Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream? review: Humphries tackles housing

On television at least, Mark Humphries is pretty much the last man standing when it comes to the once-proud tradition of Australian political comedy. The days when commercial networks would air something like Rubbery Figures are a distant memory; the ABC started purging its political satirists when it bumped Clark & Dawe from the then 7.30 Report, and finished the job when Albanese became PM and it was safe to dump both Sammy J and Humphries in the space of little over a month.

For those expecting Sold! to be a scathing take down of the politics of housing along the lines of those segments Humphries used to occasionally do on 730 – or more recently and somewhat bizarrely, on Seven news – the news is mixed.

Yes, there are occasional jokes scattered throughout this one-hour special (keen-eyed viewers will spot a familiar name from The Chaser in the credits). But the main focus is on the state of housing affordability in Australia. As you’d expect, it’s no laughing matter.

Sold!: the rent trap

Opening with the news that despite a decade-long career in television he’s still renting – as he puts it, ‘If a D grade celebrity like me can’t afford a home, who can?’ – we’re hustled through a quick look at the hell of house-hunting (cue much queueing) and the nightmare of renting. It’s brief scene-setting, because unless you’ve had your head in a lunchbox for the last 15 years you know the score.

Humphries’ goal here is to go behind the suffering: ‘What the hell has led to this housing crisis, and how can we solve it?’

Watch the Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream? trailer.

What follows is an entertaining and informative journey down a familiar path to a destination that is in no way a surprise. Which is good news: there’s really only two possible answers to the current housing crisis, and if you think it’s ‘young people are spending too much money on avocado toast’, get out.

Along the way, Humphries meets Jordan van den Lamb, AKA Purple Pingers, who points out that rental properties today are often slum lord death traps rife with black mould. Then he tries to get a loan from the Bank of Mum & Dad (which is the only way most people can get the funding for a home), and flips into investigative journalist mode briefly to examine the facts behind the fiction that overseas investors are the ones pushing prices up.

One of this special’s strengths is that it’s a breezily watchable way to debunk a bunch of wrong-headed and at best semi-racist attempts to blame migrants for the rise in house prices. Turns out overseas investors make up less than 1% of house buyers; if immigration was really behind rising house prices, why didn’t they crash during Covid when immigration dropped to zero?

Even the idea of the evil house-hording Boomer takes a knock, as Humphries chats to a surprisingly sweet former co-worker who owns two homes – the one she was living in when she met her partner, and the one they bought when they moved in together. So who or what’s to blame?

Fortunately, Alan Kohler in a bathtub (in a nod to The Big Short) is here to point the finger. If you guessed ‘shifts in taxation brought about by John Howard designed to turn home ownership into an investment’, congratulations – turns out you’re as smart as Mark Latham, who was the only politician at the time to spell out the implications of Howard’s scheme. Once again, Australian politics turns out to be just like Alien vs Predator: whoever wins, we lose.

Sold!: a cure

Humphries spends the rest of the special travelling around searching for a cure (and trying to live down Lathan’s description of him as a ‘shitz-his-pantz comedian’). Changing the tax system is currently in the too-hard basket – and here’s Bill Shorten, the last politician to try and who is now notably not our current PM, to make that extra clear – but maybe ways of speeding up supply might help? Well, 3D printing homes is certainly a nice idea.

Not all that long ago a special like this, one that starts out as a comedy explainer and ends with serious and completely humour-free interviews, would be seen as a bit of a mixed bag. Today we’re used to Australian programs trying to be two or more things at once; it’s not like any network is going to fund two separate specials on a massive issue that affects a huge slice of the population.

Fortunately, Humphries, who in the past has occasionally come across as a touch self-satisfied in some of his comedy, makes for a likable and sympathetic host here. This really does feel like a passion project; it’s nice to see someone on television who’s actually concerned about an issue that’s tearing at the fabric of this nation.

The most moving moments come are when Humphries looks at social housing tenants, people whose homes are increasingly at risk from trendy government schemes to get out of providing housing right at a time when the nation is crying out for the exact opposite.

Refreshingly, this ends on a note of authentic outrage rather than shrugging acceptance. It’s rare indeed to see an Australian documentary special conclude with the riled-up presenter saying ‘this is actually morally wrong’ – even if he does then wheel out Ray Martin in a final desperate attempt to appeal to those house-hogging Boomers whose self-interest is a big part of why everyone else is out in the cold.

Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream? is available on Binge and Foxtel from July 21 July 2025.

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