LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
Once a suburban house with a scallywag of a home loan, a locally produced car in the driveway, children playing silently in the yard and a wife chained to the stovetop, the classic Australian dream is now something you only hear about if you work in aged care.
Gender roles and children that can conceal some rather horrific family secrets aside, the classic Australian dream is now something that you might come across in a history lesson or in the mad drawings of a particularly out-of-touch child.
For any young person trying to establish a secure foundation from which to live the rest of their life, the Australian dream still exists, it’s just one of those stressful dreams where nothing makes sense, nobody is acting normally and the anxiety feels incredibly heavy, close and real.
Common tropes of the modern Australian dream include replacing the home loan with rising rent payments, locally produced cars with buses, silent children with loud housemates and dutifully cooked dinners with takeaway that you are later informed is the reason you cannot ever afford to own a house.
Betoota local Claudette Shaw (32) states she is a prospective homeowner or at least would be if she ever had a salary that met inflation, didn’t get taxed extra for HECS debt and not having private health insurance, could afford to feed another person and lived in a country that didn’t have housing prices that seem like they have abused steroids at ‘00s WWE levels.
“I had this dream that I was paying more tax than some of Australia’s biggest businesses combined,” stated Shaw, who despite having less than $2k in the bank is constantly asked when she will be reproducing.
“The real estate agent led us into this really shitty house but they seemed so happy about it, lik their teeth were all doing their own little goatee girt grin too. Even though this place had an old sink in every room bar the kitchen and a wooden floor that croaked like a decommissioned Spanish galleon, investors still put in a bid for $2.3 million dollars.”
“Despite all this, the government, who, get this, was led by Albo now, were doing nothing about it while considering a tax hike to young people to help pay for aged care for the older generations who have kept stealing from us.”
“And a pack of chips was like $7!”
“The weirdest part was though, I didn’t wake up afterwards. It was just my life the whole time and trying to do anything about it felt like doing those dream punches where your arms are wet noodles and your knuckles are halfsucked marshmallows.”
MORE TO COME.
