Australian Politics
The brutal new class division appearing in Australia
This is not a new division at all. There have always been those who inherited significantly and those who did not. And being a "not" is far from a life sentence. Those who pass down wealth often started off poor themselves. I did. Nobody ever gave me a penny -- or even a cent for that matter. I earned it all.
And I remember that. I now provide heavily discounted rental accommodation to five people and give half my disposable income to a charitable education cause. So the rigid class lines described below are a myth. There are such lines but they are not all due to inheritance and are not fixed or permanent. And inherited wealth is often squandered anyway, which makes it very impermanent. It is squandering that I find contemptible
Inheritocracy – a term recently heard. Our lucky country is careering towards a great generational divide; a landed gentry of property owners on one side and renters on the other. A brutal new class division, flippant about educational attainment as the great equaliser. Rules are upended in the new order; degree holders may well be losing out. Indeed, among certain writers it’s now de rigueur to put “renter” in your social media bio. Blazing contempt and coolness, the brazen political stance of the othered. But as a nation we’re heading into uncharted waters, as resentments grow and younger voters cleave to whatever political party can do something about this vexed housing situation. If it can. The challenges are immense, the population restive.
That silky game of inheritocracy is playing out all around me. In one corner, a succession of friends and acquaintances stepping into enormous wealth as their parents pass away and family dwellings are inherited. The talk is of clearing parents’ houses for sale, upsizing into better places, holiday homes on the coast, paying off mortgages, extensive travel. They’re living their best lives, free of the corrosiveness of money worries. That’s a heady liberation. And during a cost-of-living crisis, no less.
In another corner, the dumping of building waste in a local car park. A council man clearing it up tells me people can’t afford the tipping fees anymore, so they drive all over the city to find car parks and secluded roads without CCTV to deposit their waste, which sometimes contains asbestos. A tiny snapshot of the other side. Of despairing Australians forgoing three solid meals a day because they can’t afford it. Of putting off the doctor visit because it’s too expensive. Of holidays as a distant memory. And many younger Australians work within a new order of employment – they’re immersed in all the stresses and indignities of the gig economy; the sheer, craven callousness of a system not on their side.
The stark reality: vast numbers cannot afford to live the life their parents had. For a 34-year-old in 1990, the average mortage in Australia was roughly three times their yearly wage – now it’s eight times. Many have given up on that great Australian dream of home ownership, a situation likely to reverberate through the generations. It’ll never happen for them now, nor, quite possibly, their children. Thus disadvantage rolls down through the years. What is bequeathed is all the uncertainties of the rental market – and a fundamental stress in life is instability. When it comes to property, we want to feel safe, in our own place, in a dwelling no one is going to take away from us. In the lucky country, the Great Australian Dream is now denied to a vast tranche of the unlucky.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has warned that if we don’t act sharpish on housing affordability then Sydney may well be heading down the path of San Francisco, where you can see middle-class workers in suits and ties lining up for food banks and living in homeless shelters. The natural order of things, upended. The consequence of an obscene property market. Mookhey believes there’s only a five- to 10-year window to act.
“How one grudges the life and energy and spirit that money steals from one,” writer Katherine Mansfield wrote during a stretch of poverty. “I long to spend and have a horror of spending: money has corrupted me these last years.” The dream, for all of us, is to not be held hostage by a lack of money. To be free of the endless scrabble to obtain it, because how exhausting, stressful, consuming that is. What an extraordinary moment in time in Australia. We’re heading towards a new class order. It’s called a “propertocracy”, and it’s a tragedy for our nation.
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Students choose arts degrees in droves despite huge rise in fees under Morrison government
I took an Arts degree and enjoyed it but whether the taxpayer should be funding it is another question
Owen Magee knew how high his student loan would be if he enrolled in an arts degree – he saw the headlines in 2020, when he was still in early adolescence.
But measures introduced by the former Morrison government that doubled the price of some degrees to incentivise students into other courses didn’t dissuade him, nor did recent cost-of-living increases.
“I decided I’d prefer doing something I’m interested in,” the 18-year-old says of his decision to study a media and arts degree at the University of New South Wales.
“A lot of young people are moving away from conventional ideas of education and the workforce to pursuing things we genuinely enjoy in life.
“We know what’s best for us – we’re willing to stand up and say ‘this is our future, we’re not going to allow our lives to be dictated’.”
Data provided to Guardian Australia shows Magee is not alone. Students are flocking to arts degrees in record numbers despite a 113% rise in student contributions for communications, humanities and society and culture degrees, implemented as part of the widely condemned Job-ready Graduates (JRG) scheme.
It’s equivalent to $16,323 a year, or about $50,000 for a three-year degree.
Despite the spike, Australia’s largest universities including UNSW, the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and Monash have all experienced a jump in applications for arts degrees, leading to higher enrolments.
