Most of us fight with our neighbours. There’s an easy fix, but you won’t like it

For several years, my neighbour was living in two places. He was in his own house, of course, but he was also living rent-free in my head. It didn’t seem quite fair.

To detail the dispute would literally put you to sleep. We charge extra for that, so I won’t. The interesting discovery was that when I told friends and acquaintances about it, every single person said they had been driven mad by disputes with their neighbours. Not half of them, not two-thirds, not nine in 10. Not just those who lived in houses or those who lived in flats. All of them. Every single one. (I lie. It’s actually more like 99 per cent.)

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Trees and fences. Water and earth. Too much noise, too much light. There were cars and renovations. Kids and dogs. Musical instruments and sound systems. Smoke. There was race, ethnicity and ideology. Every fact of life could trigger a fight with the neighbours.

For some, the dispute had been the worst experience of their adult lives, worse even than grief and loss. If I asked my neighbour the same question, he might have given the same answer. But our relationship was not one where we could ask such candid questions.

The Law and Justice Foundation’s Data Digest surveyed Legal Aid NSW, Law Access NSW and Community Legal Centres (the alternative to going to the Local Court) in 2016 and found about 8000 reported neighbour disputes a year. This was before COVID-19 and working from home squashed neighbours closer together for longer, so we can assume the incidence has risen.

Relationships Australia, in another pre-pandemic survey in 2019, found that at least 60 per cent of women and 68 per cent of men had experienced conflict with their neighbours. Similar data have been recorded in other countries.

When they have ended up in court, neighbourly quarrels have resulted in convictions for crimes and threats of violence. Apprehended violence orders are not uncommon. Neighbours also have the power to hit each other where it hurts, even putting up placards or other signs of unpleasantness when one of them is trying to sell. As this would also affect the one who is staying, it shows how far these disputes drive people into cutting off their nose to spite their face.

A Hunter Valley polo club owner who did go to court described the border with his neighbour as the “Gaza Strip”, tasteless when he said it in 2017 and unacceptable now, but a barometer of the strength of feeling.

I won’t waste too many words on asking the obvious: why? The Australian property obsession creates obsessive emotions. Given the explosion of property values since the Howard government’s tax incentives turned housing from a dwelling into a prime investment, many Australians have all or most of their wealth tied up in their house, making it the hottest of hot buttons.

Unlike with family disputes, you can’t just avoid your nemesis until Christmas. (Although I do have a friend whose fractious neighbour is also family: double-whammy.) Your neighbour is right there. And you are right here. It’s hard to dodge each other indefinitely.

Our situation was less a dispute than a stand-off. That didn’t necessarily lower the emotional temperature. We kept communicating with our neighbour, though this was often just a pretence of civility. We agreed never to let relations get so bad that we’d end up in the Local Court, but truces, while steering you clear of open warfare, can leave a rash of mosquito bites. I knew his opinion: the problem was entirely our obligation to fix. Simple. I was never sure, however, if he was hearing our side.

On the scale of things, this wasn’t a bad neighbour dispute, and it never got out of control, but sometimes it felt close. There is a prevailing sense, in this cultural moment, that men can be one provocation from blowing their stack. You can’t avoid this, and I won’t pretend that it didn’t add an undercurrent of fear to what were otherwise fairly polite communications.

Anna Musson, an author and the founder of The Good Manners Company, an etiquette advice service, told this masthead in April that, “getting along with neighbours is a thermostat for your life. We should get to know who lives near us and build a community, whether for our own loneliness, neighbourhood security or to build that sense of belonging.” As, of course, we should but disputes occur after that horse has bolted and the gate, if there is one, has been slammed shut.

Our legal system, accepting that etiquette systems have failed, offers a stepped approach. The Law Society of NSW advises talking to each other (duh), and, if that fails, using a mediator who “will not make a strict ruling about who is right or wrong or impose any penalties. They will simply try to settle the dispute by having you agree to a solution you both can live with.”

In our case, I spoke with the Community Justice Centre, which was extremely helpful, though we chose not to use it in the end. “Knowing your legal rights” is also prescribed, though in my experience the law is not black-and-white and can only lead to a secondary dispute, between two neighbouring non-lawyers, both pretending to be legal experts. Unclear law becomes another language for, “I am in the right.”

Talking, using mediators and even taking the next step by retaining a lawyer are sensible middle-class approaches for neighbours who have turned into insensible middle-class hotheads. The textbook says everyone should take a step back and acknowledge the kernel of truth in the other side’s argument. But a rules-based order carries civility biases that quickly fall away when people are so convinced they are right, so impotently frustrated in other areas of their life, and so constantly provoked that they revert in an unpredicted flash to their inner cave-person. It’s more than just a nasty shame; it can, among people of every demographic category, become life-threatening.

Because neighbour disputes are so demographically mixed-up and so universal, I find a sliver of consolation. Imagine if the tinderbox of neighbour disputes could be politicised, and society were divided into two warring neighbours. Then we’d be in the 1930s. But we’re not. Fortunately (or unfortunately), every neighbour dispute is unique, and every one of us believes implacably that we are in the right. If a political machine could gather all that passionate righteousness under one banner, then we’d be at war.

Luckily, when it comes to conflicts with our neighbours, all of us are equally self-righteous. There is no principle on which we can be turned, as groups, against each other. We’re not in the 1930s yet, and Australia does not have a neighbour it cannot live with. What a reassuring thought that is.

We got out of our stand-off by spending a lot of money on the problem and then moving. You can be in a privileged enough position to buy your way out of conflict. From my straw poll, that is the most consistently successful outcome. Swallow your righteous arguments and just give in. Don’t expect any thanks or acknowledgement. Having been the one to yield, and having paid to get rid of the problem, you’ve let their stubbornness outlast yours and given them the moral high ground. So what. As time passes, you realise you didn’t need it. They can have it.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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