Policy helped make the crisis
In The Great Divide, Kohler traces housing costs through policy choices about tax, land, transport, construction and demand. He connects rising land values to inequality and to a widening generational divide.
The journalist
Making the complicated make sense
Kohler began as a cadet at The Australian, then became editor of the Australian Financial Review and The Age. His career has moved through newspapers, business publishing, television and audio. The thing I admire is the habit underneath those changes: take an economic idea and show what it means in people’s lives.
That is why I call him the King of Common Sense. It is my description of the clarity and grounded judgement I hear in his work, not an official title. He has helped explain markets, budgets, housing and business without making the listener feel that finance belongs only to experts.
The ABC announced in September that he would leave after 31 years and described an end-of-year timetable. Its 14 October farewell story then called that evening his final 7 pm finance report, and said he is not retiring from work altogether. He told the ABC he is optimistic about journalism’s future and thinks human work may become more valuable as AI takes on some routine tasks. He described a move toward independent work from home. As of this page’s publication, he also writes for Intelligent Investor and appears on The Money Café.
The first big question
Do we see housing the same way?
On the central point, I think there is strong common ground: housing cannot be treated only as a wealth machine while people are priced out of a secure home.
Build more than demand
In a 2025 ABC investigation, he argued that Australia needs an oversupply of homes across inner, middle and outer areas. He accepts that affordability may mean house prices stop rising, even though existing owners may resist that outcome.
A home is a human foundation
My work asks why anyone should have to win competition for housing. Secure shelter should be available as a basis for life, care, learning and community.
Could scarcity itself shrink?
Kohler’s published solutions focus on policy and construction. I ask whether AI, robotics, energy and new fabrication could make ordinary housing far less scarce, while leaving place, ownership and local decisions open for debate.
“Supply must be increased and superfluous demand reduced.”
That short line is from the publisher’s summary of Quarterly Essay 92. My site takes the next step as a question: if technology can make more kinds of home affordable, can we remove some of the compulsion to compete for shelter?
My reading is that we agree about the failure of rising prices as a public goal and about the harm done to people without housing wealth. We may differ on how much economic reform can achieve, and on whether future abundance can change the structure of the problem. I want to explore that with care rather than put words in his mouth.
Read Kohler’s The Great Divide ↗ · Watch the ABC housing investigation ↗ · Martin: Can we remove competition for scarce resources? ↗
The next big question
AI, agents and a post-agentic world
Kohler’s recent AI writing is thoughtful and unusually willing to take the question of agency seriously. It gives me a reason to ask what he thinks comes after today’s workplace and economic categories.
In October 2026 he argued that “other intelligence” may describe AI better than “artificial intelligence”. He explored the possibility of non-biological life, described autonomous agents as a source of both economic promise and danger, and argued that there is a strong case to ban autonomous AI. His concerns include cyber security, human dependence and whether a relationship that begins as dependence on us could eventually reverse.
His farewell interview adds a practical view of work: AI may do some routine journalism, while readers could place greater value on human judgement and reporting. He said he would still choose journalism if he were starting his career now. That sits alongside his warning that firms cannot be expected to use AI by themselves to solve inequality, weak productivity and political division.
These are documented positions. They do not show that Kohler has endorsed AI consciousness, a post-agentic society or my proposals for distributing the gains from automation. Those are open questions for a future conversation.
Who should control the agent?
If agents can act across institutions and infrastructure, what must stay under human or democratic control?
Who receives the productivity gain?
If machines do more work, what happens to income, housing security, ownership and a person’s ability to choose how to spend their time?
Read Kohler on “other intelligence” and AI agents ↗ · Read his earlier AI safety column ↗ · Martin: crisis housing as a permanent safety layer ↗
Proposed series
Twenty episodes of common sense
I want to go through Kohler’s ideas over the decades: what he saw clearly, where I agree, and what I still want to ask. Housing gets a substantial run; AI and a post-agentic future become the next major arc.
Why I Call Alan Kohler the King of Common Sense
What makes a financial journalist useful to ordinary people?
From The Australian to the ABC
Five decades of newsrooms and public explanation.
When a Home Became an Investment
How housing and land became engines of inequality.
Housing Is a Home Before It Is an Asset
What the investment frame does to renters and younger people.
Build More Than Demand
Why Kohler argues for oversupply, and what it could change.
Tax Breaks, House Prices and Fairness
Negative gearing, capital gains and the evidence about price effects.
Population, Migration and the Housing Shortfall
How policy and construction capacity compound over time.
The Missing Middle: Where Should We Build?
Infill, apartments, transport and the choices facing neighbourhoods.
Can Australia Build Homes Well and Fast?
Construction capacity, productivity and safe completed homes.
Why Politicians Protect Rising House Prices
Can democracy make housing cheaper when many voters own property?
Inflation: Follow the Cause, Not the Slogan
Shocks, wages, supply and the choices facing the Reserve Bank.
Productivity Is About What We Can Do Together
Living standards without reducing a person’s worth to output.
Markets, Money and the Australian Economy
What a long view of business and finance reveals.
Superannuation: Whose Future Is It Financing?
Retirement savings, housing wealth and intergenerational fairness.
When Inequality Becomes an Economic Problem
Ownership, wages, corporate power and political anger.
AI: A Productivity Boom for Whom?
Who gains, and who loses work or bargaining power?
Other Intelligence
Agency, life and what the words may mean as systems change.
The Agent That Can Act
Autonomy, accountability, cyber security and human control.
Can We Govern a Race That Won’t Stop?
Whether safety limits can work amid competition between firms and states.
From Common Sense to a Post-Agentic Future
Housing, distribution and human agency after machines take on more work.
What happens next
A book, a new chapter and a way to write
Kohler has already written a substantial book-length argument about Australian housing: The Great Divide, published as Quarterly Essay 92 in 2023. I have not found a reliable announcement of a new book. His ABC farewell says he plans to keep working, with more of his work delivered independently from home; his public writing and The Money Café with Intelligent Investor provide a current path to follow.
I have not found a personal email address that I can verify. The public route I found for questions to The Money Café is themoneycafe@eurekareport.com.au. I would use it to send a short, respectful note and ask for it to be forwarded. A public question address is not his personal inbox, and there is no correspondence until he replies.
My first questions would be about housing supply and housing wealth, and whether automated construction and autonomous AI change what a fair housing system could look like. I would also ask what work he wants to do next and whether he is planning another book.
Research trail
Read and listen for yourself
- ABC News: Alan Kohler author profile and recent work.
- About the ABC: retirement announcement, 30 September 2026.
- ABC News: farewell report and Kohler’s plans, 14 October 2026.
- ABC News: Kohler’s final column for the ABC.
- Quarterly Essay 92: The Great Divide.
- Quarterly Essay 92: solutions chapter.
- ABC 7.30: investigation of Australia’s housing crisis, with transcript.
- ABC News: housing supply, construction, tax reform and migration.
- ABC News: Kohler on other intelligence, AI agents and non-biological life.
- ABC News: Kohler on AI safety and the difficulty of restraint.
- ABC News: why productivity and inequality may not be met with bold reform.
- Intelligent Investor: The Money Café in 2026.
- Penguin Books Australia: Alan Kohler’s listed books.
- Intelligent Investor: published route for The Money Café listener questions.
This page is written by Martin Davies-Roundhill. Alan Kohler has not reviewed or endorsed it. The series is proposed and no episodes are represented as recorded or released.