Australia's love of property is taking over traditional social values

Some time ago I was in a seminar and the participants were asked to write a list of the things Australians most valued. We broke into small groups to brainstorm; most of the groups came up with things like "mateship" and "egalitarianism". Top of my group's list was "property".

It's the difference between what we like to think we value and what we actually do value. The things that we put a high price on - a colloquial phrase that in the case of real estate is literally true. One of the reasons that house prices have soared is that property is so valued by most Australians that it becomes ever more valuable. Demand for property is prodigious because it is what everyone wants. Real estate is at the centre of the national psyche.

Clothing, food and shelter are said to be the essentials of life. Yet our interest and desire for clothing, and even food, nowhere approaches the deep national obsession with property. The ownership of a house on its own block of land is said to be one of life's goals for most Australians. As this becomes an increasingly difficult dream to realise, so the strength of the impulse intensifies.
Some Australians are now paying more than 40% of their income on their mortgage. When one adds to that the amount of energy and money it takes to maintain the house, it means that many people have literally become slaves to bricks and mortar. Instead of a nice house being a reward for a balanced life well-lived it has become the reason we get up in the morning. Of course just about all of us will deny that our houses are that important to us. We'll say that we value love and family most of all. And, of course, mateship. And egalitarianism.

Our lives tell a different story.

The hours spent on the road every week, getting from work to the mortgaged castle; the fear of losing a job because of the mortgage payment; the family holidays forsaken; the lack of interaction with neighbours because you are all working long hours and hardly see each other; the friendships that wither because you are living miles apart.

As the open paddocks around our cities become gobbled up by housing estates, the malaise of the long-distance commuter, mortgaged to the hilt, will only deepen. How to stop the treadmill?
The obsession with houses is not something most of us want to examine too closely. Like gorging on chocolates, we are happy to sit in front of the tele and indulge in an orgy of renovating or vicarious house-buying. We see it as a harmless bit of fun, escapism from the daily grind. But is it? Maybe it is actually the opposite - maybe these are the very things that make for the daily grind. Maybe we'd be better turning the television off and going out with our friends or to a local community meeting. Maybe then we'd stop obsessing about houses.

It is not entirely our fault. The national economy is largely driven by the building industry and it has always been so. The health of the nation is measured in the number of new housing approvals. When the Howard Government doubled the first home owners' grant it wasn't because Mr Howard was being nice to young marrieds. It was because the building industry was screaming about the impact the GST was going to have on demand for new houses.

The GST has increased the cost of housing but so have many other things. The collapse of HIH put Home Owners' Warranty insurance into chaos. The cost to builders of taking out this compulsory insurance has soared in the past two years because there is now only one major player in the field. Builders have to put all their personal assets on the line just to get this insurance and many have left the industry because of the difficulty and expense.

The Home Owners' Warranty scheme was foisted on a reluctant insurance industry by the State governments. The administration of it alone is costly and these costs are passed on to the home buyer. It was once the case that the builders' licensing authorities were responsible for making sure the house you bought wasn't going to fall down around your ears. Now no one is taking that responsibility but everyone is paying for the cost of insuring in case something goes wrong.

The monster houses that are going up everywhere are another part of the problem. Who needs them? Yet it is the fashion and for the sake of "re-sale", even older empty nesters seem to feel obliged to buy the four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with informal and formal rooms (which no one ever uses).

If we had a tax on floor space (as the English once did on windows) we might see a rapid shrinking in house sizes and a concomitant saving of money and preservation of open space. And we might see more innovative housing solutions.

Housing is important, yes. And there is nothing wrong with loving our homes but what we are witnessing is verging on a national disease. Last Saturday, sitting in a city café, there were two women at the table to my left and a group of three women to my right. There was a time when women met to share their lives. But last Saturday all five had their heads buried in the real estate columns.