At the University of Melbourne, demand for its Bachelor of Arts degree is higher in 2024 than any time in the past five years.
It’s had a 14% surge in the number of first preferences for the bachelor program since 2022, while enrolments have also jumped since 2021, rising from 1,597 to 1,641 this year.
Monash University has seen first preferences for arts degrees rise by 11% since 2021. Enrolments jumped almost 2% this year, at the same rate as the University of Sydney, which has consistently grown its arts enrolments since the JRG reforms were introduced.
Prof Claire Annesley, dean of arts, design and architecture at UNSW, says there has been a “massive swell” of students choosing degrees in her faculty.
First preferences for arts degrees surged by 14% at UNSW this year, while the student course load was also up.
“I think they can see the future better than we can,” she says. “This generation of young people will be creating jobs you and I can’t imagine – and industry knows that as well.”
The latest graduate outcomes survey reported the largest increase in employment rates in the field of humanities (up from 81.7% in 2021 to 86.6% in 2022).
Median graduate salaries also jumped, sitting at $66,700 compared with sciences and mathematics at $66,000 and business and management $65,000.
In the unknown future of AI, Annesley says humanities offer skillsets that can’t be replaced by emerging technology. Complex societal problems – from the climate emergency to the pandemic – need effective communicators and policymakers.
“AI can reproduce what we already know, but creativity is an innately human skill,” she says.
“Right now we’re penalising people we need to be part of the business of innovation and core solutions. There’s an urgency here.”
The CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, says JRG “failed” to encourage students into certain disciplines and instead shifted additional costs on to students and universities.
According to the University Admissions Centre (UAC), which manages applications for New South Wales universities, 21% of first preferences were directed to society and culture degrees in the most recent intake, with roughly the same number of offers provided.
The most popular courses were a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Double Law at UNSW.
The figures are nearly identical to 2021. Yet in the same period, first preferences to health, historically the most popular study area, have reduced (28% to 25%), as year 12 applicants have turned to arts degrees in higher numbers.
“We’ve already called and will continue to call on government to prioritise student support measures in the forthcoming budget,” he says.
The Universities Accord final report recommended JRG needed “urgent remediation”, adding it had “significantly and unfairly increased what students repay”.
The education minister, Jason Clare, told Guardian Australia the government would respond to the recommendations in the accord “shortly”.
But to Magee, the further into his course he gets, the more concerned about his economic future he becomes.
“Down the road, my student debt will take a lot of my income … it worries me,” he says.
“The government should be encouraging students to find paths they enjoy, not restricting it.”
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Living paycheck to paycheck and crammed into Chinese-style high rise apartments: Dick Smith predicts a future Australia that NO-ONE wants to see...
Dick Smith fears today's young people will have no savings and be forced to live in Chinese-style high-rise apartments unless immigration is urgently slashed.
Younger voters are the group least likely to criticise record-high immigration, even though they are the most likely to be locked out of the housing market, unable to buy or even now rent.
Mr Smith, who has nine grandchildren, said 'woke' young voters are more likely to back the Greens and believe all critics of high immigration are racists.
But the veteran businessman and philanthropist says they need to understand the connection between a surging population and climate change.
The entrepreneur, who turned 80 last month, fears homes with a backyard in Australia's capital cities will no longer exist by 2050.
He said the national population will have almost doubled to 50 million by then - and housing will have become even more 'catastrophically' unaffordable.
For young people now, that would mean a future living in overcrowded conditions like China, even if Australia's annual population growth pace slowed to 1.6 per cent, down from 2.5 per cent now which is the highest levels since the early 1950s.
'Basically, we're doomed; we're going to increase our population to staggering numbers,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'Jammed into high-rise like China, many very poor and who just live pay packet to pay packet and have no savings at all.
'Mainly capital cities, basically, will be like Shanghai.
'The beautiful houses with a block of land for the kids to play in the front yard and have a cubby house, that will go forever.
'Every house will be knocked down and replaced with high rises.'
Mr Smith has also blamed the ABC for young people being less likely to criticise high immigration, even though they are suffering in the housing market as a result.
'The people at the ABC, being a bit lefty, you would think would support having a population plan,' he said.
'The ABC never, ever suggests we should have a population plan because then you'd have to talk about our high immigration levels, and in the ABC, if you talk about limiting immigration, you must clearly be racist.'
Mr Smith argued most young voters, obsessed with climate change, had failed to make the connection between a surging population and unaffordable housing - because of the ABC.
'We have one great hope, and that's the ABC; it's independent, it should be able to tell young people that you can't have endless growth and we need to have a plan,' he said.
'But they don't say it. I can understand why the young people wouldn't link population growth to unaffordable housing because they're never told about it.'
