Batman’s been changed by virtue-signalling jokers

Batman is in a fractious mood. It’s a constituency split socially, culturally and politically.

I know, because I have moved across the great divide.

Our family lived in the southern part of Batman, in Northcote, for 20 years — during which time we saw the area change hugely as it was gentrified. The friendly, community-focused primary school has turned into a hotbed of ambition and rights ­assertion. Some parents haven’t merely hovered in a helicopter, they have descended the rope ladder and seized the day.

Signs have been erected at corners hectoring us to stop driving and “Take a stroll to the shops: Fairfield Village 10 minutes” or “Keep the air clean and walk”. The family-friendly bowling alley has been demolished and replaced by an apartment block pompously yet melancholically named Bouliste. A bakery run by a family from the old Yugoslavia was knocked down to make way for another block of flats, racily dubbed Libertine.

The area, 20 years ago, was full of Aussie battlers like our neighbours — he was a factory foreman — and post-war migrants for whom this was the most affordable suburb near the city. Lemon and fig trees, vines for making grappa, and flower gardens all flourished.

Those families have almost all gone. As house prices have soared, diversity has evaporated. Housing stock has been upgraded commensurate with the absurd cost of land, occupied overwhelmingly by the ­established upper middle class.

The lanes behind the homes, developed to admit nightsoil carts, later gave access to back-garden garages. Today, most are gone. As double-car households seem de rigueur, parking — now on the street — is at a premium.

Apartment developers appear to escape having to provide enough parking by playing up to the wishful thinking of the municipal planners: that because there’s public transport and buyers are likely to vote Green, they won’t be driving cars.

A few years ago the council distributed posters promoting a Christmas event, highlighting that — perhaps to avoid upsetting lawyers or architects who string Tibetan prayer flags across their gardens — the program would not include Christian carols.

Virtue-signalling, however, is rampant: “Northcote loves forests”, various households assert, as if no one else does — or as if the signaller wishes to compensate for living near the centre of a vast city instead of near or in an actual forest.

People have scrawled on the lower half of stop signs, with leaden irony, the name of Adani, the Indian group that wants to build a huge coalmine in northern Queensland, a prime issue for these distant voters. This, of course, is the area of Batman that is staunchly Green, and where we sold our home.

Our family shifted across the divide, to the north, with cheaper housing and more cultural and social diversity. This area remains more inclined — to judge by the placards — to vote Labor.

However the cards fall, Batman is a resonant indicator of a new clash of values and of power changing our cityscapes.