Two years ago, I bought an apartment. It was an oddly terrifying prospect then, and it’s an oddly terrifying prospect now. I did not live the kind of life where property ownership was a possibility, and yet here I am. Occasionally I put Once in a Lifetime on the stereo and it feels horribly appropriate.
I earn about thirty grand a year, on a good year. I shouldn’t own anything as large as an apartment. I should barely own the number of books that do. So I largely achieved home ownership by doing exactly what our current prime minister suggested when it comes to buying into the property market: I burrowed money from my parents. Technically, they offered the money. And then we fought for about a month over whether that was a viable thing, and how I’d pay it back, and whether I wanted to live the kind of life where I was tied to a particular piece of property, and how much I disliked the idea of needing a steady pay-cheque instead of wanting one as a change of pace after years of sessional and freelance work.
They won. I went looking at apartments.
It’s still weird. I still resent the necessity of a steady pay-cheque, from time to time.
But it doesn’t change the fact that I am emblematic of the Prime Ministers preferred method of getting around the generational problems of entering the housing market.
The difference is this: I recognise that I am an enormously privileged fucker.
Suggesting this approach as the baseline assumption for people under the age of forty owning property makes me lose my shit. It makes me happy we’re six weeks away from an election, here in Australia. And that we may actually get a chance to see the election fought over actual policies rather than personalities and taking pot-shots at the internal party politics that defined the last two elections.
I care who wins this election. More than I have cared about politics in a long time, and I fucking care about politics. I just care about politics a lot more when the plans behind policies are clearly articulated and the vision the government is heading towards is clear and in-synch.
Bring it on, motherfuckers. Convince me you’re worthy of the job.
