Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta

Whilst I am habitually much more interested in politics than the average person (the average person currently needs to significantly lift their game in order to preserve our democracy), I recently decided very reluctantly after weighing up many salient concerns that my obligations for civic duty towards our democracy would be better served by me …

Continue reading “Democracy Sausage Sizzle Fizzle”

You won’t see any F-14 Tomcats on static display outside US Naval Bases or in aviation museums. It is a shame as they were beautiful planes to watch flying, as evidenced in that 1986 classic movie Top Gun. That is because, after they were all retired, they were shredded into very small pieces of scrap, …

Continue reading “Top Gun 2 – Why Bother Now?”

Where do I start to write about how to salvage the Great Australian Dream for most of my friends and the next generation? Do I start with a much younger me, too arrogant to know my own financial ignorance, but very very very lucky? Or is it about interest rates, and how we all were …

Continue reading “How to create Housing Affordability: The Nuclear (or Austrian?) Option”

I would love to consider myself a protest voter these days, given I am rather skeptical about the sincerity or general decency of the current government, and have never been particularly enamoured of the current opposition, much as Albo seems, on the surface at least, to be authentic and (formerly) cuddly. However, living out in …

Continue reading “Allegro Non Troppo Part 4: How Woke are the Teal Candidates?”

The news that a Communist Chinese naval vessel with surveillance facilities has been sailing in international waters (albeit part of our exclusive economic zone) not far off the coast of Australia near to some of our more sensitive naval facilities has been greeted with the proper expressions of horror by our Defence Minister, Lord Voldemort. …

Continue reading “Who cares about French Submarines: We need French Scuba Divers. Right Now!”

I like a good cargo cult. Last April, at the time of the sad demise of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, I wrote at length about how he had his own cargo cult in Vanuatu, The Prince Philip Movement, which worshipped him as a god. (I do hope that they have chosen one of …

Continue reading “Contemporary Cargo Cults in the Pacific”

The above image was the Commonwealth Bank’s mascot back in the 1980s, when I first seriously engaged with them as a customer as a teenager. I think I took out a term deposit with a 13.75% interest rate in 1982. Back then, I think we saw our banks, particularly our local branches, as trusted partners …

Continue reading “The Elephant in the Heavily Mortgaged Room – More Thoughts on Home Affordability”

The cliche we know as the ‘Great Australian Dream’ is not new, nor original to Australia. Captain John Truslow Adams popularised a similar but not original idea in 1931 as the ‘American Dream’, which then became aggrandised. And even before such ideas of mundane, suburban, petit bourgeois prosperity and moderate affluence became clearly defined, we …

Continue reading “When Does The Suburban Dream Become A Nightmare? Reflections On Home Ownership”

Not too many Australian beer companies are owned by Australians. Broo, the publicly listed micro-brewery, is the exception that empathically proves the rule. You can’t own shares in Fosters (aka Carlton & United) or Lion Nathan (aka Tooheys) anymore unless you buy shares in Asahi or Kirin on the Tokyo stock exchange, and where is …

Continue reading “Broo’s Ballarat Land Sale Sunk By Red Tape”

What was it that the shade of Achilles said when Odysseus met him in Hell (or Hades if you prefer) on the latter’s long journey home to Ithaca? It was something along the lines of much preferring to be a day labourer in the world than a prince in Hell. Well, I am an office …

Continue reading “Allegro Non Troppo Part 3: Posh People With Very Deep Pockets”