The Only Five Ways To Get Rich In Australia When You Come From Nothing

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One thing that is for certain in Australia is that social mobility ain't what it used to be.

Once upon a time, blokes like John Singleton and Clive Palmer could pop up out of suburban and rural obscurity and go on to make hundreds of millions of dollars by just getting to work.

Back in the day, entrepreneurs and business figures didn't need to come from family pedigree to make money.

This isn't the case anymore. It's mostly due to a property market that has effectively ruled out ever owning a block of land on a single income, and severely limited the amount of dual-incomes that could even get a foot in.

This highly manipulated property market also keeps commercial shop fronts empty due to the fact that owners would rather set rents higher than any small business could ever afford, and live off the land valuation that comes from the unrealised yield.

So if you reckon you can cook a feed that people will line up for - don't bother setting yourself up anywhere near a CBD. If you've got a service that people want - you're best off basing yourself on the road with a ute and a stall at some yuppie markets. Nobody can afford to own homes or open shops. That idea of Australia is over.

Academia and science are also no-go zones for anyone who wants to make a bit of scrilla. Even the historic 'rich people jobs' like lawyers and doctors aren't what they used to be. In 2025, these people are renters.

This comes down to an entire generation of post-war Australians who received government incentives and tax loopholes that encouraged wealth hoarding. Without any family money to help, there is no chance of setting yourself up to take risks in career or business.

Media ownership used to be a surepath way to getting rich, but these same institutions have been severely degraded by the boomer management who refused to believe that the government would let their industry be disrupted by the invention of social media.

Go bush? Don't bother. The farms and mines are gradually being bought up by foreign conglomerates. Did it ever seem strange to you that words like Shenua and Adani are so common in Australian politics?

There's only 5 ways left to get rich in this country, if you're starting from the bottom.

1. Break Your Ankle On A Council Footpath

Pretty simple really. Look for an exposed manhole or protruding gutter, and fall into at an awkward angle. The councils have pretty much offloaded all of their road maintenance to private companies that pay exorbitant insurance fees. This is why. It's a safety-net for when incompetent citizens don't look where they are going and suffer an injury that may put them out of work, and traumatise them. If executed properly, a broken ankle could land you half a million at the least. That's enough to put down a couple deposits on some red brick apartments in a 'up and coming' suburb that is undergoing a discreet relocation of public housing residents. This is how you become a property baron.

2. Own Two (2) Pubs In A Regional Or Outer-Metropolitan Area

This is somewhat of a long-term play. Start as a pub glassie in a regional or outer suburban shit hole town. Move your way up to bar manager. Your own cost of living will be low because it's not a nice place to live. Eventually, if you can avoid drinking too much piss yourself, you'll get made licensee. At that point, the bank will be willing to loan you the money you need to buy a pub of your own in another shit town. Don't fuck around with live bands or a fancy menu. Just make sure the pokie room is ambient. Eventually, you'll be making enough money to ask the bank to spot you enough to buy the only other pub in town. Once you've done that, move all the pokie licenses from the second pub into the first pub and consolidate. Renovate the first pub. Fuck off the family restaurant and build a mini-casino to absorb all of the degenerate gamblers in the region as well as the transient blue collar workers. You can leave the second pub to fall apart if you want. Who gives a fuck, you are rich now.

3. Have An Affair With Someone That Was Born Before 1975

Just because you weren't alive in the salad days when banktellers could buy terrace houses with a year's salary, it doesn't necessarily mean you missed out on the wealth that came from it. Look at the Prime Minister. He was born in public housing and spent his youth going to rock concerts and protests. Until a couple years ago, he was just a career public servant who probably averaged no more than 150k a year over his entire working life - but he still owned two homes in an inner city market. People that were born before 1975 still live and walk amongst us. They work as teachers, roofers and pilots. All it would take is for you to seduce them into destroying their marriage and then marrying you out of shame. No pre-nups obviously. Their ex will take half, and you can take half of the other half. It's still more than you'll get working a salary job for the rest of your life.

*An alternative to this level of intimacy is to just befriend an elderly ethnic migrant with no next of kin living in Australia. Pop round for a cup of tea once a week, maybe mow their lawn every few months. Higher risk but higher yield if you can get the keys to that heavily concreted workers cottage.

4. Sell Cocaine

High risk, but incredible margins. Buy a discreet sedan that was made before before 2015. Anything after that has in-built computers that carry data that can place you in certain places at certain times. Buy in bulk from Outlaw motorcycle clubs, and keep a list of customers on a burner phone. Don't accept new customers unless they've been recommended by old customers. Wash your money through pokie machines in shit pubs like that ones mentioned above. Do NOT buy a rolex.

5. Get A Job Driving Dump Trucks On The Snowy Hydro 2.0 Project

Pretty simple really. Prime Minsiter Malcolm Turnbull's 2016 decision to expand the Snowy Hydro to provide large-scale energy storage and increase generation capacity by 2,000 megawatts has resulted in rivers of gold for blue collar workers. Mostly because everyone working on it needs to be paid to relocate to the freezing cold back end of Kosciuszko National Park. The entire project was meant to cost $2 billion and be completed in a couple years. It's blown out to $12 billion and it's only 67 percent done. It's worth getting your 'confined spaces' and 'working at heights' tickets and getting a job on that bad boy. Crane operators and dump trucks drivers are making half a mil a year for one week on/one week off.

Things were certainly not that plush when Nonno and Papou were working up there after the war.

But it's unfair to say these men and women don't deserve such enticing renumerations for the labour, when really, if you consider the stagnant wage growth and inflation, they're only making us much as baby boomers did working as plumbers and air hosties under John Howard.