ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
New research into housing affordability has uncovered an uncomfortable truth: the nation’s lowest-paid workers will have to work over four decades just to get a deposit together.
In our town, many thousands of largely disposable people from low socio-economic backgrounds form a cornerstone of the decadent existence enjoyed by those who have some wealth.
Data released by the Independent Housing Affordability Watchdog Committee of South West Queensland (IHAWCSWQ) has found that locals like 34-year-old Frisbee Sampson, a coffee maker and cashier, will have to work for 41 years just to get enough money to put a deposit down on his own Meriton-style dogbox in a trendy café district like the French Quarter.
Mr Sampson told The Advocate that earning close to minimum wage is very hard in this climate, leaving him feeling like all his hard work will be for nothing.
“41 years, can you believe it?” he said.
“I mean, what’s the point? At least I don’t have any debts. Besides my HECS debt, but that’s not real debt, right? I’m just so crestfallen. Debt is just modern-day slavery, anyway. That’s what my mates from The Actor’s Studio in Betoota Heights tell me.”
The Advocate spoke to a number of local residents about the plight of Mr Sampson and the 41 years of life he must trade just to enter the property market.
“Who gives a fuck?” said an electrician working in the roof of The Advocate’s Daroo Street newsroom.
“You listened in school and tried hard. Took a punt on yourself. Do you really want some smelly barista living next to you? Being equal to you? Fuck that, bro. People who don’t have a go are just disposable. Use them and throw them away.”
David Murchison, the manager of The Advocate’s printing press, was equally as scathing.
“He’ll probably inherit a million bucks if he doesn’t do himself in on the smack before then,” said David.
“No, fuck him. Honestly. He cries poor but you’d have more metal in your face if you came face-to-face with a fucking claymore. Covered in shitty tattoos. He’s not having a real go. Imagine his kids going to school with your kids. Fuck that. This is the egalitarian, dystopian future that the lefties want. We work and build a society worth living in and they get to enjoy the fruits of it, all the while trying to tear it down and say life’s so unfair,”
“How do other people get ahead? They fucken work their cunt off, mate. It might take 41 years for him to save a deposit as a barista. Has it occurred to him that he should, I don’t know, go to fucking night school or something and skill up? Get a better job, go work in the fucken mines. You know, sacrifice a bit. Not just get on the smack with your mates every night.”
More to come.
