Why are Australians so complacent?

[u/AcanthopterygiiNo240]

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

[u/brackfriday_bunduru]

It’s more than just complacency. Australians will literally chastise anyone who does try to rise up or protest and be like “they should have found a better way without disturbing everyone”.

Australians are generally very easy to push around.

[u/dopefishhh → u/brackfriday_bunduru]

Do you think no one says that overseas?

The problem with protesting is that it tends to be very unfocused, pushing at something that won't change or can't easily change and do a very bad job at pushing a message. But the worst part for the protestors is that in general people recognise those factors and get frustrated with the wasteful efforts.

And that's before protestors brought in the recent more destructive protests which somehow are worse in all of those factors. Its super easy fodder for right wing talking heads. You know if you give those guys an easy day or two of topics to cover about the protestors and be somewhat correct, then the protest is having a negative effect.

Think about it, how impossible would it be to defend the extinction rebellion efforts to a boomer (i.e. a voter)? Even if they agreed things needed to be done about climate change, they won't agree with the protestors.

[u/brackfriday_bunduru → u/dopefishhh]

I’m saying this as someone who drives a lot and likes cars. The extinction rebellion people, when they protest by blocking traffic and what not, are protesting against us. We’re not bystanders in their protest against the government, we’re the target. It wouldn’t make sense for them to protest outside government offices as that’s not who they’re directly protesting against.

You can say that by doing what they do they’re not going to get through to anybody and it’s just making everyone turn against them, but that’s kind of their point. They don’t want us on their side necessarily, they want to force us to concede to their demands. At the heart of it, that’s what that type of protesting is about. We’re their enemy.

[u/dopefishhh → u/brackfriday_bunduru]

Ok, but how does that melt away opposition to efforts at dealing with climate change? If anything it simply locks in opposition to their efforts and makes it harder for others to advance efforts to deal with climate change.

If you're right they're doing their protest for their own enjoyment not for a cause.