ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
After living rent-free with his parents for two years, Bowen Niles and his fiance-of-five-years Heidi Nichols have been able to enter the local property market. They’ve secured a three-bedroom townhouse on Jasper Street in the French Quarter and years of renting in grotty apartments in the same neighbourhood.
“I’m just so glad I can put holes in the walls finally. Hang some art,” said Bowen.
“But it’s great to finally get out of Mum and Dad’s place. I love them but fuck, they’re so annoying. They’d make me do this shit after work like the mowing. They made Heidi do the shopping sometimes, too. But yeah, getting our own place has been a real game changer.”
One part of their game that’s certainly changed is their outlook on life and what the future of this country looks like.
“We have a mortgage now, so we have an added worry,” Heidi added.
“With interest rates going up. Inflation. You know, all the things. Politics becomes much more important because your vote actually starts to have an effect on your destiny.
However, Bowen and Heidi were sprawled over their new Nick Scali lounge last Monday night watching Four Corners when something in their mind clicked.
They watched Opposition leader Peter Dutton talk to a reporter that he wouldn’t have made eye contact with in a lift a year ago. It was a confronting programme to watch, they say, after years of supporting human rights protests on social media and chortling when Scotty From Marketing went on TV and made a cunt of himself.
“You know,” said Bowen.
“I don’t mind this new Peter Dutton.”
Despite his part in numerous human rights abuses, his hand in prolonging human suffering unjustly, weaponising racial hatred and xenophobia, Heidi nodded.
“He seems like a nice family man. I didn’t know he was a policeman? And he’s done so well for himself?” she said.
“I bet his parents didn’t shoehorn him into the property market. He looks like he did it on himself.”
Bowen nodded and smiled.
“He’s not as bad as those smelly renting lefties say he is.”
More to come.
