rba issues warning to banks, page-18

Quite right Justis - however the RBA has held them too high for far too long which in turn has hammered our BOP, created the Dutch Diease here, battered the manufacturing sector , tourism , retail and so on. Whilst the mining boom was going it hid the damage they did and now some more realistic settings are in place with room to go down as it will and should unless the others raise substantially.Imagine the profits the mining sector would have generated had the settings been lower and the resultant tax intakes .

This obsession with stimulating / dampening real estate via fiscal policy is absurd.

The sooner govts improve the housing supply through other means the better but the way we handle it is just plain crude and archaic.