In Adelaide, the amount of infill developing going on to build three or four compact homes on what used to be a family block should make Ross Elliot very happy. Since Adelaide has relatively very little public park space (~5% of metropolitan area) we are seeing our city tranformed into a hot and dusty concreted landscape as the 30% of uncovered space required by councils becomes the driveway and little green is left save a few token pot plants where once half the block used to be garden. What a wonderful future we have before us as the baby-boomers (having ignored the warnings about unsustainable growth in the 1970s and then having raped the Earth for the following three decades in a growth and consumption frenzy so that resources are now in decline) now demand to live a comfortable retirement. To do so that they will trash our suburbs with even more property development and import ever more cheap workers to wipe their invalid backsides while not giving a damn about the future they are leaving for their children. And their retirement plans are about to tbe blown away anyway as peak oil takes an ever more throttling hold on the world economy and the baby-boomers debt-fuelled consumption and growth frenzy meets its inevitable end. Oh, I am soooo looking forward to the next decade and I do not feel sorry for the Boomers. They will get their just desserts but their children will be inheriting a trashed world and will be forced to pay for the Boomer's mistakes. Baby Boomers and their comfortable and convenient retirement be damned......

Yes Ross there are plenty of examples of the type of 'intensive cottage development' you refer to; many going in around the Perth Hills suburb of Kalamunda where I live.

Seems to me that 2 story terrace houses may be a better use of land, allowing more park space.

Michael, I know that many baby boomers have been selfish but so also are many in your generation. We're all in this boat together and need to find solutions together. How to build community again is a problem for all ages; let's work together. I do agree with you that housing security for young people is more important than for the old.

Immediate tax reforms - abolish negative gearing and tighten capital gains tax - would go a long way to bringing housing prices down by reducing speculation. Greedy people of you generation and mine have been gulity of fuelling this housing bubble.

Michael I'm so glad I don't live in your head, it must be a horrible place.

That doesn't let you off though Ross. Your "jam them in" ideas may not be quite the hell Michael sees, but it is still a very bad idea.

I am well past your 64, living on 20 acres with the horses, dog cats, birds & fish, left behind by the kids, as they spread their wings. Yes it's a bit much to maintain, & thoughts of a place in the suburbs, with less work did have some appeal.

That was before a recent trip to Sydney. I had look at The Shire, where a girlfriend had lived, a short work from Sutherland station, in the late 50s.

It was a lovely place, nicely kept homes, nice yards, plenty of shrubbery, & attractive streets. That was before infill.

Now it is just nasty. Buildings jammed in where there was not enough room, no drives to a garage out the back, or gardens, just buildings. Streets packed with cars parked nose to tail for kilometers, & all over the foot paths as well.

Yes those were once granny flats, but with granny gone, now they are just cheep rentals, with the cheep people that brings. Homes that would have had windows open all day, now have prison bars in place of curtains, a place where people exist, not live, with a crime rate through the roof.

Ross we all know that upgrading facilities in built up areas, to handle increased population, is more expensive than developing a greenfield sights, so why this effort to justify infill development.

If you wanted to approve transportable granny flats in backyards, later removed, I could perhaps agree, it cost me a fortune for a legal granny flat with todays regulations, but otherwise, no thanks.

If I were a resident of an inner suburb, I would be fighting you tooth & nail, to stop this destruction of a good lifestyle.

Baby boomers have different standards to the young of today. We learnt how to save money, while being payd a few quid a week. Today it is spend to the limit and then some more. I can-not fathom your argument, about being 64. The world is what you make it. Live for the minute, or think about your future. People that live in each others pocket, you have been doing that for a long time to put up with that. It is not compulsory to live like a swarm of galahs.

While there are retiring couples or singles who want to stay in their old neighbourhood many use the decision to sell their existing inner city dwelling to finance a change in their lives.
Most of the aging couples I know (including myself) have decided to move out into a rural residential location where we can raise pets and chooks and develop a decent garden and orchard.
We grow our own olives to make our own olive oil.
A huge number of Living programmes on TV are about people moving to the country while hardly any are about people moving into the apartments so favoured by the planners.
We live on a hectare of land and while the cottage is small we also have a double garage, and a separate office and sleepout.
You see we don't really retire we just change our mode of work and realise that gardening is so good for our health. We soon develop close relationships with "our butcher" and "our pharmacist" and indeed we have a stall at the weekend local market.
I really don't want anyone telling me how and were to live - especially when these decisions are based of false assumptions.
Let us be.

