Having to baste our brains with Australian media daily, we in the bunker have developed an innate sense of stories that in their tone and content are completely unique to each publication. Take the following, published on last Monday’s front page and continued on page three, which we believe is in the running for the “most Sydney Morning Herald article possible” award.
That it concerns “ferry safety”. That it’s about private school boys, and as such concerns something nobody outside Sydney’s wealthy harbourside suburbs could conceivably give even the merest toss about.
It’s the best example of the “private school” subgenre of SMH classics we’ve seen since reading the following paragraph:
The King’s School has defended a controversial trip by its headmaster and his wife to the Royal Henley Regatta, saying it was standard practice among independent schools to fly principals overseas with their spouse and traditional for the King’s principal to travel business class.
Chef’s kiss.
Ah, but could we work in a property price angle? Do you even need to ask?
Fees at Sydney’s top private schools have grown almost as much as the city’s house prices since 2005 and are likely to hit the $50,000-a-year mark by the end of the decade.
Three schools — The King’s School, The Scots College and SCEGGS Darlinghurst — will charge more than $40,000 for Year 12 in 2022. Annual fee increases at other schools range from 2% at St Catherine’s to 4.5 at Reddam House.
Where’s the NIMBYism? We’re referring to NIMBYism of the level that causes adult people, who presumably follow other news in the world, to feel justified in adding the word “devastating” to the sentence “impacts on view loss”.
Or our favourite, the kind that leads riverside mansion owners to form a “boutique” pressure group to address the pressing issue of noisy Sydney Harbour party boats, no doubt teeming with vulgar nouveau riche:
‘The world’s gone crazy through Spotify and high technology,’ [Friends of Sydney Harbour committee member David] Morris said. ‘How can you let this happen on the world’s most beautiful waterway? It’s really getting out of control.’
Not in MY waterfront, thanks. It’s a novel take on the paper’s approach to development and Sydney’s nightlife. Alas, the piece devotes absolutely no space to where any of these people schooled.
The same omission disqualifies the story that reveals Karl Howard, the real estate agent who attacked a woman with a samurai sword after a sleepless, week-long cocaine and alcohol binge, put his “light-filled architecturally designed warehouse” on the market. “I don’t believe the property holds any psychological stigma for anybody,” Belle Property agent Simone Azzi told the paper.
