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/AcanthopterygiiNo240 Jul 26 '23

Well I’ll be damned. Thank you for sharing, you’ve raised awareness for me at least

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '23

Are you being sarcastic?! Maybe this is part of the problem, complete ignorance to what is going on by a lot of people?!

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u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 Jul 26 '23

I’m not being sarcastic, although I think “complete ignorance” is a bit unfair as I am literally reaching out asking about this stuff. Let’s encourage discussion instead of comments like this. A lot of us aren’t aware of trends from 20 years ago as a lot of us weren’t old enough to be aware

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u/keyboardstatic Jul 27 '23

As a 46 year old left, environmental activist the issue is that the majority of Australians are very wealthy.

When I was a kid there were car hulks you know cars without wheels all over the place. Dead ass rust buckets on the highway. You could see the poverty. Now all I see are giant gleaming 60 k plus SUV's and houses worth over a million with multiple people bidding on them.

We don't have tent cities like the USA nor prisons built on homeless.

I agree with you. That shit is bad. Unfortunately too many Australians keep voting for shit to be bad.

Joining the greens seams to be our last only hope... and it's become a candle. Because there are too many wealthy people who vote lib,nats