Understanding Brisbane

maybe the flip side of the question is, Brisbane will shine in the coming years after Sydney and Melbourne became out of reach for many ppl.

 

Bogans? In Brisbane? Walk down Edward Street and there is a sea of young Asians swarming towards you. Young people - everywhere. They are skinny with straight black hair and backpacks.

 

I thin Sydney is way more bogan. Seems Brisbane is more progressive despite the stigma. Results of SSM are usually a great indicator of how progressive population is.

So a state that is bleeding population due to mining adjustment and a state that has been adjusting post holden era are two comparable states? Tasmania always was in doldrums population wise, always had the oldest population and the worst underemployment metrics. Even then it is the third worst. Beyond abysmal.

Queensland has been adjusting post mining boom, yet still recorded the third highest population growth rate.

 

The biggest reason in my view why Brisbane is no Syd/Mel are 2 reasons
Supply side - Syd and Mel are constrained by natural barriers. E.g harbour. Brisbane is not
Demand side - large scale companies and the many high paying corporate jobs they bring. Syd and Mel have it Brisbane has some but not enough.
I'm talking large operations. .not small scale shops, not sales offices, rather large scale diversified operations.

On the supply side, probably not much anyone could do. Short of limiting residential building approvals.
On the demand side..well..this is helped by the drive shown by the state government and this requires vision, ambition etc which was and still is missing.

 

Hey @JDPI. What happened to Hyping Brisbane?

 

Disagree that the state govt has shown a lack of vision. Both parties have been lacking at times but the handling of cross river rail by Newman was terrible and put infrastructure spending back 5 years.
I dont think its that hard to see why its behind Sydney/Melb it literally has half the population.
As a city it has half the population of the others so less demand than the others for everything.
Qld is also the countries most decentralised state being the only one with close to half the population outside of the capital.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to add..
Brisbane is the best. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the river sparkling. This can mean only one thing: a boom of epic proportions is on its way..really, Brisbane needs no more drivers than these 3 things I mention for it to boom..

 

The sheer numbers of pop size don't have much to do with it. And the question was Brisbane specific not qld as a whole.
There are many highly populated areas (cities) in this world with low price growth and vice versa, sometimes in the same country and therefore a lot of the same federal laws apply in unison.
The vision and drive I'm talking about are not cross river rail type projects (although these projects help)..
Look at places like most Asian and some European and also American cities ( eg. Amazon second hq) ...and you will then see how ambitious and driven the top brass is to attract and retain economic growth via large globally dominant companies investing in many hundreds iof jobs within city limits and many millions they have to bring to enable that and that's just one company. You bet the top brass politicians do everything in their power to make it happen. this may even include generous tax incentives...whatever needs to be done...
That's what I mean by having the ambition and vision (attracting strategic investment that enables the vision) ...and that kind of investment (jobs mainly) draws other companies to do similar, which draws many more people, which results in tax dollars etc etc ....you get the picture ...
..
The argument you could make however is that Brisbane's main selling point is quality of life. .not hustle and bustle...and that's the kind of stuff cross river rail enables. I suppose you could say that is vision initself.( ie vision to be a great place for quality of life). Fair enough..just don't expect a boom then...expect a nice friendly laid back little stress, chilled vibe place...and as good as that may be, its not enough for a boom.

 

Remember we’re talking about a city who only started sunday trading less than a decade ago and where options are limited to chain store take outs on Mon and Tue. City asleep by 9pm Mon-Thu. Queenslanders probably have a lot to do with why Brisbane economy doesnt kick like Syd and Mel. Migrants to Australia only really think of Mel and Syd. Brisbane needs to water down the Queenslander with some migrants!

 

Remember they built the tunnels and Queenslanders went yeh nah. They preferred the long way.

 

That's a viable scenario. . It may do well not because of itself, rather because alternative markets have done so well that they are victim of their own success and Brisbane is the only old dog standing. viable but I doubt..unleas it develops it's own internal drivers if significance, if Sydney/Mel are out if reach, I think people will either invest in RE elsewhere or in a totally different asset class altogether...maybe a RE investment trust or super, or shares etc....

