How Brunch Became a Battleground in Australia’s Intergenerational War

In the past few years, Australia's public discourse has become increasingly divisive. At the centre of much of this infighting is fear—of terrorism, refugees, the environment, of LGBTQI people calling for equal rights. The growing divide between young and old Australians comes back to fear too. Namely, millennials are scared they'll never have the security of owning their own home. Baby boomers, it seems, fear they've raised a generation of entitled brats.

All of this swirling unease came to a head when self styled "social observer" Bernard Salt penned an op-ed for The Australian excoriating the "evils of hipster cafes." It was a perfect storm: anti-hipster sentiment meets intergenerational resentment. Salt unleashed a flood of gleeful agreement from older readers, and anger from younger ones. For them it felt like a rich old guy—whose Twitter bio describes his location as "Melbourne, Paris, Lorne"—was mocking their financial anxiety.

See, Salt saved his most stinging critique for that most sacred millennial ritual, our church if you will—he went after brunch. His basic argument was that young people could afford houses, if only they stopped indulging in the bourgeois delight that is avocado toast.

"I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more. I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family," Salt wrote. "But how can young people afford to eat like this? Shouldn't they be economising by eating at home? How often are they eating out? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house."

This isn't the first time brunch has been caught in the crossfire of old versus young. A few years ago the New York Times declared "Brunch is For Jerks." Urbanist Shawn Micallef even wrote a book called The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure, arguing the meal is the height of conspicuous consumption. As interesting as both are, they follow the same formula—an old person scratching their head at why young people are so weird.

Salt's article is no different, it just highlights how differently baby boomers and millennials see the world. "Back in the old days––as much as I hate that term––the big barrier to buying a house was obviously the loan. Mortgage rates were high, even though house prices were quite low. It cost a lot of your monthly income," says Robbie Reid, who's worked as a financial planner for the past decade. "Now that interest rates are so low, older people look at that and say, 'Well you know, it costs nothing to borrow money, so why can't you afford a house? You should just spend less.'"

But as Reid explains, the real estate market is very different now than it was when baby boomers were looking to buy their first homes. "For Melbourne or Sydney a deposit for a median house would need somewhere around $200,000," he says. "Even if you're looking at a median unit, you're probably looking around $120,000. That's a lot of avocados on toast."

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Many millennials blame older generations for these structural inequalities in the housing market. It's hard for young people to watch baby boomers scoop up scores of negatively geared investment properties, when no one under 20 can even afford their first home.

It's probably trying for baby boomers too, seeing millennials splurging on things like brunch, which have long been viewed as luxuries. For reference though, right now, a two-bedroom "renovator's delight" in Sydney that's literally on the verge of collapse will set you back at least $1 million. Just to afford the deposit, you'd need to skip brunch for 25 years.

But brunch isn't a meal anymore, brunch has become a symbol for everything baby boomers hate about millennials. They see young people as lazy—they can't wake up early enough for actual breakfast. They can't stick to plans, which is why brunch could happen any time between 11 AM and 4 PM. "The meal has spread like a virus from Sunday to Saturday and has jumped the midafternoon boundary," David Shaftel wrote in "Brunch is For Jerks." "It's now common to see brunchers lingering at their table until nearly dinnertime."

The big one though is that millennials are entitled. Older generations see young people gorging themselves on piles of smashed avocado, once a rare indulgence, and feel they are misspending their money.

That's essentially what Bernard Salt is arguing. He sees cafes full of millennials wasting their disposable income. But this money—left over after rent, bills, taxes—is what you've got to spend on making yourself happy. Weighing up current and future happiness, older generations decided buying a house down the track was the better choice for them. It seems today's young people, unable to see any point they'll be able to own a home, just decided on happiness now.

For his part, Robbie Reid doesn't think this is the catastrophe many media commentators make it out to be. "I think in the last decade… the proportion of people who have buying a house on their priority list is decreasing," he says. "A lot of people are saying 'my home is not a big enough priority to be living on baked beans for 25 years, just so I can own the house that I live in." Even Reid and his partner decided to keep on renting, because buying in Sydney just didn't make financial sense.

In a way, his advice to millennials is similar to Bernard Salt's—think about how you are spending your disposable income. "The trap people fall into is though that difference between rent and mortgage, where they can end up with nothing. You do have to be doing something with your money and not just hoping," he says.

That something could be saving for a home deposit, or maybe investing in stocks. It could even be used to start a business. Apparently cafes are very popular, even with the middle aged. While in the past, 50-somethings would've rarely ventured out of the suburbs, now they are out in force every weekend—spreading broadsheet newspapers across vast expanses of every cafe's communal table. Perhaps this is why brunch has become such a battleground. Because everyone loves it, and everybody is scared there aren't enough spots at the table.

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