Laws and governance at all levels of government—local, state, federal—regardless of party, currently support and, indeed, incentivise the maintenance of property as an asset class over any notion of home or dwelling—a guaranteeing of landlord rights that liquidates all other claims.

Approaching a house at night, it is possible to tell, from a distance, if the television is on. Even if the program is inaudible, the night walker, passing by, can discern beneath the sounds of wind and foliage, of cooling roof iron and cars ticking in their mechanical sleep, a kind of hum—a high and eerie keening, a dog whistle set to the human ear. The ghost in the television is electricity, pulsing at high frequency, causing the metal parts of the appliance to vibrate minutely, shaking its tiny ferrite bones.

As a retail worker with more than ten years’ experience, I was saddened, though not particularly surprised, by the recent decision of the FWC to cut penalty rates in my sector. It strikes me as the logical outcome of the widening gulf between the ‘servants’ and the ‘served’ – a willed ignorance to the actual conditions of labour, that extends right through to the uniquely free-floating, disconnected lives of most of the political class.