Zoe Pepper

Welcome to this bonus episode of The Briefing.

Australia's housing crisis has become one of the country's biggest generational fault lines, with the great Australian dream of owning a home feeling increasingly out of reach for younger Australians, just as housing has once again taken centre stage.

in the recent federal budget.

Now, more adults are moving back in with their parents, renters are being priced out of stability, and frustration around intergenerational wealth and inequality is fueling a growing clash between boomers and younger generations.

Now, a new Australian film is turning that tension into dark comedy.

Birthright explores housing pressure, class divides, and what happens when the family home becomes the only safety net.

Zoe Pepper is the writer and director of Birthright and it's inspired by real life experiences of young people moving back home as housing stress intensifies.

And she joins me now to unpack why the housing debate has become so heated and what's driving the generational divide and whether the Australian dream still exists at all.

Zoe, firstly, can you unpack the concept of housing as a birthright?

This idea of like the Australian dream of owning a house,

has kind of always been a thing.

When you go to Europe or other places, it's not really the same.

Do you think Australia still believes that the idea of, you know, the Great Australian Dream is still achievable or has it become kind of more of a myth than reality for millennials and Gen Z?

Yeah.

How do you think the idea of housing has changed from generation to generation, particularly in the film, you explore the kind of boomers millennial relationship?

What do you think those policies and reform has done to

housing equality what has it done to family relationships in Australia?

And in that, the film focuses on a young couple, millennials moving back in with one of their parents.

And this is a common thread that we have been seeing for people either trying to save for a house or they've been booted out of the rental market because rent increases have just gone bananas.

But what was the inspo kind of behind that storyline?