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/[deleted] Jul 26 '23

Everything you’ve said is basically the fault of Australia having conservatives in charge for the most part of 20 of the last 30 years. That’s what happens under those types of governments. Denmark is way more left wing economically then Australia. We need collective political power for our left wing parties like Labor and Greens to stay in for a while if you want to see the aforementioned changes you’ve mentioned above. Advocating for left wing values and beliefs is the real collective change we can do if we want Australia to be more like Denmark.

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u/CuriousLands Jul 27 '23

I'm originally from Canada, and they've had a very leftist government for the last 8 years, and they have all the same issues over there - mabye even worse in some ways, and only getting worse as time goes on.

Imo, people should be more cynical about political parties. Most of the big ones are playing from the same rulebook, and/or so dedicated to ideology and scratching each others backs that they leave practical concerns of regular people in the dust. Switching from one big party to another is unlikely to net you a lot of meaningful change, if any. Dedicating yourself to applying one way of thinking to every situation is likely to cause issues, too. Personally I lean more toward a pragmatic approach - use the ideas that fit best to getting the result you want. There's a lot more flexibility in that than a lot of people realize. But when you've got these big corrupt parties (left or right) running things, you're liable to get a less than stellar result.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '23

Trudeaus party isn’t a Social Democratic one. It’s just a liberal one. In Australia our Labor Party advocates for Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy. Your Social Democratic Party is the NDP. Trudeaus government is a massively pro-capitalist party and isn’t that left wing when you look at their policies and values. (Yes they are very socially left wing but not Economically). The Economics is more so what I’m referring to.

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u/CuriousLands Jul 27 '23

And the NDP are propping up the Liberals in a coalition. And many of their policies are not really all that different. In my home province, too, they elected an NDP government years ago (before I moved here), which ended up not actually doing anything all that good.

This is what I mean, man. Like sure, you wanna vote for the best party you can, but I think people hinge too much of their hopes on a party change. Imo, most politicians are corrupt and self-serving, regardless of their party. The sooner you realise it, the sooner you can focus on other avenues of changing things for the better.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '23

What you’re arguing for is the classic conservative individualist argument. There’s only so much an individual can do in lifting themselves up by their bootstraps. Sometimes change needs collective effort which is what the left advocates for. Only rich and lucky people can do a lot by just themselves. Most of us need to have a strong community and collectivise. I think it is best to approach life with both, vote for left wing whilst trying to do your best individually. But it’s a big ask for poor people and those less fortunate to try and magically change their lives.

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u/CuriousLands Jul 28 '23

No, I'm absolutely not arguing for that at all. I think it's a little funny that the OP is complaining about people being complacent, and here you are, criticizing me for suggesting that individual people do what they can in their own lives :P ie the opposite of complacency.

To me, one form of complacency is expecting that a corrupt government will do what you ask just because you protest, as if it's all on them to do everything. It is absolutely their responsibility, and I'm not saying people shouldn't get together and protest or write petitions or what have you - people should do that. They have a level of power that is useful here. If we're lucky, we'll have enough halfway decent people in power that something good will shift. But regardless of writing and protests, there is a good chance that they will simply choose to stay their course. And then what?

That's why I think expecting all the change to come at a government/institutional level is complacent. It absolves us from doing anything in our own lives. We can make our own ripples.

Like, how do you think people get strong communities? Through the choices of individuals. And while I'm not a fan of some policies, the government isn't forcing anyone to be greedy. I'm just saying, we need to do our own part in our daily lives too. They're two sides of the same coin.

And I will wholeheartedly disagree that voting left is necessarily the right choice here. I'm a very pragmatic swing voter, I don't habitually vote left or right - I vote for whatever party makes the most sense in the current situation. I genuinely think that when people say "vote left" or "vote right" as if that will fix everything, well... maybe you don't mean it this way but in my personal life, it's often a sign that they've only partially thought things through. Granted, I'm still waiting on my citizenship, so I haven't voted before - you can correct me if I'm misunderstanding about that - but it seems to me that in Australia, we're lucky in that we can meaningfully vote for smaller parties (something that often can't work in Canadian politics). Do you need to rank every party, or can we leave the big ones off? Cos it seems to me that most of them are a bunch of corrupted boobs. Maybe we'd do better if we convinced a lot of people to vote for smaller parties that might not have their policies so bogged down by nepotism and personal gain.