Tim Ross (Russo) of Streets of Your Town and Merrick and Russo (Triple J) fame has been touring the country’s state libraries with his show, The Australian Dream?, a cloyingly white, nostalgic journey into Australia’s housing policy and architectural achievements.
The show started with archival footage and a voiceover from a partner of one of Australia’s greatest architects. The footage talked about freedom in the 60s, when nothing bad could happen. The show repeated these lines later. Unfortunately, Russo’s cultural theory was distinctly lacking. By framing the 60s like this, he conveniently skipped over Australia’s dark colonial history and the abuses that were perpetuated so that Australians could luxuriate on their quarter-acre blocks.
He talked about Australia’s current housing crisis, noting that his parents used to be “homeowners, not first homeowners.” But that was as close as he got to tackling toxic myths of passive income and issues with people having five houses whilst others have none. He did briefly pinpoint when things all started to go wrong, but rather apologetically for his all-white, older, well-shod audience. He noted that housing prices uncoupled from real wages in 1999 due to the capital gains discount that was brought in. Russo did quote John Howard’s infamous line that ‘no one ever complained to him’ about the price of their houses going up. Russo then went on to offer his solution, or “the only solution” in his opinion: building more social and affordable housing. He flashed a picture of some small, well-designed social housing onto a large screen and noted that Police and Nurses need somewhere to live.
I don’t think these workers would want to live in social housing, but we must move away from our Mcmansions. Also, he could have picked professions other than these distinctly middle-class ones. His analysis of the policies on offer to address the problem was woeful. What about removing the capital gains that started this problem? What about grandfathering negative gearing? What about only allowing negative gearing for new builds that are social housing? What about an inheritance tax for the ultra-rich? Housing affordability cannot be fixed by mere architectural solutions alone.
He did talk about our war on trees and gave examples of housing built to keep the old natives as features. But then he marveled at how we have managed to build over dunes, as if dunal scrub did not have environmental merit.
Interestingly, he noted that the “Australian Dream” and the “Australian way of life” were manufactured post-World War II to bring new migrants to Australia as we needed a bigger population. This, coupled with a fear of communism, made the government focus on materialism and the quarter-acre block. But if we needed a bigger population, was this not also due to fear of being invaded by our neighbours after Japan got so close? So, once again, the issue of race was tellingly avoided.
The best bits were the deep dive into the architectural designs of architects Graeme Gunn and Glen Murcutt. But for me, my favourite bit was an off-the-cuff story about Peter Hook, co-founder and original member of Joy Division and New Order. This was because he was sharing his hotel in Perth with New Order. It went a little something like this:
Hooky did what most successful British musicians do. They bought an old stately home. However, this is where the similarities end. Hooky also bought a German Panzer tank. He would go into town and go shopping in it. Wild, I know! On one occasion, Hooky went into town to get a haircut. Shortly thereafter, his wife also drove into town and found the town section off with police tape; getting out of the car, she approached the officers and was told that the road was closed due to an accident. She was informed that someone had come into town with their panzer tank and hit the wrong button driving; the gun turret had turned around and decapitated them. Hooky’s wife started crying, but just as this happened, she heard a noise. Lo and behold, Hooky was driving up the road in his tank; it turns out two people owned Panzer tanks in that town.
– paraphrased Tim Ross
C.J. O’HARTE
The Australian Dream? with Tim Ross was presented at The State Library of Western Australia from 28 Feb – 1 Mar 2025. For more information about this past event, click here.
