The preferred housing model. Suburbia… endless.

There’s nothing more boring than writing about interest rates, and housing affordability. It’s a problem that’s tearing at the very fabric of our society. We all know now. The statistics are out.  Housing in the major capitals is affordable only if you’ve got wealthy parents. Or parents who just happen to be recently DEAD. If you haven’t got wealthy parents you’ll never be ale to afford the twelve billion trillion dollars you need, and that’s just for the deposit. Then there’s the prospect of buying a house where you’d actually want to live. Forget it. Inner city housing is way way too expensive so you’ll have to settle for somewhere out on the fringe. The state government in their wisdom has “solved the housing affordability crisis’ by opening up another trillion hectares of land for development, to provide more housing. To relieve the ‘housing bubble’.

Olden days suburbia. Children were encouraged to play outside.

We all know the state government has taken the easy track and caved into the developers, They’ve been land banking for years. And they know that with their donations to either party, sooner or later their horse will come in, and they’ll make squillions. And do it under the mask of altruism. Another opportunity for them to cash in on our incapacity to plan anything beyond a chook raffle. The suburbs keep spreading and youll be living a trillion miles for where you work, and the kiddies will just have to get used to being driven anywhere. That’s what you get when you succumb to the best planning advice on offer from the lobbyists. And the lobbyists are the numero uno, the Property Council .

Modern Day outsiders. For those who can’t afford a home. There’s winners and Losers. 

The Property Council owns Australia, they love negative gearing and they own the politicians. We do get the best politicians the lobbyists pay for, and in the recent federal election all roads led to the property developers. They’re the princelings of our modern nuanced democracy, and they’re there to ensure that the bubble don’t pop. It’ll just get bigger and bigger, and with a bit of luck, when it finally does pop, the developers and the property council will have made enough money to ensure that only the last in this merry go round of musical chairs will get burnt. And they will be burnt. But “they” will be those on the bottom of the ladder, the mums and dad investors who bought property thinking it would be as ‘safe as houses’.

Not sure if we want to be winners, when the losers are DEAD.

And why is the Property Council so powerful? Since Joe Hockey got rid of manufacturing and research, we only have the two industries, property and mining. That’s a two-speed economy. And there’s been such a push on from mainland China to sock cash into a safe secure investment hideaway, the inner suburbs have just been priced to oblivion. They’re all going, Sino-Georgian. The outer suburbs is where all the “other’ migrants will go. That’s why we have a population policy that is third world-ish. Because we don’t manufacture anything, we have an economy that relies on consumers buying shit they don’t need, which is invariably made in China. If you’ve got an economy that eschews inventiveness, ideas, the spark of imagination, that’s what you get. A rusk, controlled by a few, and with no vision for the future. Except shopping and negative gearing.

Tim Flannery called them the ‘future eaters’, we’d just call em the ‘here and now-ists’, They’re here, they control the now, and they don’t care about the future. And they see governance of any persuasion a hindrance. For them, the deal is the all ensuring principle of society. The downside? Three dead in a factory fire in Footscray. Murdered.

But we know society post Thatcher doesn’t exist anyway.