The Home Front, Owning the dream
6/8/202641 min
Why do so many Australians see owning a home as the cornerstone of the Great Australian Dream?
In this opening episode of our special series The Home Front, we unpack the historical, cultural, and political forces that shaped Australia’s deep-rooted obsession with home ownership. From post-war prosperity to the rise of suburban ideals, we trace how the dream took hold- and why that dream no longer fits the realities of today.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
[instrumental music] ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more [upbeat music] Is there any idea more personal, more powerful, more deeply felt than the idea of home?
Anthony Burke· Host0:17
Home gives us shelter, but it's never just that. We shape our homes. They carry our memories, our histories, our sense of who we are and who we hope to become.
Speaker 2· Soundbite0:27
As a younger fellow, home was always very important to me as a teenager, and later on as I became engaged to the girl next door, and I hope that the home will hold exactly the same needs in the heart of my children as it held for me as I grew up For generations of Australians, home meant security, the chance to settle, to put down roots, to imagine a future that felt stable.
Anthony Burke· Host0:51
Today, that promise feels beyond fragile. Australia's housing situation is at an historic low for those wanting to buy or rent alike, the result of decades of decisions too timid to challenge the inequities in the system. And younger Australians, Millennials and Gen Z, have paid the price, locked out of the stability their parents and grandparents once took for granted. I'm Anthony Burke, and on Radio National's By Design, over the next six weeks, we're exploring one of the biggest challenges facing Australia today, housing. It's a multifaceted issue, and design is just one part of it, but an important