inner city dream alive

Our last editorial pointed out that a crucial difference between Labor and the conservative parties is that the ALP’s policies and pronouncements are out of kilter with (well to the left of) the views of Labor voters  ... [continue]

[1]  January 2005 / Winning back the disenchanted

Labor has now lost four Federal elections in a row – its worst run since the Menzies era ... [continue]