Prosper Australia

Overview

Prosper Australia, with roots reaching back to 1890, is Australia's foremost Georgist research and advocacy organisation. Operating from Melbourne, it has kept land value taxation a live policy issue in a country with an unusually strong land-tax tradition.

Work

• Total Resource Rents of Australia (2013) — Karl Fitzgerald's line-by-line national rent inventory (23.6% of GDP), the modern movement's most-cited revenue-capacity study and the methodological template for Common Wealth Canada's 2023 Canadian counterpart.
• Speculative Vacancies research — Prosper's long-running report series measures empty housing in Melbourne from water-meter data rather than survey or listing counts. The 11th report (2024) found 5.2% of Melbourne dwellings vacant or barely used in 2023 — one in twenty homes — equivalent to more than two and a half years of new construction sitting idle, and argues vacancy is only "the tip of the iceberg" of broader land banking by developers.
• Advocacy and education — it campaigns for land value taxation and against property-speculation subsidies, and (through its outreach arm Earthsharing) ran the Renegade Economists radio show and podcast — roughly 600 episodes on Melbourne community station 3CR from September 2007 to November 2021, closing on the passage of Victoria's Windfall Gains Tax — plus a structured 12-part Georgist Podcourse introducing land and rent economics.

Significance

Prosper Australia is a model of evidence-driven Georgist advocacy, supplying original empirical research (notably on vacancy) that few other organisations produce.

See Also

• Speculative Vacancies 11: Empty Homes in Melbourne — the 2023/2024 vacancy findings in depth
• Renegade Economists Podcast · The Georgist Podcourse (Earthsharing) — Prosper's outreach programming
• Karl Fitzgerald — Prosper's longtime researcher and Renegade Economists host
• New South Wales, Australia · Land Monopoly · Land Value Tax

Sources

1. Prosper Australia — official site and Speculative Vacancies reports. prosper.org.au — used for the organisation's history, its advocacy work, and its speculative-vacancy research methodology and findings.
2. Prosper Australia (2024), Speculative Vacancies 11: Empty Homes in Melbourne 2019–2023 — used for the 5.2%/one-in-twenty 2023 vacancy figure and the land-banking argument (B-claim, advocacy research with a transparent, benchmarkable method). wiki summary
3. Karl Fitzgerald, Renegade Economists (radio show/podcast), September 2007 – November 2021, 3CR Melbourne — used for the ~600-episode run and its closing on Victoria's Windfall Gains Tax (A-claim). wiki summary
4. Karl Fitzgerald, "The Georgist Podcourse," Earthsharing Australia blog, 3 May 2019 — used for the 12-part course format (A-claim). wiki summary