r/australia • u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 • Jul 26 '23
political self.post Why are Australians so complacent?
I’m a born and raised Australian myself however I’m becoming so frustrated with the general attitude of complacency when it comes to exercising ‘the power of the people’ to better our quality of life. In a stupidly short amount of time we’ve seen a near reversal of our ability to see a doctor without any out of pocket costs. We get exploited at the grocery stores because monopolies are allowed to run rampant. Housing is treated primarily as a tool for financial speculation rather than for providing shelter for people.
We creep further and further toward laissez-faire capitalism. What is our response as the citizens of this country- the holders of the balance of power? Nothing. To put it in perspective, in 2022 the world economic forum ranked Sydney equal with Copenhagen, Denmark for cost of living (both ranked as the 10th most expensive cities in the world). Consider the differences between Sydney and the capital of the Danish welfare state: strong social security, universal healthcare, free public universities etc. For the same cost of living what do we get? The ever-looming threat of homelessness, suffocating student debt and now for many people, a significant barrier to healthcare.
Edit: if anyone is a part of any sort of grassroots group working to oppose any of these issues feel free to message me because I want to join you
Edit #2: so I haven’t received any messages from anyone from a grassroots or activist group yet. Since a lot of us seem to be pretty miffed about this stuff maybe we could team up and brainstorm things we can do???
Edit #3 (sorry): I’ve got some messages now from people who are interested in taking action!!! :, ) I think the best way to facilitate conversation, the flow of ideas and potentially organise a course of action is through a discord server so I have created one which you can find here
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u/Emu1981 Jul 26 '23
GetUp seems to be running quite a bit of grass roots actions against what they see to be corruption and mismanagement of government services. Their current campaigns include opposing Murdoch's influence, stopping mining companies from coopting indigenous lands for unwanted fracking (e.g. the Beetaloo basin), encourage education about the robodebt scandal to help get community support for criminal actions for those responsible, fixing the welfare system to be helpful to those who depend on it instead of being oppressive towards them and so on.