ACT’s wealthiest suburb of Red Hill odd choice for media opportunity
Updated ,first published
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor had one topic on his mind when he walked into a Canberra supermarket on Wednesday morning for a media opportunity: “Workers’ standard of living, the cost of living crisis.”
Flanked by his deputy Jane Hume and shadow treasurer Tim Wilson, Taylor took up an age-old line of attack: that Labour’s budget management was responsible for the rising cost of living and that the government had “absolutely failed Australians”.
But as the press conference raced through questions about the Liberal Party’s not-so-secret 2025 election review, the budget and the ongoing war in the Middle East, it eventually got closer to the real question: why had Taylor chosen to hold a press conference on cost-of-living pressures in the ACT’s highest-income suburb?
“This is one of Canberra’s wealthiest suburbs. The average house price is $2.1 million. Why are we here? So is this part of directly confronting the teal movement?” Western Australia journalist Katina Curtis asked.
The former McKinsey consultant and liberal leader-turned-entrepreneur stressed that he had seen first-hand the hardships endured by those struggling to pay the bills in townships and food banks. But he said difficult times affect everyone.
“No one is immune from the collapse in living standards that we are seeing across this country: 10 per cent compared to our peer countries. We will be releasing new figures today, but let me give you an important tip, Australia’s standard of living is in free fall and is far behind our peer countries,” Taylor told reporters.
Locals in Red Hill, where the supermarket is famous for its wine club and cheese range, may be feeling the pinch less than most.
At the 2021 census, Red Hill’s median household weekly income was almost $4,000; This was well above the ACT average of $2373 and even well above the national average of $1746. More than 60 per cent of suburban homes have at least four bedrooms, compared to just 35 per cent of homes across Australia. And 22 percent of residents have at least three cars in their driveway.
Taylor, who moved from Sydney’s Tony Woollahra to the Goulburn area to enter politics in 2013, maintains his financial success is the product of hard work, but Chalmers last month mocked him as “born with a silver foot in his mouth”.
Later Wednesday, Wilson hit back at an attack on Chalmers, whom he nicknamed “Pyro Jim” for fueling inflation with debt.
He did this by performing a revision of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit. We Didn’t Start the FireHe tries to keep the tempo while singing the song “Treasurer started the fire of inflation… inflation is burning, the treasurer is writhing” on the podium.
Are you also squirming? My colleagues at the front counter. But job done: Wilson assured that the evening’s clips would be his warm take on the cost of living, not Taylor’s.
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Nick Newling is the federal politics correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
