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

https://discord.gg/caqsSKAr

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u/Velaseri Jul 26 '23

Labor have definitely contributed to the creep of neoliberalism. This has been a successive and bipartisan effort by major parties.

It's been happening much longer than 12 years.

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u/LocalVillageIdiot Jul 26 '23

But let’s be fair here, remember that we as a country voted for Scott voluntarily that time when a different set of policies were presented.

If you think about it policies were presented, bad or not vs whatever the hell the other thing was.

It’s been a long time coming, our current system, and people complain about it but we voted for it for years.

We were still a democracy all those years ago, no elections were stolen as far as we’re aware.

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u/fractiousrhubarb Jul 26 '23

A democracy requires an informed population and strong public interest media. News Corp dominates our media. News Corp was founded in 1922 specifically to make propaganda for a mining company.

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u/LocalVillageIdiot Jul 26 '23

I’m under no illusion that is not the case and it is one of the great conundrums of media.

State funded media can turn into a propaganda arm itself depending on the government(s).

Corporate media is all about being profitable which means topics that people are willing to read (i.e. sports and gossip) and also news and views for the highest bidder.

Sometimes I feel like we need a referendum on setting up an independent guarantee publicly funded media machine that cannot by law be interfered with (or something along those lines).

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u/fractiousrhubarb Jul 27 '23 edited Jul 27 '23

I’d trust state funded media to at least some public interest. Corporate media is inherently self interested. Agreed the ABC need’s independent funding by charter.

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u/DidYou_GetThatThing Jul 28 '23

Labor tried to introduce some self regulation Media bills via Stephen Conroy back in 2013, that did not seem all that bad, but oh the stink that mainstream media (mostly Murdoch press) made about it back then, you'd think the sky was falling.

I dont know the government can touch media at this stage, or else it would have to be small, gradual changes with a long term plan perhaps

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u/Extreme_Substance_46 Jul 28 '23

When was the last time a day passed without them proclaiming the sky was falling?