When is Australia going to collapse under a mountain of debt?

[gingerjedi]

I watched one of those trashy programs earlier where a family pretends they want to move to Australia in order to get a free holiday. What struck me was the price of property, last time I watched a program like this you could get a 5 bed ranch with land for £100k and now you're looking at £300k average! I know the pound has weakened but still a shocking difference.

They interviewed a local town planner who earned $50k AUD and he let on his modest 4 bed was $500,000 with an interest only mortgage, thats 10x income... sound familiar?

[AtW]

They've got a lot of natural resources there that are mined for export, if anything their economy is booming and will only collapse if commodities go down, something that is looking increasingly unlikely with all that money printing that's going on at the moment.

[centurian]

The pound hasn't just weakened - it has halved in value against AUD, which accounts for half of the increase alone

[Sysman]

They interviewed a local town planner who earned $50k AUD and he let on his modest 4 bed was $500,000 with an interest only mortgage, thats 10x income... sound familiar?

Oz went through the BTL boom as well. Circa 2002/3 an Australian colleague went there for a holiday to see his folks and came back late because he'd bought his third house.

A year or two ago he'd sold one and was desperate to sell another.

[Green Mango]

Oz went through the BTL boom as well. Circa 2002/3 an Australian colleague went there for a holiday to see his folks and came back late because he'd bought his third house.

A year or two ago he'd sold one and was desperate to sell another.

They've also got a Labour which did it's best to overstimulate a economy which
was doing fine already. Now there trying to slow things down ....

[Freamon]

Another accident waiting to happen in Australia is the supply of fresh water - they've sucked their water table almost dry in a number of regions and face the prospect of having to build massive desalination plants at a huge huge energy cost.

[Fred Bloggs]

Another accident waiting to happen in Australia is the supply of fresh water - they've sucked their water table almost dry in a number of regions and face the prospect of having to build massive desalination plants at a huge huge energy cost.

Not a problem, you only need to scratch the sea bed off Western Australia and you find a world scale gas field. Not to mention hundreds of years reserves of coal seam methane resources.

[Moscow Mule]

Not a problem, you only need to scratch the sea bed off Western Australia and you find a world scale gas field. Not to mention hundreds of years reserves of coal seam methane resources.

It's a shame because there's a world class coral reef off the coast of WA too.

[gingerjedi]

They've got a lot of natural resources there that are mined for export, if anything their economy is booming and will only collapse if commodities go down, something that is looking increasingly unlikely with all that money printing that's going on at the moment.

So you think a homeowner borrowing at 10x income could soak up a couple of interest point increases?

They hadn't had a holiday in ten years and admitted they paid over half their income to the bank on interest alone.

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night on those figures.

[FiveTimes]

when we went we were getting 3 to the £1. when we looked at visiting friends for Christmas 2011 is 1.6/£1.
Lots of people are suffering due to the cost of standard goods - broadband is expense. The only cheapish thing is the petrol but that can fluctuate during the day.

People are coming back to the uk loads now .