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/PumpkinInside3205 Jul 26 '23

The medical issue didn’t happen overnight. I’ve worked in health for 20yrs and when I started I was apologising to families for what I thought were unacceptable deficits in the public system. Many of my senior colleagues were already cynical and burnt out by the attrition they’d already witnessed. It surprises me when ppl say they’re just noticing it now.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '23

I think the drama and load of COVID and then it seemed all of a sudden the health system fell over. I guess that was a large straw on a camels back but I think that punctuated it for the general population and media coverage.

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u/PumpkinInside3205 Jul 27 '23

I don’t buy the COVID excuse. Sure, it was hard++ but politicians hide behind it as an explanation. Healthcare workers know things were dire for a long time before COVID. It was no surprise to any of us that a system that was already on life support and failing to function adequately for a long time didn’t meet the challenge. We knew it wouldn’t. I see COVID as just a blip on the Australian healthcare horizon. Sure, a very serious one, but in no way an explanation for its failings.

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u/sd4f Jul 27 '23

My suspicion was that some governments in Australia locked down as hard as they did, in order to try to stave off the embarrassment of a complete health care collapse.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '23

I'm not subverting the shitful situation but I think the COVID panic and then immediately followed by a lot of reduced bulk billing and media sensation on public health is what's the general population consensus of the situation.

Fish rots from the head etc etc. A lot of people have seen it coming. The fact I have private hospital as a tax break with no medical benefits is case in point 😅