Wudapuli: the new Wall Street

Property speculators are elbowing each other out of the way in their frantic efforts to get in on the ground floor of Australia's newest boom town. Could Wudapuli be the new El Dorado?

In earnest emulation of our nation's Paramount Leader, I often begin my days with a tame stroll. It was full-moon recently and things got a bit strange, with the orb of green cheese still sitting high in the sky as the first rays of the new day began dancing on the rugged upper ridges of the MacDonnell Ranges. The sound-track to this David Lynch outing was provided by a couple of galahs that sat, perched on the powerlines, screeching like parliamentarians.

It turned out to be that sort of day. In the evening, I flicked on the telly to see that nice Mister Brough giving the keys of a brand-spanking new house to an Indigenous bloke living on the Wudapuli outstation, near Wadeye in the northwest of the Northern Territory.

Bless his cotton socks, I thought to myself. The minister is going to give every blackfella in every remote community a new house. No longer will 18 people have to share a single dwelling in Wadeye, or Maningrida, or Kalumburu. The federal government is actually going to spend its massive accumulated budget surplus by improving housing for Australia's most disadvantaged people. Happy days.

But later in the week a strange-looking bloke wearing a mackintosh, and speaking out the side of his mouth, pulled me into a dark corner at the Alice Springs Cup race meeting. He told me that the federal government had spent $3 million building four houses around Wadeye.

Pulling nervously on a roll-your-own through nicotine-stained fingers, he suggested that the feds had gone to inordinate expense to fly materials into Wadeye during the wet season, so that the castles could be constructed without delay.

As you would imagine, I sent him packing after admonishing him for suggesting that the federal government would even consider a cynical, manipulative ploy that shamelessly exploited Indigenous Australians for short-term political advantage. It just wouldn't happen, I told him, confidently.

Then I read the newspaper reports about the Wudapuli wonder and began to have some doubts. In actual fact, the “fine” print turns out to be decidedly dark and stormy.

The happy homebuyer in question, seems to have been offered only the opportunity to rent his new place for two years.

If he keeps his nose clean, he may then get the chance to “rent-to-buy” his new dwelling. No real drama so far - but this isn't what it said in the big letters on the front the packet.

It's a pretty standard real-estate contract. More or less. The punter has to pay the rent on time and look after the house. Oh, and he has to ensure that his children attend school regularly - surely a standard requirement of rental leases right across the country?

The man in the mackintosh told me that purchasers may also be required to tap-dance, juggle watermelons, and sing Christmas carols. Simultaneously.

What have any of those things got to do with capacity to pay the rent? I wondered, dimly.

It seems that prospective purchasers are to pay off their $270,000 homes at the rate of $150 a week. I think the man in the mackintosh must have handled the valuation, because there aren't so many properties around Wadeye changing hands at this early stage of the boom.

But it's only a matter of time before the housing market catches fire and the big investment banks open lavish offices in this thriving metropolis.

Apparently the federal government is suggesting that families will take up to 20 years to pay off the houses.

Now, mathematics isn't going to be my special subject when I finally get that wild-card entry onto Mastermind, but I've got to say that these figures look decidedly dodgy. (Hint: by my calculations, $150 a week multiplied by 20 years is a good few quid short of $270,000.)

Then again, I can't understand why someone would want to lease land that they already own, so I'm clearly no judge of these things.

But this circus has all the hallmarks of a “Doctor Mal's Medicine Show” patent cure-all.

The government goes to the voters this year, and Indigenous Affairs will once again be shoved onto the backburner with the tacit agreement of both major parties. But, when nagged about the natives, Howard's Heroes will be looking for a stronger pitch than, "Look we've made a complete hash of things so you might as well give that other mob a crack".

They'll want to campaign with something much more convincing: Something along the lines of "We really believe that the fizzy green snake-oil in the attractively-presented plastic bottle will do the trick this time".

I'm going to ask the man in the mackintosh about it.