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Self-absorption wins the day: a new politics can be salvaged from two decades of creeping affluenza.

Publication: Arena Magazine
Publication Date: 01-DEC-04 		Format: Online - approximately 901 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: Self-absorption wins the day: a new politics can be salvaged from two decades of creeping affluenza.(Election Roundup)

Article Excerpt
It was not the extraordinary public spending spree of the election campaign that sank Labor, but the sustained private consumption binge that Australians have been on for the past decade. Booming house prices coupled with unprecedented levels of consumer debt have left most Australians absorbed by their own material circumstances, with little room left for thoughts of building a better society.

Driven not by financial need but by the very aspirations that Mark Latham has lauded, Australian households are in debt up to their necks, and that has meant hundreds of thousands of people have looked at their partners across the kitchen table and said: 'If interest rates go up by a couple of per cent then we're stuffed'. Having the bank foreclose on you must be one of life's more unpleasant experiences, especially...



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