Mr Smith suggested young campaigners against high immigration could make the link between rapid population growth and higher carbon emissions, with Labor and the Greens both committed to a 43 per cent reduction by 2030.
'Younger people have been so frightened by what could happen with climate change,' he said.
'But there's no leader out there saying, "If climate change is caused by human beings, if we double the number of humans in our country, we're going to have double the problem".'
Unaffordable housing
Sydney's median house price of $1.4million is so expensive, someone would need to earn $293,578 a year, and be among the nation's top 1.5 per cent of income earners, to be able to buy on their own and avoid mortgage stress.
'It's a catastrophe,' Mr Smith said.
The Greens had commissioned those figures from the Parliamentary Library but the party's 32-year-old housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather last month told the ABC's Q+A program criticism of high immigration was a 'distraction'.
Mr Smith revealed his friend Bob Brown, a former Greens leader, admitted his party was reluctant to advocate lower immigration because it didn't want to be regarded as racist.
'It's quite incredible, the Greens have no population policy at all,' said Mr Smith.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13295455/Dick-Smith-immigration.html
*******************************************************Discrimination against men can be toxic too
On one reading, Jason Lau, the man who successfully challenged the discriminatory sexism of the “Ladies Only” lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, is a massive sook. But on another reading, Lau is a paladin for modern men.
He is the victor in a small but significant fight against an increasingly aggressive feminist agenda that portrays all masculinity as “toxic” but doesn’t bother to define for boys what “non-toxic” masculinity might look like.
Lau paid full entry price for MONA but, like all male visitors, was refused entry to the lounge, which is a women-only space full of plush sofas and exquisite artworks cordoned off from the male gaze. The curator of the lounge, Kirsha Kaechele, says the discrimination is the point of the artwork – it is a comment on the historical exclusion of women from male spaces for centuries.
So piqued was Lau at being bounced from the lounge that he instigated a legal challenge against the museum. He made a complaint with Tasmania’s anti-discrimination commissioner, who escalated it to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
This week the tribunal found in his favour, with deputy president Richard Grueber stating that the relevant legislation “does not permit discrimination for good faith artistic purpose per se”. The museum is considering its options regarding an appeal.
The case was a literal example of what some men’s rights activists say is the new discrimination against men that post #MeToo feminism has enabled. It’s a hard contention for many women to stomach, to put it mildly.
We still face discrimination in the form of violence from men, pay inequity, and in the household labour we disproportionately take on. That’s not to mention the fact that in the United States – supposed a beacon of freedom – women’s rights over their own bodies are being stripped away at a pace that would please the Taliban.
This week the state of Arizona was the latest to outlaw abortion care. Control over female reproduction and sexuality is a well-recognised marker of ultra-right, nationalist and fascist governments. So long as they’re not facing all of that, what have men got to complain about?
Plenty, according to a growing number of sensible voices in the United States. They caution that if the left demonises men, particularly young men, in the process of pushing a gender-equality agenda, it leaves a vacuum for boys to be scooped up by misogynistic influencer-jerks like the notorious Andrew Tate.
Richard Reeves is one such voice. He is a British-American author and commentator who used to work for the former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, he of the “radical-centrist” Liberal Democrats. Reeves now works at the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan social sciences think-tank in Washington DC, where he is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
In 2022, he published a book called Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters and What To Do About It. In it, Reeves argued that young men feel displaced by advancing women’s rights and a changing jobs market, where traditional, working-class “men’s work” is shrinking and less valued than it used to be.
Overall, boys now perform less well in school than girls (a trend replicated in Australia), and more young women go to university than young men (again, this is the same in Australia). Men are less likely to have close friends than women, and they take their own lives at a much higher rate.
In the United States, these problems are amplified for black men, who are overall poorer, more susceptible to family disruption, and incarcerated at a much higher rate than non-black men. Reeves argues that it’s wrong for progressives to dismiss the hostility of some young men to feminism as a sexist backlash against ideals of equal opportunity.
He says that “young men see feminism as having metastasized [sic] from a movement for equality for women into a movement against men, or at least against masculinity”. This is especially galling for young men when they are struggling on a number of fronts (not least in terms of their mental health), but these struggles are ignored or even mocked in mainstream discourse.
This, in turn, leaves them susceptible to the overtures of nasty misogynists like Tate, and the masculinist “philosopher” Jordan Peterson. The latter, in particular, affects understanding and empathy with struggling young men, and helps them turn their energies outward rather than retreating inwards.
Jonathan Haidt is a New York University academic and author who has recently published a book on the ills of smartphones combined with childhood – The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. He told the New York Times recently that there is plenty of evidence that social media is very bad for girls.
But for boys, the internet presents different dangers. While girls might be too invested online, for boys, the internet is a pathway to opting out. They do this through pornography and video games, which facilitate “the gradual withdrawal of boys from effort in the real world”. “We’re not seeing boys really applying themselves in the real world — we’re seeing them apply themselves in the virtual world,” Haidt says.