579 - it was the generation before the Baby Boomers - that lived through the Depression and WWII - that knew frugality. The Baby Boomers were the generation that had the choice between sustainability and rampant growth and consumerism and they chose the latter. To describe their mentality as "spend the inheritance" says it all. Most boomers are ignorant fools believing in perpetual growth in a finite system while younger generations facing debt and the impossiblity of affording a future have retreated into the virtual world of Facebook and other online distractions. The oil price-triggered crash of 2008 and the current intellectually bankrupt policies for solving debt-crises by taking more debt show the shlt-storm that is rapidly coming down on our heads. I am not, actually, so concerned about urban infill and highrise etc because most of it will never be built - we are entering a world of economic decline and "getting by" that will teach Generation Y the lessons that their Depression-era great-grandparents knew.

Nothing induces depressions as much as depression.

Compounding these issues will be the current inadequate supply of housing for people with a disability, and reluctance to ensure that new houses are built to be accessible. Properties are much more affordably built accessible than made accessible later. As the aged population grows, the level of disability grows, and the pressure on accessible housing grows.
Further, there is credible evidence that there are a subset generation of women who will be unable to afford to buy a house in their lifetime, placing more pressure on public and social housing options. See: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life/baby-boomer-divorcees-face-homeless-risk-20111017-1lto3.html#ixzz1bf0Jk06Z
These are issues we need to confront proactively as a community. It will be too late when we discover we failed to plan.

What utter garbage Michael. I'm a little before the boomers, but most of them, like me, started in a 4 room fibro box. They were reasonable cheep, but not for what you got. As they raised their kids, they slowly up graded. It is not their fault the moderate real estate they bought has skyrocketed in price.

It is the 20/30 somethings that seem to require a 5 bedroom McMansion, not us.

That high price doesn't help us that much, sell one you still have to buy another. It's those kids you've weeping for that will benefit. Mine will share the best of a million bucks, to cut the mortgages they have undertaken. That is, provided they can stop their mother spending it all, if she outlasts me by too much. You've got to watch these ladies with a dose of the travel bug.

Owen you need to be a bit careful of sea/tree changes, as you get older. A mate of mine was a real estate agent in a nice small coastal village, north of Maryborough. He used to sell the same homes about once every 3 or 4 years to retirees.

They had often holidayed there for some years, then made the big move. A very large number found that 50+Km to see a doctor, shop for more than milk & bread, or to visit if one were in hospital, soon took the gloss of things.

Many of the ladies desperately missed the kids & grand kids, & with the normal home work, maintenance lawns etc, they did not do much of the holiday things they did as visitors.

Many also love it too, perhaps you don't want to be too far from the old home grounds, so you can enjoy both. Many that left again soon, had come from Victoria.

You have made some good points, Hasbeen

Michael,

This whole intergenerational conflict idea has been beaten up by the politicians, business elite, and media, who want to turn a class issue into a generational issue. They want you to blame your problems on some postman or checkout clerk who happened to have been born in 1955 and not on the people who actually made the decisions (and were able to buy their way out of the negative consequences). As with every other generation, most baby boomers have worked hard for modest rewards and had very little say in anything. These people weren't consulted about any of the policies you object to. I agree with you entirely about growthism, but many people of all ages have unfortunately subscribed to it.

That would make the Rudd/Gillard crew the Baby Boomer Government. That explains it all.

Nice assessment of the problem. I’m not so sure about what you’ve offered for solutions, though that’s be a bit much to ask for in a book, let alone an article.

A few days ago, on a different thread, someone suggested that we go look at suburbs built in the 50s and 60s. The infrastructure’s still there today: roads, water, sewerage, schools, churches, shopping centres, cemeteries, public transport, parks, amenities ... the lot. Council and State governments could AFFORD to build communities half a century ago. It was taken for granted.

No more. Today, Councils can hardly afford to mow the lawn in the park once a month. Communities have grown like topsy, but when was the last time you remember anyone opening a NEW school, as opposed to dropping a couple demountables onto the tennis courts? What about a new sewage treatment plant? Water storage & purification facilities for increased populations? More roads? Better rail?

Actual costs haven’t gone up; they’re lower today than three decades ago, after adjustment for inflation. What’s shot through the roof is overheads. The local paper is chockers with job ads for ‘environmental engineers’, starting salary $120-$170K, and it isn’t outback parkland they’re ‘engineering’; it’s our back yards. Town planners don’t plan towns: they make sure that ticking the boxes on my application to build a deck outside my kitchen involve big fees, silly inspections, pricy certificates, weeks of useless paper-chasing, and many months of waiting.

