Renovation Nation: Our obsession with home

Renovation Nation asks why we have become so wrapped up in our homes. It explores the ways we are distorting our lives in the pursuit of prestige and tax-free capital gains as we play the real estate game with mindless passion. Fixated on interest rates and surrounded by headlines about housing affordability, we remain determined to make our homes bigger and better. The great Australian dream of owning a home seems to have become the great Australian nightmare. But what about the national home? Is our anxiety about safety and security, about keeping the ‘wrong’ people out of Australia, or off ‘our’ beaches, the flipside of this obsession?

Fiona Allon is a writer and critic who specialises in the analysis of contemporary Australian culture and politics. She is a regular media commentator on current affairs, social issues and popular culture, and researches and writes on a broad range of subjects. Her work in cultural studies, especially her writing on cities and urban culture, is known internationally. She has taught cultural theory, media studies and cultural studies at universities in Australia and Europe and regularly conducts research in European cities.