Australian housing wealth is meaningless, destructive and fundamentally changing our society | Alan Kohler

High-priced homes do not create wealth, Alan Kohler says, they redistribute it. Now financial success is largely a function of geography, not accomplishment

• Alan Kohler on how housing policy entrenches inequality - Australian politics podcast
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My parents were married in 1951 and, with a war service loan, bought a block of land in South Oakleigh, eight miles from Melbourne's central business district.

I don't know what my dad was making then, but he was a carpenter and apparently the average wage of a carpenter in 1951 was about 80 shillings a week, or 350 a year. And judging by average prices back then, they would have paid about 1,000 for the land. (By the way, the median house price had more than doubled in 1950, recovering from the big fall caused by price controls during the second world war, on which more later.)