Higgins Wood & Associates

16/10/2026

The 30 per cent floor lands hardest on the beneficiaries least able to bear it.

11/10/2026

Monday Money Talk with Noel Whittaker

Artificial intelligence is making headlines everywhere, with dire predictions that if we don’t regulate it properly it may eventually take over and we’ll all die a terrible death. As a “glass-half-full” person, I’m not too concerned about that. What does concern me is the way bots are taking over our lives, and what a hash they tend to make of it.
Try ringing a restaurant these days and there’s a fair chance you’ll be answered by a bot. That’s fine if you simply want to make a booking. But try something slightly different and you enter territory beyond the bot’s comprehension: “I’ve got a booking for two people at noon tomorrow, but I want to make it three people.” Thankfully, most restaurants give you the option of speaking to a real person, at which point the problem is usually solved in seconds.
Unlike bots, ChatGPT seems able to answer almost any question instantly. A few months ago, I bought a Brother QL-820NWB label printer because I occasionally post out books and like to put a nice clean address label on the envelope. It worked superbly for a while, but after my Mac had a software update, the printer ceased to work.
My IT guru told me this was a typical Brother trait and reckoned every time there was a major software update I would end up needing another machine. I have no idea whether that is correct, but I took his advice and bought another one; within a few months I was having similar problems.
Obviously, Brother’s service department was the place to go, but their website pointed me towards online support rather than somebody I could talk to. Fair enough – surely a bot could solve something as basic as this. The bot asked me what the problem was, and I responded, “My printer won’t print.” “I don’t understand the question,” came the response. I tried again. Same result. I even typed, “Is anybody there?” Apparently, nobody was.
So I got back on the Brother website and submitted an email request. I had just one problem: this required me to enter the serial number of the printer, which could be “found on the back of the machine”. I went to my label printer, turned it around and searched everywhere, but there was no serial number to be found. Once again, ChatGPT saved the day. It told me I had to open the printer, remove the paper roll and look inside. There was the serial number. Problem solved.
I then outlined to ChatGPT what had happened. Within seconds it suggested that, for the four or five address labels I print each week, I didn’t need such a sophisticated machine. A cheaper Brother QL-800 would do everything I wanted, use my existing labels and connect directly to my Mac via USB cable. The price was around $130, less than half the cost of the previous two label printers.
ChatGPT recommended I buy from Officeworks, mainly because if anything went wrong I could simply take it back. But I’ve never had any trouble with Amazon, and on the rare occasions I’ve needed to return something their service has been superb. Furthermore, a trip to Officeworks wasn’t particularly attractive: the local store has one of the worst car parks I know, and once you finally find a parking spot and head inside, the next challenge is finding somebody to talk to. So Amazon was my choice. I placed the order around 4 pm and was told the new printer would arrive between 4 am and 8 am the following morning. When I woke up, there it was, sitting outside the door.
That little incident raises some much bigger questions. Brother is no small business: it operates in more than 40 countries, employs almost 40,000 people and has annual revenue of around A$8.5 billion. If artificial intelligence has reached the stage where ChatGPT can understand my vaguely expressed problem, work out what I actually need, compare the alternatives and recommend a solution in seconds, why does a huge international company like Brother have a customer-service bot that cannot understand the words, “My printer won’t print”? And what does this mean for the future of retail?
The irony is that technology is not the problem. ChatGPT just demonstrated how extraordinarily good the technology can be. The problem is the way businesses are using technology. As wages and other costs keep rising, businesses understandably look for ways to reduce staff. Bots, self-service checkouts and online systems are part of that process. But there is a danger of confusing lower costs with better service. A bot may save the cost of employing somebody to answer the phone, but how much does a business lose when frustrated customers simply give up and go somewhere else?
There are millions of Australians who are perfectly capable of using technology but still want to speak to a human being when something goes wrong. This is particularly true of older Australians. Yet businesses increasingly make talking to a real person who can solve your problem the hardest option of all.
Traditional retailers also face challenges. If I have to drive there, find a park, wander around looking for somebody to help me and then discover the product isn’t in stock, online shopping becomes increasingly attractive. If I can order the same product at 4 pm and have it outside my door before breakfast, the physical retailer needs to give me a compelling reason to make the trip. Customer service should be the drawcard.
The great debate right now seems to be whether artificial intelligence will eventually take over the world. I’m more concerned about something that is already here: artificial stupidity taking over customer service.

