Charlton Hart: The Australian Dream is dead and our leaders are dancing on its grave in high-viz vests

I caught up with a mate of mine on the weekend. He’s in his late 20s, works full-time, and has spent the last two years existing rather than living. He moved back in with his parents, sacrificing his independence to save every cent, cutting his expenses down to the bone and running his life on the smell of an oily rag. He was actually chuffed. He’d finally sat down with a mortgage broker. The verdict? With the first home buyer deposit scheme, he could borrow up to $450,000. Then came the punchline, and it wasn’t funny. To buy even a rundown, 30-year-old three-by-two in Balga, where he could come home after a long shift to enjoy the fragrant aromas and screaming matches from the Homeswest property next door, he needs to find another $250,000 in cash. That is the reality of Perth in 2026. The median house price has smashed through the $1 million barrier, and for an entire generation, the ladder hasn’t just been pulled up, it’s been set on fire. Now, the Reserve Bank has decided to twist the knife, lifting the official cash rate from 3.6 to 3.85 per cent. For those already clinging to the cliff edge, this is the boot to the face that sends them falling. But it would be naïve to blame the RBA, and only lets the real culprits off the hook. This disaster was entirely preventable. It is the result of staggering political incompetence at the State and Federal level. Remember the Cook Government’s Housing Roundtable back in 2023? It was sold as a meeting of minds to “accelerate housing delivery”. Looking back from the wreckage of 2026, it looks more like a self-congratulatory talk fest that delivered absolutely nothing. In the years since, we have watched the cost to build a new house surge by nearly 100 per cent. We have watched property listings plummet to historic lows, with fewer than 2,500 homes for sale in a city of millions. We have waited patiently for six years while rents spiralled out of control, forcing hundreds of school-aged children to sleep rough every single night. And what do we get in return? We get politicians posting Reels to Instagram and Facebook. There they are, donning hard hats and high-viz vests that have never seen a speck of dirt, smiling as they turn the sod on a new development that won’t make one iota of difference to the structural deficit we face. It is performative governance at its worst— or as my brother would say they’re just more politicians p***ing in the wind. Not so long ago, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers were telling us our economy is strong. On paper yes, but at the cost of a society which is fracturing before our eyes. We should be asking ourselves why we are seeing such extreme, violent reactions in our community. In just the first month of this year, we have seen two events that should chill us to the bone. On Australia Day, an explosive device was allegedly hurled into a crowd of protesters in the CBD — a potential mass-casualty event. The sad reality is, it didn’t even shock me anymore. Days later, a family of four, including two young boys, was found dead inside their Mosman Park home in a suspected double murder-suicide. We cannot ever justify the senseless murder of children in any circumstances. We also cannot ignore the whispers about NDIS funding cuts and the crushing pressure on families trying to care for vulnerable children. When you squeeze a population this hard, when you strip away the hope of a secure home, when you let poverty rise and services crumble, things break. People break. Is it any wonder that my generation are feeling like we’re inheriting a society that is falling apart. The social contract — the idea that if you work hard, you can build a life — seems void. Our leaders need to understand that the time for excuses, roundtables, and their fetish for high-viz cosplay is over. We need people who will actually lead, or we need to accept that the “fair go” is nothing more than a fairy tale we used to tell our kids. Charlton Hart is a reporter for The West Australian