BEING ‘woke’ could be described as a state of awareness only achieved by those dumb enough to find injustice in everything except their own behaviour.

Never more is it more obvious than in various government and local government bodies’ thinking in relation to the housing supply shortage and their latest plan to solve the issue.

The latest manifestation of their guessed-at plan is to levy a turnover tax on bed and breakfast (B&B) type of accommodation.

Like most of these left-wing brain fades, the Victorian Government has decided to levy a 7.5 percent turnover tax on people using short term, mostly overnight, accommodation.

Since then, a number of NSW Councils have clutched at this straw and are known to be looking at trying to introduce a form of the Victorian tax grab by putting a time limit on the number of days each year that B&B operators can utilise their facility.

What a woke response that is.

It has no chance of working but seems to convey the thought that these organisations are doing something in order to solve the housing supply shortage.

Not for one moment will the penalisation of owners and visitors work.

The gross misunderstanding by authorities of what B&B accommodation is simply bamboozles me.

What we are talking about is a night’s bed for one or two people with breakfast the next morning thrown in.

B&B operators neither want nor expect a 100 percent rental utilisation.

It is an available convenience for the owners as well as the users to supply a short-term need and is not seen as a permanent residential opportunity. By taxing that convenience these authorities hope to drive the suppliers into offering permanent rentals on a full-time basis.

Sorry guys, that will never happen.

If you spent ten minutes thinking about the B&B market, surely you would come to a more rational conclusion than a tax opportunity.

Coastal and non-urban Councils need to think about how taxing B&B operators and their users will affect their local tourism industry.

But of course, these woke organisations are never ones to let thinking affect how they do business.

In many cases these authorities are confused by some of the online booking groups who lump genuine B&B premises in with available holiday homes for rent on a weekly basis.

Holiday rentals are not B&Bs and operate for a completely different set of circumstances and opportunities.

Mostly they are owned by absentee city dwellers for their own use, which helps them get out of the cities and into the bush or on to the coast in order to provide their families with an improvement in lifestyle opportunity.

Letting these premises on a permanent basis is seldom the reason for owning their holiday homes and in many cases these residences are located in areas where there is little or no available work that permanent renters would need to pay that rent.

They operate on the basis of higher dollar rentals for a shorter number of weeks each year, thus availing themselves of the opportunity to use that home on many of the unrented weeks that occur.

A sound reason for generating higher income than is available by permanent rental but gaining the opportunity for free self-use.

The woke thinking of these disconnected government authorities never ceases to confound logic, but it is probably just a knee-jerk reaction to have voters think that they are actually doing something positive to solve the property supply issue.

By John BLACKBOURN