verging_on_random

The Great Australian WTF?

I think I heard this correctly … it was on The 7.30 Report a few minutes ago, one of those stories they run every time the Reserve Bank Board meets to review interest rates. So I wasn’t really paying attention, but I’m sure I heard some frustrated would-be home-owner bemoan the injustice of these outrageous real estate prices and talk about how ‘The great Australian dream of a two storey home with a backyard and a swimming pool’ was now out of reach.

Excuse me? When did this become the Great Australian Dream, in the sense of something that ordinary people could legitimately aspire to? Something that you could justifiably feel you were entitled to as long as you worked hard and didn’t kill anybody? A two storey home with a backyard and a swimming pool. What about the home theatre, the three bathrooms and the walk-in wardrobe? I guess they go without saying.

I’m reminded of a story I read 10 or 12 years ago, some poor mum explaining how impossible it was to get by on $75,000 a year. Cos the kids wouldn’t settle for Lynx shoes you know, they had to have Nikes, and the family had only been able to go overseas on holidays once in a whole two years. Fair dinkum, if the Herald had set up a hotline I would have donated the $170 a week dole that I was on at the time.

Anyone remember who coined the phrase ‘Culture of Entitlement’? Smart person, whoever it was. Cut foreign aid I say … time enough to give money to foreigners when we can afford a decent standard of living for our ourselves.