A mattress company is offering struggling Australians the chance to cover their rent and mortgage for a year, as long as they aren’t baby boomers.
Koala mocks older Australians, born before 1965, by creating a website with a provocative name: boomerblocker.com – just weeks after Australia’s outgoing age discrimination commissioner criticized age discrimination jokes.
While visitors to this site will not be asked their date of birth, Koala said the website’s competing questions were deliberately designed to disadvantage baby boomers.
“In a bid to stop the golden generation from claiming more good deals, Koala is launching a first of its kind ‘Boomer Blocker’, a generationally biased questionnaire that Australians will need to answer as part of their application, which has been designed to purpose to try to filter out boomers and ensure that the offer is available to all generations X, Y and Z,” he said.
Questions include the meaning of the term ‘Brangelina’, which ironically refers to baby boomer Hollywood star Brad Pitt’s previous relationship with his younger ex-girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.
Another question was what Control C and Control V do on a keyboard, even though Word’s copy and paste features were pioneered by Microsoft, whose founder Bill Gates is a baby boomer.
Rory Costello, commercial director of Koala, argued that baby boomers had it much easier than younger generations when it came to being able to buy a home.
“We wanted to give Millennials, Gen Zers, and everyone in between, the opportunity to pay their rent or mortgage for an entire year, so they can use their cash for other luxuries boomers enjoy on a daily basis,” he said.
A mattress company is offering struggling Australians the chance to cover their rent and mortgage for a year, as long as they aren’t baby boomers.
Former age discrimination commissioner Kay Patterson, 78, whose seven-year term ended Friday, has previously criticized anti-senior jokes.
“Age discrimination is the least understood ‘ism’,” he told ABC Radio National last month.
‘We understand about sexism, we understand about racism.
“But most of us in our bones have some discriminatory views and we joke about it sometimes, and jokes that wouldn’t be accepted in other areas.
‘”You look good for your age.” You know, we don’t tell people, “You look good for being a woman” or “You look good for being an Indian or something.”
“We just have these weird attitudes toward older people.”
While baby boomers were paying interest rates of 18 percent in the late 1980s, they faced a tough mortgage payment situation when homes were much cheaper compared to median income.
That means they didn’t have a dangerous debt-to-income ratio like younger borrowers would now.
In 1989, the median home price in Sydney was $170,850, just five times the median full-time salary of $26,874 after a 20 percent mortgage down payment.
Former age discrimination commissioner Kay Patterson, whose seven-year terms ended Friday, has previously criticized anti-senior jokes.
In 2023, Sydney’s median home price of $1.324 million costs 11 times the median salary of $94,000 for the same mortgage deposit.
That is well above the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s ‘six’ threshold for mortgage stress.
So, unlike a baby boomer of a generation ago, a single average-income person now in their 30s and 40s can’t buy a typical Sydney home on their own.
Melbourne, with a median home price of $918,971, is also out of reach, as is Brisbane, with a median home price of $806,781, unless a single borrower moves to a far-flung suburb.
Australia’s two previous ageism commissioners, Susan Ryan and Dr Patterson, came from the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945.
The Australian Human Rights Commission is announcing a replacement for a position that has yet to be filled by a baby boomer.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Governor General David Hurley, outgoing Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe and his successor Michele Bullock, and Chief Justice Susan Kiefel are all members of the baby boomer generation. , born between 1946 and 1964.
Former Australian test cricket captain Steve Smith, a millennial, was an early investor in Koala, which turned a 10% stake of $100,000 in 2015, before it had any clients, into a windfall of $1.5 million in five years.
Koala co-founders Mitch Taylor, 35, and Daniel Milham, 32, are millennials featured in The Australian Review. Rich Youngsters List.
They appear in 44th and 40th place, with respective net worths of $128 million and $153 million of Australia’s richest people under 40.
Koala’s Boomer Blocker website is operational from July 31 to August 27.
