<
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/feb/16/it-matters-if-you-have-a-parent-with-an-expensive-house-how-australias-great-wealth-transfer-threatens-faith-in-the-fair-go>
"Kim Day has got word that her mother-in-law is dying. At last. It’s good news
for one half of
Kath and Kim, the noughties comedy series that delighted
international audiences with its satirisation-cum-celebration of the comforts,
proclivities and aspirations of middle Australia. By series three, Kim (Gina
Riley) is struggling; she has a new baby and is living in her mother Kath’s
(Jane Turner) house in Fountain Lakes – a mottled-brick, wide-lawned
every-suburb. But her mother-in-law on the Gold Coast is rich. She has a luxe
flat, stuffed with valuable goods. Kim is gleeful.
As they wait at a bus stop for a tour bus to take them to factory outlets, her
“second-best friend”, Sharon (Magda Szubanksi), asks: “So, do you think you’re
going to get the penthouse, Kim?”
Kim nods. She’s banking on it.
And in her ferocious nodding Kim reveals herself to be a lazy, grasping fool.
Her desperation for an inheritance, crass. Comical. Her naivety and greed are
on full show, as much as in one of her famous malapropisms: “I want to be
effluent, Mum. Effluent!”
Two decades later, the subject of inheritance is no longer a satirical
plotline. The explosion of house prices since
Kath and Kim’s Sitting on a
Pile episode aired in 2004 means that, for many younger Australians, an
inheritance has become a lifeline to securing their own futures; of maybe
getting to own a home, or possibly even paying it off before they retire. It
has, for others, become a pathway to their own accumulation of wealth. And
many, like Kim, are banking on it.
In the next 20 years, some $5,400,000,000,000 is expected to change hands in
Australia. That is $5.4tn that’s estimated to slip from the houses,
superannuation funds, bank accounts and investments of baby boomers, “the
richest generation to have ever lived”, into the hands of their beneficiaries.
And economists are warning that this great intergenerational wealth transfer
presents one of the biggest challenges the country will face over the coming
decades – threatening social mobility, economic equality, faith in the fair go
and even, potentially, faith in democracy itself."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
