I’m lucky to live near the Melbourne capital city trail. It reminds me of this though. Can you imagine a city not dominated by cars?

Yeah I hear ya. It’s insulting. There are a lot of people that don’t understand that upwards social mobility is gone now. It’s all about family wealth and support now. More people will understand this as time goes on.

He gained a lot of social capital in opposition by coming across as a humanist with his childhood story, and campaigning for increasing social welfare payments. Now he seems like the archetypal “boomer” who got what they needed and pulled up the ladder. (I know not all boomers are like this, but we’ve all met one of them).

Yeah I get where you’re coming from. I’m doing OK myself, I earn an average wage as an engineer. I pay 40 percent of my income to rent, but I’m not struggling because I have a basic life. I chose not to have a car. Bike everywhere. But I think about people like my sister, who lives on disability support and relies on food donations. I’m worried that the flow on effects will result in rent increases again. I wish the gov would entertain rent caps. There are some people in this country who have no safety margin at all, and they are falling through the cracks.

Labor have no viable opposition, so it shouldn’t matter if they receive criticism. They should do what is necessary to help those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy who are struggling most.

He’s always been like this. You can hear it whenever he has to answer questions he doesn’t like. Always sounds like “I’m the boss, don’t bother me”.

Very good points. I withdraw my comment as it was definitely an overreach.

Because wages are inadequate and passive wealth or capital inheritance are the new pathway to upward social mobility. It’s not that I think most people think like this (yet), but news articles are mostly written by people from wealth now, because who can live on a journalist wage these days.

I agree with your views on the labor party, but I can’t see the opposition being elected. There are so many people who still support labor. Everything they do is just image management (and not particular well, given the Herzog invitation). But lots of people still think they are supportive of affordable housing. They propose the HAFF, then the housing minister a couple of years later says she doesn’t want house prices to go down. Your view of the party will depend on which media you’ve been exposed to. In 2022 albo said rent caps were “pixie dust”. I don’t think this statement will age very well, but that horse has bolted.

That’s what I thought Albo’s strategy was. Make the opposition irrelevent and snatch their voters. He doesn’t seem to make any decisions based on principles. He was campaigning on raising centrelink payments to a dignified level prior to his first term. That never happened.