Time for something radical? We remain captives of convention

Elvis Presley, still the world’s the best-selling music artist, died 41 years ago yesterday. His talent and magnetism made him a 20th century icon.

However, his radicalism, his refusal to be another asexual, nice boy-next-door stitched into an ironed shirt and neat blazer was the real key to his success.

Another universal icon, Madonna, passed a significant milestone yesterday — though not at all as significant as the one Elvis passed in 1977. She turned 60.

If Elvis kicked the nice-boy-next-door traces then Madonna smashed the nice-girl-next-door glass ceiling. Her joyous, infectious celebration of sexuality was, in popular music terms, unprecedented.

It was also successful. Madonna is the best-selling female music artist of all time and the only woman in the top five for the number of units sold. Her radicalism, allied to her prodigious talent and work ethic, is enduringly successful.

Their careers show that positive radicalism is less threatening than imagined.

However, their successes may not be enough to encourage conservative politicians — the vast majority of ours — to shrug off the suffocating inhibitions gathered as they climb the greasy pole to the cabinet table.

But then, they don’t need to. As they would rightly harrumph, they get elected. If we want radicals or even slightly more radical policies, maybe we should vote differently.

In recent days New Zealand’s government has adopted a radical approach, certainly by our standards, to resolve one of the issues shaming us and making life impossible for so many citizens.

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s government has banned the sale of existing homes to nearly all foreign buyers. One of her colleagues said New Zealanders were sick of being “tenants in our own land”.

The country has, like ours, a housing and ownership crisis. Just a quarter of adults own their home, compared with half in 1991. Last year New Zealand had the most unaffordable house prices in the world.

Prices in Auckland jumped by 75% in four years. The prohibition — Denmark has a similar if less rigid one — may or may not achieve the government’s objective but at least an effort comparable in scale to the crisis is being made.

Just imagine the outrage among the percentage professionals who make their living from property financing, sales and management if we did the same.

They need not fret, there’s a better chance of Elvis playing Croke Park next summer. Convention, again, champions privilege.

Earlier this year New Zealand showed how dangerous our climate change denial is. Arden’s government announced it will not grant new offshore oil exploration permits yet discovering oil or gas remains our holy grail.

“Transitions have to start somewhere and unless we make decisions today... we run the risk of acting too late and causing abrupt shocks to communities and our country,” she said.

And all the while, children sleep in Garda stations, our carbon emissions soar, we surrender our environment to

lunacies like Food Harvest 2025 and, on an Atlantic seaboard island, can barely cope with a modest drought.

We may shy away from radical policies but, as becomes clearer every day, the consequences of our heads-in-the-sand insecurity will be far more radical than anything we have yet imagined.