I was at a twenty-four-year-old party and one young man said to me: “Andy. We despair at the thought that we may never be able to buy a house.” My reply was: “But that is ridiculous.” I added my usual explanation: “God or nature created land for all living things to share. As an Australian, you should have access to a house — even if you have to pay a little for it.” And so my engineering mind set about solving the problem. I realized that my children will have problems buying a house. I determined that, if children cannot buy houses, we have ‘fake affluence’. We cannot claim that we live in an affluent nation if the young cannot buy houses. A group of ten men can build a house in ten weeks, why does it take a young couple a lifetime to pay off the debt? Read more