Rental and other crises

Here in Australia we have a rental crisis (I've posted links in my weekly news posts, including this one). Finally some people in the media are noticing that the origins of this crisis are with the utterly evil and despicable John Howard, and policies such as negative gearing. 

We also have a massively entrenched, feeling-empowered and thus more actively vocal than any time since the late 80s (IMO) racism (the problem goes back further). John Howard’s xenophobic hate, channelled for him by the equally evil Pauline Hanson, aided that. 

In my view, every person who has voted for Howard and his neoliberal  successors, Hanson and her lot, or anything based on the false premise of building wealth through houses and everything that is xenophobic or enabling of continuing structural racism is directly responsible for a lot of hate - and the rental crisis. 

Yes, the media and public messaging had an influence, but ... ultimately, the human beings who voted for such things need to ask themselves: 

what on earth were they “thinking”? Do they understand what all that says about them as human beings - and us as a nation?

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• a home is a place to live, and the benefit of owning a home is the psychological security and emotional wellbeing that brings; 
• all humans have the right to equity, justice, and equality;
• charity may start at home, but it DOES NOT STOP THERE! 
  

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

• those on the right have the view that economic wellbeing leads to everything. I disagree - strenuously, but that is their view, and in the interest of ensuring readers can consider the matter more completely, I will mention it in passing. Others genuinely feel that the right to say no outweighs international obligations of human decency;
  
• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend to Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”.