When exactly did the great Australian dream start to die? Even conservative commentators are acquiescing to signs that we’re about to lose again, this time on faithful bricks and mortar.

For some, empire and commonwealth sprung forth when Alfred the Great devised his revolutionary system of boroughs to help organise and defend the new kingdom. Today we wear these postcodes like a badge of honour and so easily fall victim to juvenile tribalism at the mere mention of them. Consider the old English word ham used in the same era to represent an estate of gathered souls, and the most primitive instinct, to shelter one’s offspring from harm. It was the place where affections were gathered together to form the building blocks of society, being that of family and homestead.

In the colonies and during the dreamtime of early settlement, a hearth and home were the peak of migrant aspiration; nothing has changed, even if it’s further away from the CBD than some would prefer. As Australia started to form its own identity, national icons would practise future vocations against the boundaries of timber fences. This hallowed turf is diminishing before our eyes and consequently a sacred rite of passage for Australian children…

Don Bradman faced hundreds of balls by hitting a golf ball against a water tank. Neil Harvey’s immaculate footwork came from playing balls darting off jagged cobblestones. Keith Miller and Betty Wilson applied champion-forming repetition by hanging a pantyhose and ball from the beautifully ugly Hills Hoist clothesline. Alan Davidson bowled as accurately as possible because if he missed the stumps, the ball ran down a long unforgiving downhill road. The Chappell brothers were facing balls in the backyard by age two! The imagination of post-war children was captured by locals who were given the time and space to become their best.

For those not as talented, it was still a crucible of early life experience, to hear the cry: HowzThat! and then realise you’d been caught plum in front of the wicket, and that it was time to take a walk from the dirt-drawn crease. Our first test of self-governing was over. I still remember the pink-faced neighbourhood bully tucking his bat under his arm and submitting to the rule of law.

Equality of opportunity to early life experiences that impart the unteachable things are irreplaceable; like the grounding of winning and losing in an authentic peer-built environment, not one manufactured in a classroom. We are on the cusp of chats over the fence being relegated to a new class of aristocracy. Can we say that Gen Z will ever be able to understand what it feels like to come off the sweet spot of a Gray Nicholls and someone squeal, six and out?

Patrick Troy, arguably our best academic in the department of urban planning appointed by the Labor Party, was the brave visionary who called the trend to high-density urban planning ‘unfriendly child environments’. Cabinet submissions at the time exposed the fact that significant electoral considerations were to be kept out of the public eye and that the high-density gerrymander created a favourable composition of voters even when evidence suggested that public housing in particular was environmentally questionable. A perpetual Achilles heel of our system is that spend-a-thons are not tightly linked to good outcomes, it’s hardly a secret anymore that MP’s re-election is an ascendant consideration.

An epidemic of nonverbal learning disability has formed around high-density environments across the globe, parents protest about workarounds, but the evidence is mounting of the correlation between the use of electronic devices, and clinical depression relative to planning. Consider RMIT honorary doctor of laws, Chuck Feeney, who gave away all of his $8 billion fortune because of the lessons learned in New Jersey’s Elmora neighbourhood, it resembles any other working-class suburb in Australia. Porches, yards, driveways and fences put individuals in each other’s lives and the concrete footpaths were a reminder that it was a short walk to get there.

Property rights is where society once began. It’s where children were taught about inalienable human rights: the right to life, liberty, and property. So serious was the concept of trespass on this sacred ground of family life that brandishing a firearm was considered dutiful conduct to maintain order. The ‘castle’ doctrine lives on in many American states. Today it’s an even stronger protection against the vicious boogeyman of a faltering economy and a nest egg for one’s retirement.

The modern lamentation is that even with a full-time job, lenders are likely to conclude that you’re still not a sure thing to service a loan. If nothing goes wrong with your health, job, or marriage then you might arrive on a split block on the rural-urban fringe, but before retirement, you will have watched around 50 per cent of your wage stuffed back into the bank’s mortgage stocking. It’s enough to make you want to walk backwards onto the bails of your own stumps.

To buck the system we need to return to viewing homeownership as essential to family and nation-building, starting with a fresh approach to the status of the primary residence.

Stamp Duty remains the most toxic overhead to enter the market and governments suckle at the teat of it like a crack-baby. The addiction is not overstated. In the last financial year, the Andrews-Allan government raised over $10 billion from this one stream alone, keeping us in unsuitable homes for longer than necessary, especially during crises like death and divorce. Upward mobility is also diminished for the aspirational working class, today’s forgotten people.

At the 2023 Liberal Party State Council, a room full of delegates from the Victorian division listened to some Young-Liberals argue a motion on how we might put ourselves on a payment plan, in order to fulfil the unjust duty. Their NSW counterparts, always eager to make a name for themselves, proposed ALP-style high-density rezoning in a motion at their own conference. When did we start lacking the confidence to fill budget holes by actually growing the economy? We were On The Move, to borrow a slogan. For every one thousand dollars spent on residential building works, another three is raised in direct economic activity – able to sustain nine full-time jobs. Back in Sir Bob Menzies’ day, intervention meant a global search for untarifed timber, after we had stopped chasing Rommel around in the desert.

