Mark Humphries: ‘When did the Australian dream go from owning your own home to owning somebody else's?'

The Guardian

3 days ago

Mark Humphries has moved house five times in the past seven years. First was the place in the Sydney suburb of Turramurra he had to vacate because it was, 'forgive me for saying this – leaking like a giant breast from the ceiling'. Next came a house so damp, mushrooms began growing under the carpet; a small flat that was OK except for being utterly freezing, and another one-bedroom apartment where the rent went from $500 to $660 a week, forcing his exit.
It's of no comfort to the comedian and TV presenter that he's not alone in having found it extremely difficult to secure an affordable and liveable home.
'This is the common experience,' he sighs. 'It's been extraordinary seeing everyone I know go through rental increases [over the past few years] … I feel like every one of us needs to start a GoFundMe just for our daily existence.'
Housing affordability is a topic Humphries is angry about. And, perhaps ironically, that emotion can be a very useful tool for a comedian.
'I have found with a lot of my work that it's easier if you're angry about something,' he says – like, say, those political texts we all received in the lead-up to the election, or all things Mark Latham. 'Even if you're just doing comedy sketches, if you are genuinely annoyed by what has happened, you can channel that into something amusing.'
Recently, Humphries has channelled his rage 'not just for myself, but everyone' over the housing crisis into a new documentary called Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream? Out on Binge, it's a one-hour look at the problems with Australia's housing market, and how we've landed in a situation where, as he puts it in the documentary, even a 'D-grade celebrity like me can't afford a home'.
We're discussing all this in the incongruous setting of a quaint cafe specialising in tea and scones – Humphries' choice of venue. This was meant to be a quick bite before a walking interview but the moment the scones hit the table, we've lost all motivation to stand up again. Humphries, he proudly tells me, eats a lot of baked goods. He even once auditioned to host The Great Australian Bake Off, a job that 'would have been heaven'.
That particular gig wasn't to be, but Humphries has nonetheless carved out a very busy career on our screens, largely as the tall, blond and affable face of Australian news satire. You'd probably recognise him from appearances on programs such as SBS's The Feed and Channel Ten's The Project (the recent cancellation of which is a 'great loss' for Australian comedy, whatever you think of the show itself, he says).
Unlike most comics, Humphries has never been one for standup – he has done it, he can tell me very specifically, only 12 times in his life and found each one 'immensely stressful'. In fact, he's more reserved and strait-laced than the typical comedian, deflecting attention by asking me as many questions as I ask him. Rather than seeking out the stage, Humphries spent his early years after school working at a Blockbuster video store and then a warehouse. The video store may have been every millennial's teenage dream job, but it wasn't all roses.
'I got held up at knife-point three times when I worked in a video store,' Humphries recalls. 'It was awful. I had to leave that job after the third one, because I was so affected by it.'
He can still see the humour in that formative trauma – such as when he went to the police station to do an identakit after one of the robberies and described the knife-wielding assailant as 'surprisingly handsome'. Or the time his unfailing politeness kicked in as he was being held up and he asked his attacker if he'd like a bag for all that cash. Or that after he finally quit and booked a ticket to London to try and decompress, as he stepped off the tube from the airport, a fellow holidaying Australian recognised him and exclaimed 'Hey, Blockbuster Crows Nest!'
But through every odd job, Humphries was quietly nursing dreams of breaking into comedy. His career eventually began 13 years ago when he called up the satirical current affairs program Hungry Beast and asked for an internship, unsure of how else to get started in the industry given 'there's no university degree in comedy'. His turn as a comic came to the surprise of those closest to him.
'I was talking about how I'd always wanted to be a comedy writer [in a recent interview] and my dad said to me, 'I spoke to your mother about how you said you'd always want to be a comedian. We were gobsmacked, because you never said anything funny to us.''
Humphries' dad, who actually does very much support his son's career, gamely appears in the new documentary – to decline him any financial assistance cobbling together a house deposit, because, as the elder Humphries puts it, 'I'm renting too.'
'We're so obsessed with property in this country, and it's become worse especially in the last 25 years, where the idea of accruing multiple properties has become something that people aspire to,' Humphries says. 'And it's a line that I use in the doco, but I think it's true – when did the Australian dream go from owning your own home to owning somebody else's?'
What makes the situation harder to fix, Humphries thinks, is the fact the majority of Australians do actually own a home.
'Owners outnumber renters two to one,' he says. 'So it's very hard to get huge change on something that the majority of people benefit from. House prices going up if you own a house is great, but for everyone else, it's a nightmare. And so the challenge is, how do you get people who are benefiting from the current system to ultimately make a sacrifice for the greater good, so that we don't end up with this two-tier system of the homeowners and the renters? Which is essentially what we have, and it's only getting worse.'
At this point the anger Humphries had spoken of is starting to show, tea and scone neglected as fires up and rattles off the issues with Australia's housing market.
Obviously, supply is part of the housing crisis, Humphries says – so it's great that the federal government has pledged to build 1.2m new homes by 2030. 'But the issue with the supply argument is that it doesn't take into account the other part of that, which is demand. So again, if you have this system where people are able to tap into these tax incentives and buy multiple properties, increasing supply doesn't really solve that. It ends up with a whole bunch of people owning even more properties.'
Humphries points out he doesn't begrudge investors for taking advantage of the tax system – 'but that system shouldn't exist'. Couldn't the government, I proffer casually while Humphries finally gets the chance to take a bite, just put a cap on the number of properties people can own?
'Humphries nods furiously as he bites through his scone,' he narrates after a pause to chew and swallow. Ultimately, he says, to fix the housing crisis we need to rid ourselves of the idea that property prices should perpetually climb higher, and allow the value of homes to become static. 'And some of these changes can be introduced incrementally. It's not about crashing the housing market.'
So, I ask, does Humphries ever see home ownership in his future?
'Bizarrely, at age 39 I just bought a home – I just moved in yesterday,' he admits with the mix of sheepishness and amusement now typical to any millennial who manages to get a foot on the property ladder. 'But I maintain the rage!'
He is lucky, Humphries says, to have got enough work in the last year to secure a mortgage on a two-bedroom apartment near the airport, together with his partner. The irony of having used the salary from a documentary about not being able to afford a home to buy a home is not lost on him. And he insists being a very newly minted homeowner hasn't changed his perspective on the problem at hand.
'Like, I used to work in retail, and I'm still as annoyed today about rudeness towards service workers as I was when I was in the video store,' he shrugs as we dust off the scone crumbs and wrap up our conversation so that he can head home to start unpacking boxes for what is hopefully the last time.
'I'm thrilled, obviously, to get to that next stage of my life,' he adds. 'But it's something that, growing up, I thought I would have done 10 years ago, and it just felt like the possibility of it just kept moving further and further away. And I don't go into it with the idea of, now I can't wait for this to increase in value. I haven't bought a place because I want to make money. I bought a place because I want to live in a place.'
Really, he's mostly just very grateful to not have to move again anytime soon.
'I'm excited to have a bit of stability,' he says, before pausing to consider the implications of this very momentous life change. 'And just to be able to stick a nail on the wall.'
Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream? is streaming now on Binge.