Welcome to this week’s editorial,
When I was in my early teens I met a millionaire. He was a family acquaintance, newly arrived from Australia and now living in Port Moresby. Being a millionaire he built a millionaires house on Airvos Avenue overlooking the harbour. Being a millionaires house it could be seen by everyone in the town and presented an example of the sort of house you could aspire to if you were a millionaire who wanted millionaire views.
A visit to this house was an eye opener. It had views. Big views. It had a pool. A big pool. And it had a TV. The only TV in the town that picked up a Cairns TV station via its millionaire antenna. As a kid I was impressed. I was also amused that the big house with all its rooms, its billiards room and its poolside bar were all for just one person. The millionaire. He appeared to have everything he wanted but there was no family and no love in the house. Just stuff. Lots and lots of very expensive stuff.
The millionaire stayed around for a few years, made some good investments, found himself a wife and then left. Being a millionaire in a millionaire’s house there were no buyers for his grand design so it was left to slowly be consumed by the mould of the tropics. In time it was demolished with only the memory, of those who recall, the first millionaire.
When I left PNG to come to Australia I announced I was going to make my fortune. And maybe I might become a millionaire. Everyone laughed.
It was until many years later, sitting on my bed in a cramped hotel room in Saigon that I celebrated becoming a multi millionaire. Around $200 US in Vietnamese Dong covered the bed in wads of various denominations.
“If only they could see me now”. But the reality was that I was not a millionaire. I was a typical Australian leading a typical life earning a typical wage and the idea of being a millionaire was still well out of reach. But something has changed. Either we have all become rich overnight or the value of a million dollars has plunged dramatically. We are now told that when we retire we should have $1 million to cover our overheads as we grow old gracefully. That money should avail a moderate life in a moderate home until one needs to relocate to a moderate nursing home. If you have that along with moderate assets you might supplement it with a moderate pension that might moderately increase with CPI (or not). The next evidence of the devaluation of the title “Millionaire” is the realisation that a crappy little fibro bungalow two streets back from the beach with the possibility of a view from the top floor (if one was added) is now worth more than $1 million dollars. Up until a year or so ago the same house would have been around $500,000 to $600,000 and would have been within reach of a young family buying their first home. It has arrived at a point where anyone with their own home on the South Coast could call nearly themselves a “millionaire”. But what of those who don’t yet own their own home. Council has just sold land in Dalmeny to a developer justifying the sale by saying that it is their role to make available land to meet demand. There is a property boom across the shire with more and more subdivisions opening up at Coila, Broulee, Rosedale, Malua Bay and north in Long Beach and Nelligen. More land for more houses for more people. By rights the cost of houses should plateau with an increase in supply, but most likely they won’t. Sitting side by side with these million dollar houses is the fact that we have the highest youth unemployment ever experienced, a massive problem with underemployment and little sign of any wage growth in the near future. Our newly elected councillors all included the catchphrase of a need for more affordable housing. The only way houses will be more affordable to rent, or buy, will be if we have wages that can meet the ever increasing mortgages. I remember my Aunt telling me that behind the doors of Millionaire’s Row in Maroubra in the 1970’s were families who could only afford Weetbix and sausages. Forty years on and it seems little has changed—we all now live in millionaire’s houses with sausage incomes. And did I become a millionaire with a million dollars laid out on my bed? No, unless I sell my house and move to the Back of Bourke. Meanwhile, think of those of in our own community who have found themselves homeless being offered tents to live in (if they can find somewhere to legally set up camp). And those in donated caravans now being moved on from holiday camping sites. I once heard this was a lucky country where an average person, working hard, could afford an average house in an average street and live a good life with an average wage. Now it seems we all need to be a millionaire, at the least, to get by. Until next lei
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