Hume and the member for Hume.

On becoming Liberal Party leader this month, Angus Taylor explicitly identified increasing home ownership as a central pillar of his leadership and a key priority for the coalition. Hallelujah. A return to the idea that everyone should own a home, so forcefully argued by Robert Menzies in his speech on “the forgotten people”. Sadly, it seems the LNP has instead forgotten him.

Deputy Jane Hume accidentally belled the cat less than 24 hours later on the ABC Insiders, clarifying that the extra supply of homes they demanded were to be owned by property investors in order to drive rentals down. A double dose of nonsense, showing exactly how their housing policy entrenches them as the party of property.

We've examined the LNP's ideas for housing policy in the past. Remember Jason Falinski’s ill-fated enquiry into the housing crisis that determined more support for the property industry. Rather, we need to remember that every household in Australia pays a mortgage; it just so happens that one-third of all households are paying someone else's.

Angus Taylor, born “with a silver foot in his mouth", needs a better policy. In a more egalitarian society (the LNP loves the “fair go”), I suggest, "Everyone owns their own home and has a home of their own." ”.

Belling the cat

Speaking of belling the cat. It means being brave, often telling a truth. It derives from an Aesop fable about mice being brave enough to put a bell round the cat's neck. But it reminds me of another bell, this one the Bellman from Lewis Carroll's poem, The Hunting of the Snark.

The bellman tells his fellow travellers, "Whatever I tell you three times is true." Perfect encapsulation Donald Trump’s oeuvre: if you repeat a lie often enough, MAGA-nafied by the poorly educated and ad nauseam by the cowed media, eventually it becomes a truth. Or an alternative fact. Pity it obscures good policy.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, rescued from Sussan’s backbenching to the front row, belled the cat during the election when she cooed, "Make Australia Great Again."

Trump’s housing policies include increasing affordability through deregulation, restricting large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes, exploring long-term mortgage products, boosting supply by converting commercial buildings to residential, and utilising government-sponsored enterprises to lower rates.

His Majesty's loyal opposition could do well to look at some of those initiatives.

A unifying park in a divided USA

Not all in America is bleak. A quick book review to prove it. Recently deceased historian Tony Horwitz’s last book has a brilliant throughline: how a young reporter researching the divided South just before the Civil War then became America’s greatest exponent of the egalitarian possibilities of the public park.

Spying on the South: An Odyssey across the American Divide tells the story of how Connecticut Yankee Frederick Law Olmsted was an undercover correspondent in the South in the 1850s for the up-and-coming New York Times. He travelled widely in alien hostile territory, amidst discord and polarisation, sending vivid despatches back to the newspaper.

Returning to New York, Olmstead studied design and evolving landscape architecture and became the driving design force in the creation of Central Park in New York, other large public parks, and master plans for several universities.

This fascinating story reveals how Olmstead regarded landscape as a unifying force and demonstration of equality, a place where the highest and the lowest could meet on equal terms. Witnessing the vilest oppression that was to rend America apart, he then sought an architecture of egality through design. Great read.

Horwitz’s bereaved partner, Australian Geraldine Brooks, had a lovely chat with David Marr about the loss of community on Late Night Live on ABC RN.

A sign of the times

Australia is being pulled apart. Social cohesion is being advocated and undermined at the same time by the federal government. Maybe we should have a centre for “customer happiness”. Unlikely at our Parliament House at any time soon.

The lone Green member of the PHA lower house and only architect/politician, Elizabeth Watson Brown, has formed a committee called The Friends of Urban Design. A small candle is being held aloft to light the way for Australia to have an urban policy for planning and a strategy for housing. Let’s cheer on the idea of homes in the House.

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, formerly of Tone on Tuesday. Amateurs draw plans; professionals draw sections – never at cross purposes

Tone Wheeler

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