Turn-of-the-century heroics might be hopelessly outdated but the ghosts of Jeffries and Barr are still looming large. In the last two years, the fact Chinese investors have overtaken the US as the biggest buyers of Australian property has sparked headlines that could wake the ghost of Edward Said, the thinker whose 1978 book Orientalism first suggested the West imagines itself in relation to the “Inscrutable Oriental”, a deviant Asian Other whose strange customs and shadowy intentions should be mistrusted at all costs.

– Have the property wars become racism’s new frontier? – I have a new Daily Life column up today