Guest post from my mate Chris who hates himself so much he decided to live in Melbourne for over three decades:
I’ve been a Melbourne resident for more than 30 years, and given how quickly the state has imploded I’m now planning to finally become a permanent expat.
The past few weeks we’ve seen relentless ‘calls’ for people to come back to the Melbourne CBD. Most of these appear to be from commercial landlords, union related super funds and property developers losing money on rents and private owners of poorly constructed dogbox apartments for international students that are mostly untenanted.
I say, fuck ‘em.
The decline of Melbourne has been noticeable in the past 10-15 years, with the COVID lockdowns really pulling the rug out of the façade of the ‘most liveable city’ tag. I was always of the opinion that ‘most liveable’ cringe tag was a completely rigged, expensive PR campaign by certain industries (international students and property developers) to fuel the migration-real estate-debt ponzi that Melbourne is built off of. Now that’s imploded (for now anyway) and I say good.
The other wildcard on the table is the whole Work From Home thing. How many people won’t come back full-time tot he office is an interesting debate point, and will a percentage of Work From Home roles become Work From New Dehli? On the other side, it also gives the real estate lobby an excuse to infill the suburbs, case in point the whole suburban rail loop thing.
In my opinion, peak Melbourne was late 90’s or early 2000’s. About 3 million people, affordable housing, none of the high-rise apartment stupidity and fuck all migration. Traffic was busy but manageable. You could still buy a house somewhat affordably.
From about 2006 onwards it started to noticeably decline and I would say the last 7 years pre-COVID, from about 2013 onwards, the city was nosediving into a shithole.
Others have commented that the only silver lining in the whole COVID debacle was the hiatus in the migration being shoved down our throats because ‘muh GDP and house prices.’ Whether immigration comes back at the same pace as before (I personally doubt it) remains to be seen, but I agree with this assessment.
This hiatus has, in my opinion, revealed the Melbourne CBD for what it has become – a cosmopolitan, globalist shithole of soulless consumerism at the expense of the locals and for the benefit a few billionaires in Toorak, Caufield and Brighton.
The state died in the 80’s with Cain/Kirner and was finished off with Kennett selling everything off so that now there is nothing but property development and property development to drive the economy. Melbourne has been here before in the 1890’s with the gold rush, however the level of debt now is far worse. The city and state is now in the same position as the Cain government, sans the assets we owned before it.
The Melbourne City Council is basically all property developers, beginning with Australia’s worst diversity hire ever in Sally Capp, formerly of the Property Council of Australia. Then there’s former Jullia Gillard advisor Nick Reece, a total beta simp who is on the board of the University of Melbourne and whose sole job is to bring back international students because he has no other skills.
A realistic trip in to the Melbourne CBD these days basically involves being stuck in traffic due to bike lanes that aren’t used and construction stoppages everywhere, trying not to collide with third world delivery drivers bringing food to international students in high rise towers and then stepping over homeless, forgotten Australians. Throw in a planned second injecting room (purely being done to drive down asset values in my sceptical mind) with brothels legal to be placed anywhere and there you go.
Don’t also forget the dumping of e-scooters everywhere, which is far more ‘environmental’ than dumping the e-bikes from a couple of years ago. And then there’s the whole great replacement migration thing, which makes you feel like the only white person in the city (because you know we need to turn Australia into another overpopulated, authoritarian Asian shithole. Guess I just answered my own question).
The only people I feel sorry for are the long term, small and medium enterprises have been run into the ground and strong armed into closing down by Andrews and co. I don’t feel sorry for the shitty retailers and Asian restaurants that have sprung up by the hundreds purely to service international students. Fuck them, how many mediocre Korean BBQ places employing slave labour does the average cosmopolitan tosser from Northcote need?
Overall, I believe Melbourne is intentionally being run into the ground so it can be ‘built back better’ given the amount of globalist think tanks, programs and billionaires that live here and carry these things out. I draw a lot of parallels with Melbourne and New York City or San Francisco in terms of the progressive, globalist bullshit being carried out and tested here. Although, Melbourne really is the budget version of those two cities.
A rant for another time.
Can they at least bring back the Chinese beggars for a more diverse, inclusive third world CBD?
