Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️
@ethangilbert.bsky.social
YIMBY Melbourne Deputy Lead He/him ✉️colead@yimby.melbourne
Excellent demolition of “affordable housing”. It’s a muddled no man’s land between market and social housing, achieving the goals of neither. It functions as a modest benefit to a tiny fraction of middle class families. It’s costly, inefficient and impedes geographic and occupational mobility.
El Yobo@elyobo.bsky.social · 4mo agoIt’s time for Australia to move on from ‘affordable’ housing. inflectionpoints.work/articles/aga...
It’s time for Australia to move on from ‘affordable’ housing. inflectionpoints.work/articles/aga...
Against ‘Affordable’ Housing | Inflection Points
It’s not the same as social housing, and it doesn’t help those most in need. Australia is spending big on ‘affordable’ housing—but we shouldn’t.
inflectionpoints.work
15 homes in Merri-bek turns into 3. This is how urban planning created the housing crisis.
The objective should be 100 million people in the capital cities, next question
In the 1980s, for the average woman, it would have taken 6 years of wages to purchase the average Brighton property. In 2025, despite radical improvements in gender pay, it would take the average woman nearly 33 years...
Two months ago, I wrote a paper for the Electoral Matters Committee. It clocked in at 23,000 words with 16 data tables, 11 graphs, 204 footnotes and 30,000 datapoints. I made the case that we should take advantage of this historic juncture to expand participation in our representative democracy.
Argh, City of Yarra under Jolly continues to hit new lows. This is just throwing the lives of our most marginalised people in the bin to chase the votes of conservative NIMBYs. www.theage.com.au/politics/vic...
‘Greatest public policy disaster’: Yarra backflips, wants injecting room moved
After years of complaints about anti-social behaviour, syringe litter and crime, Yarra Council has voted to lobby the state to move the North Richmond injecting room.
theage.com.au
I’m honoured to be featured alongside some of Australia’s biggest names in wonkdom in the summer issue of Inflection Points. My paper is the culmination of 4 years work on declining civic participation — and why other researchers into the phenomenon have a blind spot for political parties.
Rebuilding Australian Political Parties | Inflection Points
Active democratic participation is the key to Australia’s next great flourishing. We should encourage it explicitly.
inflectionpoints.work
Inflection Points@inflectionpoints.work · 10mo ago🚨Issue 03 | Inflection Points | OUT NOW🚨 - Flavio Menezes - Brendan Coates - Matthew Maltman - Travis Jordan
🚨Issue 03 | Inflection Points | OUT NOW🚨 - Flavio Menezes - Brendan Coates - Matthew Maltman - Travis Jordan
So many of Victoria's problems can be solved with one easy trick: abolish the City of Yarra.
‘All problems come back to housing’ is one of those lines which is simultaneously a Premier buck passing a problem to another level of government while being entirely, unquestionably, true
New study from Melbourne finds reducing residential speed limits from 50km/h to 30 km/h on local roads would protect cyclists from danger, make riding less stressful and get more people cycling while not causing traffic delays for cars.
Switching 50km/h speed limits to 30km/h would protect cyclists while barely affecting commutes, research finds
One expert says a cyclist hit by a car travelling 50km/h has about a one-in-ten chance of surviving, while at 30km/h it was a nine-in-ten chance
theguardian.com
First they came for Brighton and I didn't speak up because I was not rich...
Seeing trailers for some upcoming Screen Australia backed films and it’s amazing how so few Australian Stories involve cities at all. Everyone in our cities are completely devoid of stories. Our streets are narrativeless. Only the Bush has agency.
Halloween has come early for Boroondara's planners... ...they might have to approve medium-density housing! 😱 😱
It’s not just NIMBY attitudes either. This flows into how council decision making happens — whether as a result of the “paradox of empowerment” or as systemically as a result of how governance systems are designed. Renters are excluded from consultations, strategies or even the very act of voting.
Sydney YIMBY@sydney.yimby.au · 12mo agoLovely message in our inbox this morning 😊 One of the foundational NIMBY beliefs is that renters aren't worthy of having a say about their communities.
What does the Nicole Kidman/Keith Urban split mean for the Sydney property market?
No, Australia does not need new cities. My new essay sets the record straight: we have a lot of cities, but we aren’t using them as well as we could be. To make our cities more successful, we have to open up a lot more land for commercial uses to enable agglomeration.
If a NSW pattern book design gets built in Melbourne before a Future Home does imma lose it
Philip Thalis@philipthalis.bsky.social · 12mo agoNo question the best Australian architects are masterful at house design, so great that there’s some international interest in purchasing their terrace house designs. The pressing need in Aust is for good architects to design a greater % of our housing www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw...
Yet again The Age is uncritically publishing a story about a research paper from The Australian Population Research Institute and whitewashing them as objective academic experts instead of a thinktank of washed-up cranks. At least this time it isn't just another anti-migrant tirade.
The lost boys: Australia’s male education ‘catastrophe’
New research highlights gaps between male and female students and private and government school students.
theage.com.au
Banger of a Substack article by Manning Clifford, editor at large of @inflectionpoints.work. The US and UK political class is dominated by former lawyers. Beijing is full of trained engineers. Australian MPs, however, mostly used to work for other MPs, as advisers. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Australia has become a staffer state
Dan Wang argues that America is a society of lawyers and China is an engineering state. What are we, and what does it mean for our policy?
substack.com
This report paints a very grim picture for everywhere north of the Murray River. Meanwhile here in Brisbane, we’re not even planning for the fires, floods and heatwaves we already get — let alone far more frequent and far more extreme ones.
Guardian Australia@australia.theguardian.com · last yr.The Australian government has released the landmark national climate risk assessment report, providing the most detailed picture of the severe and far-reaching social and economic impact of the climate crisis for Australia. 🔗👉 www.theguardian.com/p/x383n...
Stonnington is claiming that their current strategy can deliver 17,000 homes *more* than the Victorian Government's housing target. However, they fail to mention that their strategy needs nearly the entirety of Stonnington to be demolished and rebuilt by 2051. Very feasible...
🎙️NEW PODCAST🎙️ How do we move the needle on reform? Hear from Brendan Coates, Michael Brennan and Katie Roberts-Hull on how policy reform happens! Listen to the podcast below 👇 [Link in next tweet]
If you were going to read this but thought “actually I want you to cut it by a third and read it out to me”… podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/l...
Long Read | The fight over your backyard
Podcast Episode · Background Briefing · 14/08/2025 · 19m
podcasts.apple.com
gina rushton@ginarush.bsky.social · last yr.Spoke to dozens of people for this piece on Australia’s attempts to increase housing density, including the housing minister who says this is “not because of a New York Times bestseller”. Have a read! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...
Are subsidised homes for the middle class better than social housing for those at risk of homelessness? Planning academics and Yarra’s mayor seem to think so. We support the DFP’s 3% levy for Victoria’s Social Housing Growth Fund, which means more social housing for more people.
Another one of the systemic exclusion of renters from urban politics — whether it’s chronic underrepresentation in decision-making spaces, repeat studies that show that renters aren’t proactively engaged in consultations, or how local council elections make it harder for renters to even vote.