Result? Today, Australia’s financially incapable of nation-building. When today’s retirees were working, building a town, was straightforward, affordable, and an obvious priority for state and local government. Now that they’re ‘seniors’, it’s pretty much illegal to build a granny flat at ANY price. It’s hard enough for corporations with deep pockets to get approval for a 50-bed ‘aged care’ facility. It’s harder yet for Joe Average to add a bedroom with an attached flush toilet to an existing house so gran can stay with family. Hardest would be to build senior-friendly housing within easy reach of medical facilities, shopping, and amenities.

"and import ever more cheap workers to wipe their invalid backsides"

And how many Australian young people are willing to do such jobs (and at similar wages and conditions)?

Or would you rather have your parents go unwiped?

Generational wedge politics is really unhelpful, just as much as those who continually blather on about the failures of Gen Y.

Generational bickering merely pushes the blame from failures in government policy to a generation of people who for the most part had no power to influence policies anymore than today's youth.

Fact is the baby boomers did not have access to superannuation until later in their working lives unless they worked for governments or were high level executives. Even in the 80s when a public servant left the APS, superannuation was paid out.

I am at a loss to see why we would be better off making cities denser? The reason why many people emigrated to Australia was for the open and less restrictive lifestyle. My father emigrated from Europe away from the problems of high density living and Australia seems ever convinced to follow an already failed approach.

Why not be more creative with decentralising. There is much that can be done in this area. Governments keep talking about it but not much action so far.

The issue of baby boomer retirement is not going to be helped by duplication when when Gen Y and later generations retire. Why not face the issues of overpopulation and sustainable living now rather than continue on this farce of continuous economic growth.

Yuyutsu - why should people who take care of the elderly (or our infants for that matter) be paid ridiculously low wages? Mass immigration just serves to keep a lid on wages to the detriment of people already living here. And the Baby Boomer generation DOES have something to answer for. They could have made the choice to move to sustainable practises in consumption and population when they were given the information and when there was still time to act. They chose, instead, to believe in impossible fantasies and thereby guaranteed the trashing of their children's future. The question is, why should we continue this ridiculous pandering to their needs when they have lived so well and taken so much and left future generations with so little. We need to urgently refocus on preserving something of our resources for the generations following the Baby Boomers. They will just have to have to suck it up and experience the difficulties of old age like most other generations of humans throughout history.

Dear Michael,

I was not promoting immigration, but merely the importation of aged-care workers from third-world countries, mainly the Philippines, on a temporary visa, as is done in other countries, on working-conditions which no Australian would accept. They are excellent and devoted workers, they remain at the elderly's home 6x24 (with one free day a week, usually Sunday), they are eager to work and their salaries are affordable. Only billionaires and ex-politicians can afford an Australian to provide them with a similar devoted service.

I am not asking you to sacrifice anything - we are talking about a generation that worked hard and saved all their life for the eventuality of their old age and frailty. All they ask is to be allowed to bring and pay the foreign worker out of their own savings. It seems that the new generation is spoiled rotten and only wish them to die so that they can inherit them sooner.

Yuyutsu, I live out of the big bad city, where perhaps people have less problem with backside wiping. Whatever the staff in our nursing homes mostly speak with Oz accents.

They may be the offspring of immigrants, but you don't have to go back too far to find that is a common trait.

There is not a human in the country who is not the result of immigrant breeding, when you go far enough, so lets stop discriminating.

As backside wiping is a skill most of us mastered somewhere in our preteens years, it is not a particularly rare or highly valued. The skill more rare, & somewhat under valued is the ability to do it with a smile, & some kindness.

These skills do not appear to be concentrated on any ethnic origin, so origin is not of much importance.

Michael,

If you want to heap blame on the Baby Boomers as a group, you need to show that they have been doing something different from the rest of the population. If you actually look at voting patterns, however, it is people over 60, the generation before the Baby Boomers, who are most likely to vote for the Coalition and least likely to vote for minor parties. Even young voters overwhelmingly vote for the major parties

http://www.sisr.net/apo/watson.pdf

A numerate, well-educated person who knows something about science and human history may well be able to see through the spin from the growthists, but this is a big ask for ordinary people people who have had relatively little education, especially given that the growthists control the media. If you have been continually told that you are stupid and should sit down and shut up, it doesn't give you a lot of confidence in your own judgment.

Dear Hasbeen,

It is not a matter of ethnicity - Australian citizens of all races expect a level of work-standards. They would not be willing for example to be on duty 144 hours a week. No nursing-home employees are expected to attend that many hours, but if you care for a person at their home, that's what needed. Even if Australians were willing to work (or at least to be on call at 10-second notice) 144 hours/week, imagine how much they will charge, even at minimum-wages. Philippines do not expect the same and are more than happy to work in such conditions in order to send the money back home to support their families.

In other countries, foreign employees have certain legal rights for working conditions and minimum-pay, but these are not the same as those of residents/citizens.