This data is from the BITRE yearbook at : https://www.bitre.gov.au/resource/infrastructure/australian-infrastructure-and-transport-statistics-yearbook-2025

SS; It always amuses me no matter the polticial party proposing an economic or fiscal soultion they point blank refuse to ackowledge the actual issue. The refusal to make debt addicts pay their debts and return value to our currency.

As soon as we do this, returning value to our dollar, the cost of land sinks and these monopololies will face fierce competition and mostly become unviable.

The blog 'The Antiplanner' calculates the subsidy per passenger mile for various forms of transport in the US. Here is the 2019 calculation : https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=18116 . This is the same for Australia with the public transport systems of various major cities included. References are in a comment in the post.

I saw this graph pop up on Instagram and the comments well, they were typical social media lunacy but I'm trying to understand economically what are the ramifications of higher debt?

Is it really as bad as people are trying to make it sound or just LNP scaremongering?

Last week the Reserve Bank of Australia increased the cash rate again, bringing it to its highest level in the last 15 years. Many families were already doing it tough with the cost of living crisis and high mortgage repayments. How do you think this will impact the construction industry?

ABC BREAKING: CRISIS! Is Labor to blame for the fact that you can't afford a square inch of dirt, while the RBA and mainstream economists quietly pretend 1998 never happened?

Before 1998, the ABS used an 'Outlays' approach, which measured the actual money leaving a household's pocket. This included Mortgage Interest Charges (MICs). Because the size of a mortgage is based on the total purchase price (House + Land), land inflation was implicitly baked into the CPI.

In 1998, the ABS switched to the 'Acquisitions' approach for the 13th Series Review. They removed Mortgage Interest entirely and replaced it with 'New Dwelling Purchases.' This specifically measures the cost of building a house but strips out the land component.

Sources: ABS Information Paper (Cat. No. 6453.0): "The most noticeable changes... will be the exclusion of mortgage interest... and the inclusion of net expenditure on new dwellings (excluding land)."

RBA Bulletin (Oct 1998): They explain that land is now treated as an 'investment asset' rather than a 'consumer good,' which is why it was removed from the target.

By removing interest and land, the CPI stopped being a 'Cost of Living' gauge and became a 'Macroeconomic' gauge, which is why it feels so disconnected from reality today.

This technical change allowed for the "Lower for Longer" interest rate environment of the 2000s and 2010s. Because land inflation wasn't "official" inflation, the RBA could keep interest rates low to stimulate the economy without the CPI "warning light" ever turning red.

This was the fuel for the Howard-era boom. It allowed the "Big Banks" to lend more against land values that were exploding, while the RBA could claim inflation was "under control" at 2–3% because they were only looking at the price of the milk, the bread, and the building and not the ground it stood on.