 

Hey I have IP's in QLD and TAS, I am not emotional about either state but the acts are that TAS is performing very well economically of late. According to CBA, TAS is the 3rd best performing state and QLD is 5th.

State of the States - CommSec

 

I disagree on population size. Sydney and Melbourne have both had larger populations for longer giving them built in demand for housing. Compounding growth works for cities too. Why should Brisbane match the price growth in Sydney/Melb when they've had what most people agree to be unsustainable levels of growth?

QLD in general definitely needs some smart planning on how to transition the economy from being mining/resources reliant to a more diversified economy but it fighting a lot of history to make those changes.

Historically Brisbane has never really been the centre of activity in QLD. It developed around regional centres of primary industries up north and out west. It's never had a large manufacturing base like Sydney or Melb. The city is poorly positioned for a port so has never had freight etc really running through it. All the regional centres ran their own lines to the coast rather than to Brisbane. These a fundamental differences to how economic power has been established in the cities. It's only in the 2000s that there has been a push to develop other industries in the city.

I don't agree in giving massive companies like Amazon tax breaks to start up operations in Brisbane. They're big enough to look after themselves without needing essentially public funding to get started. Not to mention their history of shifting profits elsewhere to minimise taxes.

Develop the industries through education and tax incentives for small businesses, tech innovators etc.

I'd rather housing growth remains subdued as it's not a productive way of creating wealth for a nation. If we as a nation were as interested in investing in businesses as we are in housing we would have a much more productive economy

 

Well dont think qld gov has much more debt headroom to justify new mega projects in bris.

Theres been a shocking heap of cranes and stuff being built in the city and inner suburbs by.private developers though.

On top.of that we have pretty bad cyclone damage every year requiring rebuilding of infrastructure up north

 

Property outlook subdued in southern Queensland due to interstate jitters, experts say

 

Yep, there will be some caution that the Mexican sneeze is infectious for a few months to come, but I believe once that settles down and Brisbane is shown to be pretty resilient confidence will come back. Melb, Sydney down by another 10%.. Brisbane up 10% .. 2021 - "Brisbane up 25% over Sydney last 4 years" headlines, blah blah

Oh and somewhere above, Port of Brisbane is Australia's third largest port and Australia's fastest growing.. no problems there.

Do agree a little on the type of demographic in Brisbane and what attracts nightlife activity.. take a trip out to Sunnybank during the week at 9pm, no probs getting a meal and a few beers surrounded by people. Queen Street mall on a Friday night these days is also pumping.

Oh and we have legal scooters..such an environmentally friendly and cheap form of transport infrastructure. Wait, what? You don't have electric scooters yet? So backward!

 

No issues with the port now just providing context for how Brisbane developed into what it is now. Melb/Sydney ports/harbour were much closer to the cbd and were the transaction point for goods being moved. It brings more money through the cities helping them develop into what they are now.

Before Port of Brisbane was there the wharves up river in the cbd which is a long way to travel before you're out and on your way. Hence why the regional centres built rail direct for the coast bypassing Brisbane altogether.

 

I think people also forget that Queensland has been hammered by high Australian dollar. 1 cent change in the exchange rate could cost or add $33 million to the state bottom line. The lower the dollar is, the more the state gets.

Also Queensland is an export economy, tourism, education, agriculture and resources are all exchange sensitive. If dollar does fall to 0.65 US cents, I would expect to see Queensland economy pick up significantly.

Finally, Queensland is just only starting to export LNG and the like, internally, doesn’t south to Mexico.

 

I think I will wait for a few more posts saying that they are fed up with qld to buy buy when noone want to but you can see the light

However, a new government may also help. A news with $6b invested in qld also a good sight.

 

Well, @JDP1, those 3 things are out of control for human beings, whilst population, economy, employment are still the things that human beings can somehow control. So, in that sense, Brisbane's future is brighter than Syd/Mel's.