CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
In news that could see up to 300,000 Australians default on their mortgages, The Reserve Bank has increased interest rates for the first time in more than 11 years, with a 25-basis-point hike taking the cash rate target to 0.35 per cent.
With Australians growing anxious about years of economic strife ahead, Australia’s media families are doing their very best to re-contextualise this devastating blow to young people as a prime example of millennial entitlement.
It is now abundantly clear that the Murdochs, Channel Nine’s chairman Peter Costello and Channel Seven’s Kerry Stokes are increasingly nervous about the implications of the Morrison Government being replaced by a political party that might not be 100% committed to making sure their billionaire mates get richer.
On front pages right across the country today, there have been photos of leathery old wealth hoarders regurgitating focus-grouped Liberal Party talking points – urging young people to feel thankful that they didn’t have it as hard the charmed generation before them.
These sentiments have been echoed in Betoota Grove today, as a post-war Australian property investor tells the Betoota Advocate just how difficult life was for someone who was lucky enough to be too young for the Vietnam war, and now too old to worry about Climate Change.
Kenneth Adettall (70) says just because he had a completely free university education, four decades of economic growth in a country that expected absolutely zero civil duties from it’s citizens, doesn’t mean his life wasn’t hard.
“We didn’t have a colour TV in the house when I was a kid” says Kenneth, a semi-retired carpet store owner-operator.
“Not like you lot. You got to enjoy so much COLOUR TV”
“And don’t get me started on this interest rate rise. You spoilt kids have no idea what an interest rate hike is”
As Kenneth points out, when he bought his home 40 years ago, for smaller price than a 2019 model compact SUV Toyota Rav4, he had to contend with an astronomical 17 PERCENT interest rate.
“You kids just don’t know how to save” says Kenneth, who seems to have forgotten that it’s currently impossible to find a 2 bedroom free-standing property in any major Australian city for less than 1 million dollars.
While the fact that Kenneth is still paying off this same mortgage in 2022 should invalidate any opinion he has on economics, he continues his rant.
“I never had it easy!” says the man who bought his first house in his early 20s on a single income when Aboriginal people were still considered flora and fauna by Australian law.
“It didn’t get any easier when I bought my second and third”
“Or fourth!”
