PHON fear mongers fail when communities function

Wayne Hawkins writes that when a community truly functions (when people know each other, walk together, look out for each other), the One Nation story loses its meaning.

*CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses DV and suicide.

I lived in Romania for a few years; long enough to start a family there, long enough to stop being strangers and start becoming everyday life. There was a rhythm in daily life that I could never forget.

After dinner, we would leave the flat and walk along the path along the apartment blocks, under trees thick enough to provide shade, past talking benches. I’m not doing anything in particular. I’m outside. Neighbors said “hello” whether they knew you or not. A little further down there was a concrete table with a chessboard placed on top, and most evenings two old men sat at the table talking more than playing. The game seemed to exist mainly as a reason to be there.

The road led towards a park, and the park was the same scene on a larger scale. Children run in flocks. Grandparents are on the benches. Couples make slow laps. The whole neighborhood was out in the open every evening, for no reason at all, that’s what evenings were for.

This is the contrast I constantly encounter. Romania was poorer than Australia in every economic respect. But his public life was richer than ours often are. Our parks remain empty at 7pm. After dark, our streets belong to no one. For most of us, Australian evenings take place indoors, in front of a screen, in a bar or inserting money into a machine.

Part of the difference is what the house is for. In Romania, as in most of Europe, home was where you lived on the same block as neighbors, often for generations. This was not an asset class.

In Australia we long ago stopped talking about “home” and started talking about “the property market” and built a tax system that rewards treating housing as an investment vehicle. Platforms are now exporting our disease: Short-term rental sites have begun turning homes into hotel rooms around the world.

Barcelona saw Rents increased by 68 percent More than 10,000 listings in a decade kept homes off the market, and cities from New York to Lisbon has taken action to ban or severely restrict short stays throughout the house to reclaim residents’ housing.

And nowhere in Australia knows this more than we do: Hobart is almost Seven times more short-term rentals per person It was bigger than Sydney and almost half of them were long-term rentals. Our own council this week new move to ban short-term stays at all homes in residential areas – finally a recognition that a city where homes are workplaces is a city where no one is home.

This is where I want to be honest about what “Australian culture” has actually become, because we talk about defending it often enough.

Australians We lose more money per person to gambling More than any other nation in the world (more than $31 billion a year), much of it through poker machines deliberately placed in suburbs with the least money.

Alcohol is included in almost every of our social rituals and the harms behind it are as follows: Death rate from alcohol-related injuries has more than doubled within a decade it filled our hospitals and police calls.

Last year alone, twenty-eight women killed by current or former partnersAnd one in four Australian women has been exposed to intimate partner violence.

And as we look away from everything around us nine Australians took their own lives every day – more three quarters malemany have exactly the isolation that an empty street guarantees.

None of these came on a boat.

But the loudest voices in our politics insist that the real threat to our way of life is immigration. Newcomers will dilute who we are, change our streets, take something from us. This is an old trick; When people are hurt and angry, give them a target that is not the root cause.

Slot barons, liquor advertisers and media owners who profit from both are happy for the conversation to be about anyone but themselves.

But when you look at Australian history, the claim still falls flat.

Immigrants did not erode Australian culture; They built half of the places we now claim as ours. Greeks and Italians gave us cafe culture and food worth eating. Vietnamese and Lebanese have revived dying shopping streets. We were told that every wave would destroy us, but on the contrary, it would make this place hotter, more crowded and more lively.

The things in Australian life that are most like the Romanian street (the noisy family restaurant, the festival, the food-scented street) often come with the people we were warned about.

Now I see it in my own neighborhood too. In the early mornings and cool evenings, East Asian families walk; usually three generations together, grandparents and grandchildren, taking leisurely tours of the streets the rest of us drive through. They use our parks and trails the way parks and trails should be used. Keeping them alive and safe just by staying inside them.

Romania was not a paradise. It bore the scars of dictatorship and true poverty, and most of its people would trade places with us in the blink of an eye. But he held on to something we’ve overlooked: the idea that the street belongs to everyone, that evenings are for being with your neighbors, that community is a habit you practice every day rather than a word politicians invoke at election time.

And we know we can do it because Hobart is doing it right now. Dark Mofo It continues as I write this – the streets are bathed in red, Winterfest is gathered shoulder to shoulder, thousands of us are out together in the cold midwinter darkness.

This proves that the appetite for shared public life never leaves us. But pay attention to what it takes: a festival, a ticket, a reason to spend. The challenge is to carry even a tiny fraction of this into ordinary weeks; knocking on the neighbor’s door, checking to see if the guy down the street is okay, standing by on our own paths before something happens to call us.

Because I realized that when a community really works, when people know each other, walk together, look out for each other, the One Nation story no longer makes sense. Fear of strangers requires strangers. He can’t survive on a street where everyone says hello.

So when someone tells you that immigrants are threatening the Australian way of life, ask them which part. Gambling losses? Drink? Violence behind closed doors? Because the people I see actually living the version of Australia worth preserving (walking outside, talking, being present) are often the newest Australians.

The grandmother who makes her evening rounds on my street does not understand our culture. It shows us where we left off.

Wayne Hawkins owns the Crisp N Sweet bakery and cafe in Claremont, Tasmania, and is an independent candidate for the federal seat of Clark at the 2028 Election.

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