How will you pay the stamp duty when you buy this property ?
usually 80% lvr for equity loan so 400k * 80% = 320 k so you could borrow zero as you don't have enough equity.

How long has wife worked for your company as this will affect this idea but it worked for my father a couple of years ago when he went for a loan.

If you want this type of hands off type of property management you might be better off getting a DHA house.
check out
http://www.invest.dha.gov.au

They are known as quantity surveyors

The more interest you show in the property the more the real estate agent will try it on.

You must be prepared to pass on this property and use your time to look for a better deal. If you can get over your anger and move on to looking at the next deal that will come up.
You can then tell this agent you have made a mistake and have now changed your mind and will look else where to buy and the offer is withdrawn .
You might find the agent will accept this and let you slip through their fingers but you never know they might realize they are losing a sale and might make you a better offer.
You could make an offer of $260,000 with a two week sunset clause that the offer is only open for two weeks and after the two weeks move on.

I increased an offer once by $5000 to allow the vendor to pay off their mortgage but they had got stuck in a housing commission loan repayment scheme where 15% of their wage was used to pay off the loan. After 10 plus years the vendor ended up with a higher loan amount and also they were on a higher fixed interest rate.

If you can always ask the agent what the reason for selling is. You can be lucky and get an honest answer and then be able to structure an offer around what helps the vendor.

As an example say the vendor was an investor and wanted to sell to have money for a holiday then a quick 30 day settlement would suit them more than getting the most money from the sale.

You may be able to use a longer settlement as a bargaining point with the seller. As it gives the seller more time to organise somewhere else to live. They might bring down the price for the opportunity of saving interest from bridging finance.
You do not usually pay interest on the loan until settlement occurs and you get capital growth in the mean time.
It gives you some breathing space to organize finance The bank will love the extra time. 

Does property have built in robes, air conditioning, ducted heating, modern kitchen , good bathroom, recently painted
What you have to do is compare what other properties are renting at. And what features they have as mentioned in the first line of this comment. I looked on www,realestate.com.au
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=s&cu=fn-rea&s=vic&ss=&ag=&t=ren&snf=rbs&chk=0&lead=&ty=&searchFormSource=advanced+search&tb=jan+juc&u=JAN+JUC&is=1&pm=&px=&pme=any&pxe=any&minbed=&maxbed=&cat=&p=10&o=def
There are 5 properties on it.
So if you have a tenant already in the place you cannot jack the rent up from $105 a week to say $300 a week. The tenant can complain to the tenants tribunal that you are raising the rent by an unreasonable level. Regular reasonable rental increases every 6 to 12 months conditions the tenant to rental increases and your dad can slowly catch up with the current rental market rent levels. For example a $10 a week increase is like a 10% rent increase to the tenant
Where as a $105 to $300 a week increase is approximately a 200% rent increase to the tenant which may be seen as unfair by the tenant..
I was in the same predictament but my previous tenant broke the lease for personal reasons and I was able to increase my rent to market value minus $20 ($20 a week reduction due to not having ducted heating, garage, ect) for the next tenant.
about 8 years ago I made the mistake with one of my tenants in not increasing the rent regularly over 8 years and the rent fell behind so I increased the rent from$130 a week to $135 a week and the tenant abandoned the property. $5 a week was about a 5% increase and it caused the tenant to leave. The market rent was $160 a week when I increased the rent by $5 a week.

If your dad has not increases the rent for a number of years for this tenant you might find the tenant moves when faced with a reasonable 10% rental increase as they are not used to having rental increases and realize the good low rent is a thing of the past and they will be facing rental increases from now on.

Unless the current tenant moves to another house and then you can increase the rent to the market value in one hit.

Formula

$105 a week = 105 * 52 = 5460    per annum 
yield = 5460/450000 * 100 = 1.2%

$300 a week = $15600
Yield is 15600/450000 = 3.4%

Other areas in Victoria have rental yields are between 4.0% to 6%
Worked out by going on http://www.realestate.com.au and looking at what is being sold that has a current tenant renting at $x per week. Unfortunately None at Jan Juc selling with tenants. So at a lower 4% yield value.

450,000 * 4.0/100 = 18000 per annum.
rent = 20250/52 = $346 a week

Check local real estate agents that rent properties. Might be worth having them take over the management of the rental property as they can assess the achievable rent.

 neighbouring torquay
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104615838&f=60&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=37047593&s=vic&snf=rbs&tm=1227648990
rent $400 a week value is $490,000 – yield is  4.2% yield

A maximum geared property has less of your cash in it and more borrowed money in it. So you could have another property that is non tax deductible having less borrowings against it while having the deductible property having more borrowings and less deposit through cross co laterilising it.

Alternatively you may have one property that is positively geared and another property that is negatively geared. The two balance out so that you are offsetting positive passive income against a rental loss property so nett property income = zero.

positively geared property could have a larger deposit and smaller loan thus making it positively geared assuming that it is difficult to get positively geared property without a large deposit in the current property market.

c2 "Was basically just wondering what people think of both and which one is the lesser of two evils."
Negative gearing!
It really depends on if you can afford to cover the short fall if negatively geared.
How many properties can you afford to cover with your wage.
You are betting on capital growth after capital gains tax is taken out to outstrip the costs of holding the property.
 If interest rates go up your costs go up.

Positive gearing.
If you are like me with no wage – cash flow is more important.
You own less property but it doesn't cost you to keep properties.
Pay less land tax as you own less properties
If you keep paying down properties and buying more eventually you have cash flow that can be used to cover a negatively geared property. So you can eventually have a mix of both methods.

I use to be negatively geared but am now positively geared.

As Elka stated "Does your question relate to a specific situation ?"
Possible situations .

Situation one:
You have a property with heaps of equity but you do not have any cash for a deposit for the next property purchase.
Solution one.:
             Borrow money from house one as line of credit and avoid cross colaterisation.
Pros – You now have money for deposit. on second house. The First house doesn't become repossessed if you can't pay loan on
             house two.
Cons. You have borrowed the deposit so you have to pay interest on the first line of credit loan as well as the new investment
            loan. So you are probably negatively geared anyway.
Solution Two.
            Use property one as security as well as property two.

Pros- Avoid Loan Mortgage Insurance. If you get behind in repayments you have breathing space due to lower Loan value ratio.
           May make it easier to borrow from bank.
Cons. Will probably be negative geared. If you default you could lose both houses.

Pros- You main residence or PPOR has less non tax deductible interest payments. Avoid Loan Mortgage Insurance. If you get behind in repayments you have breathing space due to lower Loan value ratio. May make it easier to borrow from bank. Maximum leverage.      
Cons. Will probably be negative geared and can claim a tax deduction to help pay off loan. If you default you could lose both houses.  

Yes.
What might be a consideration is if the mining company has future plans to mine the land under the building.
You need to know the term of the lease. They are 99 years to 999 years and can be less due to remaining time left.
I know the power companies that mine coal in Victoria lease the surrounding land to farmer so they can mine the coal when the need arises in the future.