Noel Whittaker is the author of Retirement Made Simple, Wills Death and Taxes and numerous other books on personal finance. Email: [email protected]

06/10/2026

I’m a glass-half-full person, but there’s no doubt the world is going through a challenging period.

Governments everywhere are struggling under massive debt burdens, and the irony is that there are only a few ways out: cut spending, raise taxes, or somehow generate much stronger economic growth.

The first two are politically unpopular, while the third is much easier said than done.

The bond market is pointing to higher interest rates, while many of the headlines right now are about falling property prices. When I talk to agents around the place, they tell me vendors are becoming reluctant to sell because they know they may not get the price they expected.

Even the Bank of Mum and Dad is becoming more cautious. Parents are asking why they should help their children buy a home today if they believe it may be cheaper tomorrow.

And that hesitation has ripple effects. A quieter property market means less stamp duty revenue for state governments and less spending on furniture, appliances, renovations and all the other things that go with buying a home.

That’s the challenging part. But adversity also brings opportunity. Markets and circumstances change, and opportunities appear where we least expect them.

The important thing is to understand what is happening, keep a sense of perspective and be ready to take advantage of those opportunities when they come.

[Full newsletter linked in the comments.]

05/10/2026

04/10/2026

Monday Money Talk with Noel Whittaker

When announcing last Tuesday’s interest rate increase, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock stressed that Australia has a serious productivity problem. She’s stating the obvious: we now rank just 16th among OECD countries for labour productivity. And we seem determined to make it worse, with ever more regulation, more compliance and more red tape. No wonder productivity actually fell in the latest year. What’s more, Commonwealth gross debt is around $1 trillion, and the latest Intergenerational Report tells us the federal budget faces deficits for the next 40 years.
We’ve already seen what red tape can do. It is slowing the building industry and has virtually hamstrung the financial planning industry. Comprehensive financial advice now costs at least $5,000, and comes buried in a mountain of compliance paperwork few ordinary Australians could possibly be expected to read, let alone understand. And now we are doing it again with ever-expanding identity checks and anti–money-laundering rules. Nobody disputes the need to catch criminals and stop dirty money flowing through the system. The question is whether forcing millions of innocent Australians through increasingly intrusive and time-consuming compliance procedures is catching criminals, or simply making everybody else less productive.
That question became very personal for me recently. My wife and I have been customers of St. George Bank for more than 40 years. Recently we both received letters asking us to verify our identity, and answer a lot of questions. Some of these seemed ridiculous: “What is the origin of your net worth?” and “What is the purpose of the bank account?” If the object is to catch criminals, I doubt the baddies are going to provide their criminal history. And to me, the purpose of a bank account should be bleeding obvious.
We completed the forms and returned them, only to receive identical letters four weeks later. Reluctantly, we went through the whole process again, including a visit to our accountant to have copies of our passports certified. A fortnight later came a third request asking the same questions. I’d had enough. I lodged a complaint, pointing out that we had supplied the information twice in the bank’s own reply-paid envelopes without receiving any acknowledgment.
The bank’s response was extraordinary: they froze our bank accounts. I don’t think I have ever been more angry in my life. What happened next? Well, when your accounts are frozen, you’re told to ring a 1300 number, so you can spend an eternity listening to, “We’re experiencing an unusually high volume of calls.” It took two hours to get our accounts operating again, and by then I was determined to find out what was going on.
