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The number is double, but the rate of change isn't. If Australia's population is 20 million and New Zealand's is 4 million, then a population increase in Australia is 320,000 people and New Zealand 40,000. Do we say Australia is growing 800% faster that New Zealand? No.

No, you cannot compare growth rates like that. If I have two kids, one a metre tall and a young teen, the other 50cm tall and a toddler. The teen's hit a growth spurt and growing at 20% per year, and the toddler's growing at 10% per year, how much faster has the teen grown than the toddler...

16 is 60% higher than 10, but in terms of the base, it is only .6% higher. Consider this semi-hypothetical. NZ's population is around 4 million, Australia's 20 million. Australia's 5 times bigger than NZ. The stated population increases would give Australia a population of 20.32 million and NZ...

No, you cannot do it that way. Say a country's population grows by 10% and another's grows by 16%. Does this mean their differences are equivalent to the countries with 1.6% and 1.0% growth? No. Deriving percentages from percentages is an incorrect and distorted way of looking at things...

There are plenty more overlapping similarities with all those countries, yet at every turn, you think Australia is different enough to avoid calamity. Simply not the case Incorrect points: 1. It is ill advised to derive percentages from percentages. Australia's population increase is 0.6%...

Yet strangely not that much stronger than NZ population growth, which has enjoyed a strong commodity boom recently, and is also heading for a recession and house price correction.

I definitely think these things need to be taken into account. Which is why I don't believe those 40% fall predictions, despite being a D&Ger. My thoughts are we'll see nominal 10% falls, maybe real falls up to 15% Australia wide, but not much more than that. In any event, I don't think the...

My point is that the belief in some circles that the RBA will aggressively cut rates is misguided - doing so will cause a massive flow of funds out of the country. The RBA will ease slightly, but you won't see a return to official interest rates below 6% for a good while.

By learning from others experiences and mistakes. Only the foolish learn from their own mistakes.

How is not having a stake different from having one? If I am wrong, I potentially have to cough up more to get into the property market. If I am right, but enter anyway, I could potentially lose money as well. It's called knowing your risk. We all have skin in the game, Dazz. Is it really?

I'm not expecting anything, yet. Until we start seeing largish index movements, I'd be hesitant to predict anything more wild than what you've predicted for the next two years. I don't think it's a good idea to predict over a longer term basis than that, which is where we disagree. Yep. What...

So looking at the graph there and seeing the spike in the early 90s, it seems only a small amount of repossessions are required for property to turn down? Rates peaked in '89, but the property downturn lasted a good few years after. Not a healthy sign at all.

Otherwise known as 'it's different here'. The problem is, despite a strong economy, we're having record levels of defaults, not witnessed since the last big property downturn in the early 90s. So yes, Australia's stats aren't as bad as the US stats, but they are comparable to the woeful stats...