2019-01-06
By Max Larkin, GI Co-editor
So, what is the ‘Australian dream’? Let’s lay it out. It’s a three-bedroom house on a quarter acre block with a couple of cars. The idea of an Australian dream is so realistic it has defined our nation for the last fifty years and why shouldn’t it? We have plenty of space, tonnes of raw materials, we all could have a lovely home in the suburbs.
Unlike the Greens, the major parties don’t believe affordable housing is a human right, or if they do, they have done little to prove it. Most people my age (and I am 22) have given up on ever owning a house, let alone a ‘couple’ of cars. Of course, we have the hyper ambitious types who don’t mind getting a mortgage or two. But why must the rest of us go into debt for the rest of our lives to live in a house that doesn’t belong to us?
Rent prices are bonkers, housing prices are bonkers and what have our ‘enlightened’ leaders done about this? Nothing (or not enough). Even if you have managed to scrape enough to buy a house you have to claw and fight your way past ‘savvy’ investors that literally live off negative gearing and the value of the houses that could give homes to people who actually need them.
How broke do they need us to be? My friend with a bachelors in sound engineering has a decent full-time job on the gold coast at a very reasonable rate, but is living with eighty spare dollars a week because the rest of his money is going to rent, fuel and utilities. He doesn’t get to save and he is not living in a palace. He is living underneath a family in a segregated house. I’d hate to see what that family is paying on their mortgage.
It doesn’t matter who you are, you should be able to afford a house, or at least afford your rent. You should be able to save if you work hard, but you shouldn’t have to work yourself to death. We are not living in the industrial age anymore. Our society isn’t modern because it does not have a realistic and affordable housing market, but we can be. Our society isn’t progressive because our current institution would rather rob the poor than help them up.
How are we ever going to pay off our HECS debts, when we have to fork out more than half our income for unsavoury living conditions? We work hard and we have nothing to show for it, because the houses we are living in consume more money than tax and fuel combined. These insurmountable costs are keeping this generation down and unfortunately, I don’t think the next generation would stand a single chance against the corrupt, bigoted and money grabbing ethos of the Coalition.
I’m not even going to talk about vans. I don’t know anybody who likes living in a van.
‘Fair dinkum, Scomo’? ‘Australian Dream?’ Yeah right. The Coalition is intent on housing nothing but our hopes.
Header photo: The author’s abode.