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The trouble comes, though, when a national crisis that shapes the lived experience of millions is linked to the corrosive myth that makes immigrants the scapegoat for the country’s woes. Aside from the fact that economists have confirmed that housing affordability is the result of supply issues such as taxation of new housing, infrastructure funding and planning bottlenecks, Smith’s use of language — “jumbo loads”, “ridiculous immigration” — conjures the pernicious image that immigrants are faceless hordes whose motivations don’t spring from individual dreams and circumstances but some collective desire to game the system.

• I have a new column up at SBS Life about the dangers of blaming immigration for Australia’s housing crisis.

From a 1993 interview with the writer James Salter, who I’ve just discovered, in the Paris Review. 

“I used to really love writing in the early mornings but these days, that time is for sitting on my balcony with a coffee and a stack of magazines and then walking the 40-minute walk to my studio and taking in the scenery. Taking pleasure in this time, before deadlines and emails kick in, has helped me feel a lot saner.”

As the world gets scarier, I feel like there’s nothing as grounding as having some daily rituals. Along with a group of freelancers, I chatted with Madeleine Dore of the excellent blog Extraordinary Routines about some of my worst and best working habits. You can read “Lessons on Being the Worst Freelancer” here.

It’s easy to dismiss ’90s malls as soulless shrines to consumption, home to crappy food courts, and embarrassing mid-market chain stores. But doing so ignores the ways in which these places gave teenagers a sense of connection with each other, as well as the freedom to be themselves. As a teenager, Saturdays and school holidays were spent with my friends, drifting up and down the escalators or circling the faux-Milanese atrium, the focal point of an exceedingly average Perth mall called the Galleria. We’d stop to try on Doc Martens that were out of our price range or cowl neck minidresses meant for nightclubs we were too young to go to. These unsupervised hours were our first real taste of adult freedom. The inward-facing nature of mall architecture let us indulge in our friendships and be as insular as we wanted to be—we were free to simply drift, to take up space. The things we did buy, like strawberry lip balms from The Body Shop and albums salvaged from the discount rack at Sanity, didn’t feel like consumer items, they felt like the evidence of our bonds.

— I wrote an essay for Vice, about being a teenage mallrat, as part of their weekend summer series. You can read it in full here. 

A photo posted by Neha Kale (@nehakale) on Nov 4, 2016 at 3:34pm PDT

Issue 16 of VAULT magazine, featuring stories on the crime-photographer-turned-artist Asger Carlsen, artists Julian Hooper, Pip & Pop, Oscar Enberg and Atong Atem as well as features on designing mausoleums and the fallout from the fake furniture boom is out at newsagents around the country now! Or you can subscribe here. 

A photo posted by Neha Kale (@nehakale) on Nov 6, 2016 at 7:24pm PST

I was lucky enough to profile the incredible Canadian poet Rupi Kaur for The Collective — the issue, featuring Lupita Nyong’o on the cover, is out at good newsstands around the world now!

The stories of cities are always stories of gentrification and Kings Cross is a case in point. The trouble is, though, that we’re tricked into believing that gentrification and its bywords — renewal, regeneration, transformation — are a straightforward swap of one seamy, undesirable reality for one that’s cleaner, shinier and benefits us all.

But as Jason Reynolds points out in a January 2014 Gawker article, the root word of gentrification is gentry, which, as the Merriam-Webster puts it, refers to “the qualities appropriate to a person of gentle birth.” If you think that cities belong to those who live their life there rather than those powerful enough to believe in their right to civilise everything around them, without thinking about the consequences, this should make you as uncomfortable as it makes me.

– I wrote about the gentrification of Sydney’s Kings Cross for SBS Life. 

But, for me, wildly inappropriate costumes aren’t as rattling as what those costumes might represent. I’ve grown desensitised to the possibility that white people might use Halloween to try on a false self that is culturally insensitive. It’s the fear that Halloween may give them permission to be their true self — a self whose racist instincts are submerged by polite society — that turns my blood to ice water and gives me the chills.

– from : “Why it’s finally time to rethink your harmless Halloween costume?” my latest column for SBS. 

 

I spoke with Michael Cathcart from ABC Radio National’s Books and Arts show about the new issue of VAULT magazine — its cover features a nude painting by the New York painter Lisa Yuskavage and we were asked to censor the nipples before distribution. You can read the interview and listen to the full broadcast here. 

Any artist will tell you that on our best days, making art is a labour of love. The starving artist myth tells us many lies, but two stand out: The first is that our labour is worth nothing, and the second is that love conquers all.

— I wrote about why the starving artist myth is a toxic legacy we need to shut down now for Daily Life.