I could not agree more, TBH the last time I was there it was a disappointment, infested with 3rd world workers and woke fuckwits that were too scared to order Nando’s in person from the counter because they actually had to talk to a stranger.
But if they get rid of the brothels and massage parlors how will an incel such as Timbo get laid? Cos we all know white girls despise neckbeards
The one thing white girls despise more is your slayer opening gambit of:
“Show bob and vagene.”
Especially when your Ubering them home.
Not even close, u old cuck. My disdain for curries is probably greater than yours for vagene
melbourne was a shithole before immigration
Everyone there is obsessed with AFL. Its the most cringeworthy thing I have ever encountered
Even highly educated people
Honestly, should be bombed from the air
gayFL sucks but really all sportsball blows
the fascinating with pro sports to me is just zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz like what’s the appeal. i dont get it therre’s obviously something wrong with me
only thing i like is summer olympics bc it feels grand and rare and you get to see cool simple shit like running that you never get to see anywhere else.
yes all sports are garbage except fighting really
But Sydney does not have the level of adoration for sports and sports people that melbourne does
Its the kind of provincial , hick bullshit that you see in perth or adelaide only
Even I don’t think anyone in brisbane really gives af either
People in sydney are too busy trying to get rich or look good to give af what happens with some bogans kicking a ball
Brisbane loves sport but not as fanatical as Melbourne with the exception of State of Origin.
I think its how they deal with it. The reality of living in a dysopia in making can only work if you cog dis into believing it is not what it is.
I think that is also where the woke self loathing comes from. Not just are they f’ed, they also have no hope of not being f’ed, so the only hope comes from if others have it worse.
But if others have it worse, how to you signal you have it better and are superior? afl fills that void, basically bread and circuses.
There is fascinating research done into the last days of Rome or Byzantium, where the reds vs the greens (chariot teams from memory) dominated politics just as rivalries happen between afl teams.
Having left Melbourne nearly 10 years ago. Every single point resonates with how I felt each time I went back to visit. Fucking spot on.
Someone was telling me today they want to white wash all the graffiti art in Melb, to make it more welcoming for tourists and int. students apparently. All I could think was “Yeah that’s totally why they dont want to visit and not the past 2 years of draconian governing” State govt and city council are so fucking far off the mark.
theres nothin to fuckin do there and it sucks. i look back at old photos of syd and melbourne before the 60s ‘urban renewal’ wrecking balls came in and destroyed everything and man it looked so much nicer, beautiful old buildings now it’s full of generic modernist/post modernist architecture and glass skyscrapers that are completely boring to look and walk around under. virtually every large city in australia (brisbane might be the worst offender actually) is indistinguishable from every other large city in asia or really anywhere else in the world outside of europe.
i’ll bet australian cities were a lot more interesting and edgier prior to the 2000 olympics and the housing boom, now theyre sanitised globally homogenised boreholes.
Other than a few less big buildings, less apartments, more office space and a lot less immigrants I dont remember it actually being all that different ór edgier in the 90’s in sydney.
p.s those “livability” surveys are meaningless to most people, theyre like university ranking surveys in that theyve been misrepresented to market cities. the livability survey melbourne was always at the top of is describing the specific experience of overseas executives staying in a hotel, had NOTHING TO DO with the average person who actually lives in the city.
Some government departments are already subverting the outsourcing rules to hire WFH Indian slaves into permanent positions. No visa required. Of course they are also forcing Australian employees back into the office because WFH is bad.
Just a matter of time before they subvert minimum wage laws and advertise on Freelancer.com and award positions to the lowest bidder.
One advantage to Working From Home is that it probably makes life very difficult for anyone living in a 20 to a 2 bedder sardine can slum, especially the ones where they’re sleeping in shifts. We can probably thank our shitty internet infrastructure for that too.
They don’t tend to be doing “knowledge work” but rather manual labour of various kinds that requires a body on site.
Timbo, your mate is spot on. One could expand it to all of Melbourne. If you look at photos a few decades ago, Melbourne was green being the garden state. Now it is just beige. Everything is being demolished to build grey blocks of apartments. I can never understand why Melbourne needs to be bigger than Sydney, it is like two adolescent boys seeing who has a bigger penis.
I have only been to hellbourne a couple of times (for work, I didn’t intentionally choose to go there) and hated it. People told me it is great because you can go to cafes and shop. However, I think that just highlights how the pinnacle of achievement as an EZFKA unit is to be a narcissistic consuming twat.
