Rudd pledges $500m to cut cost of new homes.

That would buy around 960 full block median priced houses in Glen Waverley.

In a lunchtime address to the South Australian Press Club, Mr Rudd said Labor's Housing Affordability Fund would cut the cost of a new home by about $20,000.

It will be used to help fund infrastructure for new development blocks which include water, sewerage, transport and parklands.

It will also cover holding costs associated with planning and approval delays, which are often borne by the homebuyer.

Mr Rudd said the money would assist 50,000 homebuyers over five years.

In 2003 I posted about housing affordability, quoting an article which said the typical first home buyer in Melbourne had to pay $335,800 for a new home which was at the time a 2 and a half times increases since 1996.

Today it's $420,000.

Personally I've never much liked the first home buyers grant (although I admit it helped me buy a home) and Rudd's plan smells of an extension of that, although it is aimed at specific costs, not just a lump of money.

Brumby, Hulls take power.

No surprises there.

No word yet on the by-elections.

Article in today's Age about a topic I'm very interested in... what will be the new classic albums from the 90s?

Specifically the article is about sales statistics of catalogue albums, something that has been deeply effected by downloads (including legal and illegal).

Now that the '80s and '90s are ancient history, what albums are people still buying from those decades? Do critical favourites like Radiohead and the Pixies grow more popular with time? Or do the Backstreet Boys and Madonna still rule the charts?

I noticed some of the high sellers mentioned in the article have been released on discount (sub $10) for years which would help sales, or re-released recently (Weezer's "Blue" album for instance).

It also seems to help if the band is still touring, like Metallica, or the Stones. The bands that suffer are those that are off the radar, no matter how popular they were at the time.

So... meme time? Which albums (pick as many as you like) would you recommend from the 90s to a teenager now? You can cross over to the late 80s or early 00s if you must?

Although... who's to say said teenager wouldn't have already sampled whatever you recommended, applying the 3 second "is it good" test and dragged it in the trash icon already?