I set up discussions with AUSTRAC, the Australian Banking Association (ABA) and senior bank executives – channels most customers cannot access. The ABA told me that identification requirements were a major source of customer complaints, while one senior banker said that much of what was needed to detect criminal activity could be found simply by examining transactions in the account. A senior bureaucrat told me his 80-year-old mother nearly had a heart attack when asked to identify herself, because she thought she had been the victim of identity theft. He also pointed to the difficulties in some Indigenous communities, where people may not have the documents the government requires. Last week my doctor told me the same thing had happened to her – this time with ANZ. After threatening to move all their accounts, the bank finally relented.
AUSTRAC says the questions help banks establish what normal activity should look like for a customer. “Knowing who a customer is, where their money comes from and how they intend to use financial services are effective ways to identify suspicious activity and protect customers,” a spokesperson said. Questions about wealth or the purpose of an account do not themselves reveal criminal activity, but provide a benchmark. If subsequent transactions don’t fit the customer’s story, that may raise a red flag. AUSTRAC argues this makes it harder for criminals to launder illicit money through Australian banks.
I can’t argue with the objective. I’m less convinced about the method. A criminal is hardly likely to answer “drug dealing” when asked about the source of their wealth. Surely the real giveaway is what actually happens in the account. The transactions should tell the bank far more than a questionnaire ever could. Meanwhile, think of the productivity cost of all this checking. Banks send these requests to millions of customers, irrespective of what is happening in their accounts. Customers spend hours finding documents, getting them certified and returning forms. Banks then spend countless hours processing them. Or customers don’t return the forms, and suffer all the indignity and inconvenience of spending hours getting access to their own money again – losing time, effort, and trust in the system along the way.
The obligations on those dealing with financial matters do not stop with banks. Real estate agents are also now caught in the anti-money-laundering net. AUSTRAC says: “Real estate agents are not required to ask every buyer where their money comes from. Source-of-funds and source-of-wealth checks generally apply only to higher-risk customers or unusual transactions, such as purchases involving virtual assets or $50,000 or more in cash.
“For lower-risk customers, checks are more straightforward, including verifying identity, sanctions and politically exposed person status. Where enhanced checks are required, businesses must verify the information against independent evidence. If the customer’s story and the evidence don’t match, that may raise a red flag and trigger a suspicious matter report. AUSTRAC sets the requirements, but businesses take a risk-based approach: the higher the risk, the more extensive the checks.”
But surely the Nobel Prize for bureaucratic stupidity goes to whoever decided the best way to follow up an unanswered request was to freeze the customer’s bank account. Think about the consequences. The customer discovers their money has suddenly become inaccessible, rings the inevitable 1300 number and joins a queue. Eventually a staff member has to investigate the problem, establish the customer’s identity, find out what happened and get the account operating again. Then there are the hidden costs nobody measures. Destruction of goodwill is one: a decades-long relationship can be destroyed by freezing someone’s money without so much as a phone call. What about customer mental health crises caused by suddenly facing all this stress? And what about the bank staff? Is anyone supporting them to deal with distressed customers day in, day out? Or to be confident in the judgements they are making about whose accounts to freeze, when, and why?
As for productivity, how many thousands of hours are being wasted in this process? Much of it could surely be avoided by contacting the customer first and asking what is going on.
And that brings us back to where we started. Australia has a productivity problem, yet we keep designing systems that consume more of everybody’s time. Every hour a customer spends chasing paperwork, every hour a bank employee spends sorting out the resulting mess, is an hour that could have been used productively.