In their desperation to solve the housing crisis, our government is seizing planning controls and will ban objections to medium-density projects, as long as a significant portion of cheaper duplexes are included. Long-standing design amenities like off-street parking won’t matter anymore and the lowered price tag of your primary asset meant to future-proof your retirement will be unquestionable. In traditional Labor growth corridors, newer housing estates like Cloverton know what rushed planning leads to. Residents regularly face 45-minute waits to creep through 1km of bottle-necked congestion that resembles a moat and drawbridge.

A Green-Left demand to institute a statewide rent freeze, totally oblivious to the ramifications of such misplaced compassion was still no match for a proposal to return to the holy grail of socialist-based administrations being that of death duties which would have legally stolen 5 per cent of the family home for the privilege of you dying. The response was savage and the idea from assistant treasurer Danny Pearson went back into the ether.

Our money-shuffling government already takes huge slices on mum-and-dad-investors with capital gains, windfall, and progressive land tax. This year, increases of 34 per cent (according to the Parliamentary Budget Office) confirms Victorians are now paying the highest property tax in the nation. There’s little wonder why construction insolvencies are at their highest in a decade. This figure is expected to rise again after the crossbench tripled the residential vacancy tax in November 2023. On a medium Melbourne house price, a $56,000 fee over three years potentially awaits you as a reward for investing in Victoria.

Covid, global warming, housing. It’s all an emergency! The eight most terrifying words put in sequence remain: ‘We’re from the government and here to help.’

On September 20, 2023, a fuller housing package was released which includes 90 new town planners for a backlog of permits, which according to insiders is likely to result in millions worth of project teardowns because of work-flows stacked with advice from junior planners. The central theme of this quick fix is a reduction of urban sprawl that will culminate into a dystopian inner-city melting pot that can’t handle what’s already in front of it. Who can name the police station, hospital or classroom that’s not already inundated? Headlines of 80,000 new homes every year for a decade are believed by the same voters who expect infrastructure projects to come in on time and budget because they saw chairman Dan in a hard hat on the ABC.

Medium-density builds appear to solve problems by integrating us with existing infrastructure, but the holistic nature of a human being is overlooked. Like its hi-density mistress, suburban character is lost, design choices, entertainment, health, privacy, and individuality are all eroded which should be enough to settle the polemics of a difficult political problem. Australia is not Japan or Singapore nor is the medium-density compromise of Paris and Barcelona fit for purpose. A BBQ and swing-set at dusk equalises rich and poor on a daily basis, parents shouldn’t face uncertain expeditions to secure a public grill at the municipal park. These unintended consequences are outside the expertise of the most decorated economists.

Homeownership as the centrepiece of public policy requires a migrational flux to the regions. Outside of NIMBY self-interest, there must be a revelation that the current approach is hurting us collectively. This might be assisted by some of these old ideas, still waiting to be hit for six:

• Special economic zones: income tax breaks for residents that relocate
• An even more aggressive scheme for companies that do likewise
• Progressive rural loading pay for GPs and other essential services
• Further identification and release of vast crown land reserves
• Job matching that links migrants to skills shortages in the regions
• Extension of the blackspot program for mobile networks
• Extension of state-wide bottleneck projects that impede decisions to move
• Scholarships for regional universities
• Public-Private partnerships in regional Hospitals
• Re-commitment to inland/high-speed rail
• Rural living rezoning and grey area green wedge
• Consulting with banks and fixing the salary cap on the ‘shared equity scheme’

A Regional Australia Institute survey claims that one in five are contemplating a move to the regions, it’s not like cultural offerings of the metropolitan lifestyle aren’t available, they’ve been there for decades. Apartment living most often serves as a stop-gap not a destination. Rate-hungry local councillors on the other hand are thrilled that the Albanese government has projected 27,000 new immigrants into capital cities but apartment living is manifestly unsuitable for these larger families.

Harold Holt once noted that central planners in the Labor movement were terrified at the political landscape of millions of ‘little capitalists’ who were about to have a genuine stake in their adopted communities; suburbs were not a microcosm of our pillars of industry, they strived to look in the opposite direction and remain bastions of urban retreat.

If the great Australian dream dies, all the smoking ceremonies in the world will not pull us out of an impending spiritual doom. A broad-based strategy to decentralise our cities needs to be revisited. The experts say the economics isn’t good but in every other portfolio this hasn’t been a problem when ‘putting people first’.

The real climate emergency is a social compact that is about to be torn in two; people that don’t recognise themselves.

The remedy, of course, is not to go deeper into taxpayers’ pockets but that every kid should be forced to face a yorker before the streetlights come on and mum calls stumps.