Welcome Chris!
The Melbourne CBD has very little for local EZFKA units. Can remember the last time was pre-covid, walking down one of the main streets off Flinders Station and noted it just filled with currency exchange outlets, travel agencies and those freight/packaging businesses used by Daigou shoppers to send goods back to China.
As stagmal correctly points out, livability indexes are based on how it is for business execs who can stay in fancy hotels and splurge on wanker priced dining – they have no bearing on the common man. Most locals can only afford to live out in suburbia, and even most remote areas are self-sufficient so there’s really no requirement to venture too far out, and even less so with the rise of online shopping. With working from home being fairly well ingrained, I can see the CBD being left further hollowed out and destitute. I predict it will end up similar to areas like St Kilda where strip shops are left vacant as landlords who have inherited or paid off properties decades ago have no incentive to lower rents to attract tenants, as reducing commercial rents will negatively impact on property valuations.
yes, good piece Chrisso!
while you bemoan the lack of attraction for legacy EZFKA units, I think that the system is set up to function without them.
profit is profit and it doesn’t matter a pinch of shit whether that profit is produced by making foreign student bods turn the hamster wheels or if legazens turn the wheel.
serioulsy, absolutely zero shits are given about this. Indeed, trying to give a shit – or god forbid express a preference – would b tantamount to racism, the way the EZFKA has been set up….
In the corporate world you have for profit organisations and then not for profit. But the not for profits still are determined to turn a surplus.
At a country level I think Australia is still trying to work out if its making a profit or surplus.
The point being the outcome is the same regardless.
I think you are spot on regarding not needing to function without locals. The irony is due to Covid the exodus of immigrants coupled with the loss of cheap labour has seen said CBD take a significant hit and I don’t think they know any other way to revive it.
They’ve tried to throw meal and food discount vouchers to attract diners back to the city centre, but I think too many people are finding the traffic/parking and other headaches not worth the incentive.
Any benefits of working in the office accrue to the employer, the costs are borne entirely by the employee.
Seriously you can WFH and claim tax deductions whilst if you commute to the office no deduction. Then there is the 2 hours a day most save not commuting.
The social aspect of going to the office is nice though and if employers such as mine want to throw free food and coffee I’m still semi partial to heading in maybe 2 days a week.
Plus there also the politics of it all,better to build and maintain relationships in person.
That’s assuming they’ll actually let you in and aren’t discriminating!
Benefits of working in the office benefit parasitic super funds. If employees had their preference, they would WFH most of the week, but that would mean significant reductions in leased floor space.
Brand new EZFKA consumer units are far more compliant than legacy units which is why the elites are 1000% behind Dom’s plan for an additional 400,000 units per year. If you told them they had to work in the CBD, they will with no questions asked.
It’s funny though, let’s bring in hordes of Indian and Asian workers to work in the CBD when if they stayed in India or Asia the work could be sent there anyway in part
But yes that wouldn’t save the commercial landlords would it
Neither would it save house prices here, it is all we have left, without increasing house prices there is nothing
Other than commodities, our only export of any value is our lifestyle (ie visas).
Great point – forgot about WFH tax deductions, The only other beneficiary of returning to the office is the micromanger – their role becomes redundant and it’s harder to throw your weight around from behind a screen.
Totally agree. Walking around the top of Swanston street (near RMIT and Melbourne Uni) playing “Spot the Aussie” is like being in down-town Hong Kong. Without the “Hey, cool, I’m in Hong Kong” ambience.
I called Melbourne home from 2013-2019. I watched the Inner North being demolished at a disturbing rate – so much so I had to move house twice in 8 months as the wreckers moved in to make way for 8 townhouses or some other ugly grey mid-rise apartment block; albeit mostly empty once they were built.
is there a CBD anywhere in ezfka that should be preserved??
I can’t think of any
Little known fact is Kings Cross was bought up by Bairds favourite elites before he closed all the night-life down. As a result sky-rocketing in value.
It is always the case. Same deal with all the properties around Goulburn and lobbying to have a high speed rail stop there.
Not many people know about Fisherman’s Bend scandal. These pricks have no fear.
Liberals profit at Fishermans Bend (theage.com.au)