- The Guardian
- Issue #2203
That was Shadow Housing minister Andrew Bragg’s answer to the question of whether low-income earners should accept substandard housing so that developers would have an easier building code to deal with. Bragg said he wants the national construction code to be boiled down from 2,000 pages to 80 so that more “basic and safe” homes are built.
His colleague, Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson has said that rather than having homes with decent heating or insulation, people could “just put on a jumper.”
There was predictable outrage from the Australian Council of Social Services and housing NGO Everybody’s Home, as well as from members of the public who don’t think low-income earners have less rights than the well-off. There were also calls for Bragg to actually look at what the building standards do. Homes built without building standards would definitely be basic, but are unlikely to be safe.
There are also logical objections. As well as being callous, Bragg’s idea just wouldn’t work. What’s more likely than a flood of “basic and safe” homes is that developers would build the same number of homes and just pocket the savings.
It’s good fun to give the Liberals a public kicking when they’re being this obnoxious, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Bragg’s comments show how the Australian ruling class sees working-class people.
Bragg is far from alone. The ruling class includes Labour politicians. Of 227 sitting federal MPs and Senators, only 12 declared no property ownership. 77 of the MPs owned three or more properties.
Prime Minister Albanese likes to brag about his working class origins and the fact that he once lived in public housing, but he consistently backs lobbyists with deep pockets over the ordinary people he claims to care about.
Large majorities of Australians support policies such as a ban on gambling ads, a gas tax and action on the Coles-Woolworths duopoly. This is a democracy, so we’ll get action on those things, right?
Wrong. Analysis from Deepcut’s Royce Kurmelovs shows a pattern of Labor consistently siding with powerful lobbyists “against the public and national interest.” From AI data centres to salmon farming to gambling advertising in our children’s faces, Albanese chooses the lobbyists every time.
Since he’s not Andrew Bragg or Tim Wilson, Albanese isn’t stupid enough to say that the poor should live in substandard housing or just “put on a jumper” if they get cold, but he is every bit as lined up with the interests of the people who own the economy.
Why? It’s not because ‘Albo’ is an unusually bad person. It’s because our Prime Minister is part of a system that lets us have elections from time to time, but doesn’t let working people run the country. When ‘Albo’ is replaced – either by the likes of Bragg and Wilson, or by someone from the Labor Party, the ruling party will continue to do what the lobbyists want.
This state of affairs will continue until we have a country that is run by the people who produce the wealth – the workers. Until we have socialism, the leadership of this country will put large corporations ahead of working people every time.
