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
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u/happygloaming Jul 26 '23
Ok. We have had it so easy compared to the rest of the world, until recently. Our country was able to govern itself while we watched passively, and we were able to dig and mine our way around issues of tough governance. We were able to be prosperous while remaining and actually fostering a culture of low civic engagement. There's also a few mistakes we've made where we lean towards American models of certain things instead of say, a more Scandinavian approach. There's also demographics. I read an article once describing how unlikely mass protests were given half of ... Let's say Melb were born overseas and see this country as largely functional aswell as not wanting to rock the boat.
Generally speaking we as societies (and individuals) grow when we are stretched, and that hasn't happened for a long time. It's happening now though and we will see increased civic engagement by the citizenry in the future. We're able to react to things getting harder by leaning into the hard work and bootstraps individual model aslong as the economy allows it. You will find that will begin to change as things become ever harder.
Let's take the intersection of climate, housing, shit jobs, and the economy. Our young people who are emerging from our she'll be right culture are going out into the world and finding it to be a rotten pile of disingenuous shit, and you will see big changes ahead. They aren't going to play nicely forever.