ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A group of local 30-somethings have compared graduating during the 2007-2010 Global Financial Crisis to the current housing affordability crisis, telling The Advocate that both events have had their own effect on shaping their psyche moving forward.
In one of the function rooms above the Gelded Seahorse Hotel in the Old City, Stanley Coleman of the French Quarter said he was under-employed for five years after he graduated with an economics degree because he didn’t have any family connections to the finance industry.
He worked in a sandwich shop, as a tree lopper’s labourer, he worked on the Lake Betoota fishing trawlers, and he worked cattle for Kidman.
It wasn’t until 2019 that he got his first job in finance, which he said was great “until the world shit itself again and had to shut down because letting hundreds of millions of old and/or fucked and/or poor people die is morally reprehensible”.
“I’ve been treading water, socially and professionally, for pretty much ten years now,” he said.
“So I’m not sure what’s been worse. Not getting into the workforce properly until I was 29 or being locked out of the property market. Which, to be honest, isn’t true. It’s a hard truth for a lot of young people. You can buy a place to live, but it won’t be half as good as the house they probably grew up in. It will be some Meriton shitbox, one where you can literally hear your upstairs neighbour’s arsehole open up and the doodoo hit the water. My cousin Dale lives in one and you can hear the bloke above him moan when he’s pooing,”
“Like, you can afford one of those no worries. Well, perhaps not everyone. But how grim is that? He grew up in a nice house in Betoota Heights with a trampoline and an outdoor pizza oven. Now, he lives in a place that grows mould like a greenhouse and lets him hear every word of a neighbour’s argument when he’s trying to shave his carrot or watch the tele. It’s certainly better than being homeless but mate, that place cost him $300 000,”
“But does this all stem from the jobs crash during the GFC? I can’t wait until it’s Friday because I’ll just get pissed and forget about it all. Suck the gunk out of a bootleg Guangzhou-crafted e-cigarette and pass out on the floor of my bathroom again,”
“That’s peace.”
More to come.