Noel Whittaker is the author of Retirement Made Simple, Wills Death and Taxes and numerous other books on personal finance. Email: [email protected]

30/09/2026

Australian house prices fell for a sixth straight month in September, and the property market is likely to continue experiencing falls of up to 15 per cent in the coming months off the back of higher interest rates and cuts to property tax breaks, experts say.

29/09/2026

Property clock out now https://htw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/HTW-Month-in-Review-September-2026-Resi.pdf

28/09/2026

In some countries, home owners can take in boarders with a tax-free threshold to incentivise renting out spare rooms.

28/09/2026

Monday Money Talk with Noel Whittaker
Suddenly the bond market is grabbing headlines. World debt is soaring, tensions in Iran and Ukraine are intensifying, and a market most Australians rarely think about is becoming impossible to ignore.
And the numbers are staggering. At around US$160 trillion, the global bond market is the biggest financial market in the world, slightly larger than all the world’s listed sharemarkets combined. More importantly, what happens there affects your mortgage, your superannuation, your shares and property, the Australian dollar and ultimately even your taxes. So it’s worth understanding what all the fuss is about.
In this context, a bond is simply an IOU from a government or corporation. It promises investors a capital sum at some future date, together with interest along the way. Take two Australian Government bonds. One pays just 1% and matures on 21 November 2031; the other pays 5% and matures on 21 June 2036.
This is where bonds get interesting. Take the 2031 bond. It pays just $100 a year on a face value of $10,000. With market rates around 5%, who in their right mind would pay $10,000 for something yielding just 1%?
Nobody — and that’s the point. Bonds are liquid investments, and their prices rise and fall with the market. When market interest rates rise, the price of an existing bond falls until its return becomes competitive. Today you might pay roughly $8,200 for that $10,000 bond. You still receive the $100 annual interest, but when it matures in 2031 the government pays you the full $10,000. That $1,800 difference is part of your return.
Now compare it with the 2036 bond paying 5%, or $500 a year on $10,000. Because that is close to today’s market rate, its price stays around $10,000. That’s the golden rule of bonds: when interest rates rise, existing bond prices fall; when rates fall, bond prices rise. Don’t confuse the coupon with the return. A bond paying 1% can still give a new buyer a return approaching 5% because its price has fallen. The government doesn’t alter the interest rate as rates change. It’s the market that alters the price.
Investors are demanding more to lend governments money. Inflation remains stubborn and geopolitical uncertainty remains high, but the elephant in the room is debt. Governments are spending more than they receive and borrowing the difference. US government debt has passed US$40 trillion, while global public debt is heading towards 100% of world GDP by 2029. Somebody has to fund it, and lenders are saying: fine — but you’ll have to pay us more.
And this is where the bond market flexes its muscles. Governments control taxation and spending, while central banks control official short-term interest rates, but neither can completely control the bond market. If investors believe a government is borrowing too much, spending recklessly or allowing inflation to get out of control, they can refuse to buy its bonds at existing prices. Prices fall and yields rise until buyers return. It is the financial markets imposing their own discipline on governments.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently threw down the gauntlet to financial markets. Speaking about US intervention to support the Japanese yen, he declared: “I am the house now … And you can bet against me if you want.” The remark has attracted particular attention in bond markets because the US Treasury has also been stepping up its purchases of longer-dated government bonds in an attempt to restrain yields.
Bessent, of all people, should understand the danger of that challenge. In 1992 he was part of George Soros’s team when it took on the Bank of England, betting that Britain could not continue defending the pound. The government fought back, even announcing interest rates as high as 15%, but the market won. Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, and the Soros fund made more than US$1 billion from its bet against sterling.
Bessent has now changed sides. The trader who helped take on the house is running the US Treasury and declaring that he is the house. But his former boss and mentor Stanley Druckenmiller has a brutally simple warning about governments taking on markets: ultimately, “they always lose”.
Perhaps the best description of the bond market’s power came from James Carville, political adviser to Bill Clinton. He famously said that if reincarnation existed, he wanted to come back as “the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Thirty years later, governments may be rediscovering exactly what he meant.
The United States is particularly important because US Treasury bonds are the benchmark for much of the world’s debt. When the US 10-year Treasury yield heads towards 5%, investors naturally ask why they should accept substantially less elsewhere. That matters enormously to Australia. The Reserve Bank sets the cash rate, but it does not dictate interest rates for the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Those are determined by financial markets and reflect inflation, economic growth, expectations about future Reserve Bank decisions and, crucially, what is happening overseas. The bond market can tighten financial conditions without the Reserve Bank doing a thing.
Homeowners should take notice. Variable mortgage rates are heavily influenced by the cash rate, but banks obtain money from many sources, and their wholesale funding costs and fixed-rate loans are influenced by bond and swap markets. Investors should take notice too. When interest rates were close to zero, investors seeking income were virtually forced into shares, property and other riskier assets. Now shares and property have competition. Why take substantial risk for a 4% income return if you can get around 5% from a high-quality government bond?
There is a sting in the tail. If you already own a bond paying 2% and new bonds offer 5%, nobody will pay full price for yours. Its price must fall until its return becomes competitive. That is why supposedly conservative bond funds can suffer capital losses when interest rates rise. But for retirees and other income investors, the flip side is attractive: new money invested in fixed interest can now earn returns unimaginable just a few years ago.
Australia is also a major borrower. There is close to $1 trillion of Australian Government Securities on issue, and around half of Australian Treasury Bonds are held by overseas investors. We therefore depend heavily on international investors continuing to lend us money. If they demand higher returns, we have to pay them. In 2020, Australian 10-year government bond yields fell to barely half of 1%. Today they are around 5%. That is an extraordinary change.
The bond market may seem remote from everyday life, but it sets the price of money. It influences what governments and businesses pay to borrow, what banks charge their customers and how investors value almost every other asset. Governments can keep borrowing only while investors are prepared to keep lending. And those investors are becoming restless.
Perhaps Carville had it right all along: the bond market can intimidate everybody. Right now it is sending a warning — the days of virtually free money are over.

24/09/2026

Following the government's budget changes, a narrow majority of housing investors would pay more tax, while 43 per cent would pay less, researchers from an economic policy institute have found.