Peter Tulip is an economist who has become an unlikely champion for housing affordability.
Since his university days, Tulip has worked as an economist at some of the top banks and organisations in the world, including the OECD, the US Federal Reserve and the RBA.
His response is emphatic. “Even if I didn’t like having a block of apartments over my back fence,” which, he later clarifies, wouldn’t bother him in the least, “I would like the new shops and restaurants and the new bus service that typically accompany that higher density. And I think NIMBYs forget that; that with the higher density comes a whole lot of urban amenities that people really value.”
I’m curious to know if he has ever lived in an apartment and enjoyed it? Plenty, he says, and been happy. Later he admits: “I mean, if I could live on a farm, a two-minute commute from work, that would be glorious. But clearly that’s unrealistic. If you want a modern, prosperous economy, you need urban density. Putting people closely together is how ideas develop, and how the industries of the future prosper.”In his formative years, Tulip resisted homeownership.
Former US Federal Reserve boss Alan Greenspan took some heat for decisions towards the end of his tenure.He speaks fondly of his time at the Federal Reserve. Then-chairman and Reagan appointee Alan Greenspan hired him, and Tulip left shortly before Greenspan came under fire for stoking the dotcom bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis. Tulip’s time at the Fed was a career highlight.“I routinely felt like I was one of the dumbest people in the room at the Fed,” he says.
I observe he must feel somewhat vindicated by the Labor government’s review of the bank, which triggered the appointment of new governor Michelle Bullock and the most comprehensive overhaul of the bank’s operations since its inception. Is she up to the job?
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