“They’re investing their time, their efforts into things that don’t pay off in the long run.” The appeal is obvious – porn and gaming are virtual opiates where your mastery is complete. In both, you are in control, or your male avatar is, and you can construct a fantasy-reality without having to consult, or please, the people around you – the women around you.
This male disaffection is mirrored in the growing political divide between young men and young women, a phenomenon across the OECD, including in Australia, on which I have written before. Sometimes the news can read like a litany of power abuses by men, from the geo-political to the interpersonal. But as we advance towards gender equality, we also need to consider how those stories are perceived by boys.
They need role models who can show them how to keep their innate sweetness, and pick a path towards being the sort of decent, kind men we all know in our families and communities.
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Jacinta Nampijinpa Price attacks state premiers over 'racist agenda' promoting treaties with Indigenous groups
Senator is scathing about state treaties
It's just amazing how the Left ignore the fact that racial discrimination is always harmful. They are deeply hypocritical about it. They are a brilliant example of deeds not matching words. Sad that a black lady has to call them out
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says state premiers are failing to heed the message of the Voice referendum and promoting a racist agenda pushed by an Indigenous minority - as NSW begins paving the way for an Indigenous treaty.
The NSW government led by Labor Premier Chris Minns announced yesterday it was seeking to appoint three three commissioners as part of a $5million commitment to exploring the possibilities of a treaty with Indigenous communities.
LNP Senator Price said Mr Minns was ignoring the result of last year's federal Voice referendum and instead listening to an urbanised activist class who did not reflect the wider Indigenous community.
Indigenous elder calls for land tax exemption, free uni and interest-free loans as part of upcoming treaty negotiations in Victoria
'Not only did Australians and particularly NSW Australians vote no to The Voice but they voted No to concepts that were attached to the Voice, that were treaty and truth,' Senator Price, who is Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, said.
The Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which is described as one leg of a process towards truth-telling and treaty in its foundation document, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, was rejected by over 60 per cent of voters last October.
Senator Price also pointed out that a recent vote for a Voice to the South Australian parliament only saw a 10 per cent turnout of those eligible to vote.
In the areas where the most marginalised Indigenous people live, only around 300 voted out of 2,000 eligible electors.
'Those premiers that think they know what’s best for their constituents are pushing ahead with separatism in our country,' she told Sydney radio station 2GB on Friday.
'It is dangerous, it is unhelpful and in a democratic nation such as ours, in 2024, this is going to put us backward.'
Senator Price said the poor turnout in South Australia as well as in an election to elect Victoria's First Peoples' Assembly showed that only a minority of urbanised Indigenous activists were pushing concepts such as voice and treaty.
'It’s this ridiculous notion, it’s a racist notion to say we all think the same as a race of people,' Senator Price said.
'We don’t treat any other race of people in this manner but we continue with progressive, leftist leaders to push that notion, which is a racist stereotype.
'We know that when you stand up and call yourself a victim and you attack anyone who listens with this notion, there are those in power who will fall at your feet and give you what you want.
'Just because we are Indigenous doesn’t mean we are all marginalised. In fact only 20 per cent of the three per cent or us are marginalised and our efforts should be focused on the marginalised.'
Senator Price joined Warren Mundine, her fellow No vote campaigner at the Voice referendum, in condemning the push for Indigenous people to be exempt from land tax as well as interest on loans and university fees as part of a Victorian treaty.
'It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s more rent-seeking,' she said.
'To suggest that the rest of Victoria, non-indigenous Victoria have to put their hand in their pocket, pay their taxes so it goes towards people of a certain racial heritage and of mixed heritage, is just utterly ridiculous.
'It is separatism, it causes angst, it causes a divide within communities.'
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has not ruled out the race-based financial advantages being included in a treaty with the state's Indigenous population, with negotiations to be held later this year.
Prominent Indigenous Elder Aunty Jill Gallagher AO has pushed the case for an array of financial benefits the government should consider for the treaty, which also included exempting Indigenous people from stamp tax and council rates.
Appearing on Sky News, Mr Mundine labelled these demands a 'brain fart' and said they would not make a practical difference to the major issues facing Indigenous people.
On Friday Senator Price was also asked by 2GB's Mark Levy about her hometown of Alice Springs, which following a riot has seen a curfew imposed on youths.
Senator Price said this had provided some welcome respite for the crime-wracked town but she feared what would happen when the curfew is lifted next Tuesday.
'We can’t live like this long-term,' she said. 'We need to have our community back to what it used to be instead of normalising this kind of behaviour because we don’t get it anywhere else.'
She said the Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney needed to step up and 'get serious with policy that is going to improve the lives of marginalised indigenous Australians'.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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