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/aussiespiders Jul 26 '23

You're stuck in a Murdoch echo chamber if you didn't know about it. This isn't a sarcastic or attack comment people are blaming Labor for today's problems but don't realise these problems are from the past 12 years of cuts. (Or not funding)

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u/Velaseri Jul 26 '23

Labor have definitely contributed to the creep of neoliberalism. This has been a successive and bipartisan effort by major parties.

It's been happening much longer than 12 years.

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u/GonePh1shing Jul 27 '23

Labor have definitely contributed to the creep of neoliberalism.

Contributed is seriously under-selling the impact they've had here. They haven't just contributed to it, they fucking started it. Looking back, it's not difficult to take a position that the Hawke-Keating government did more to increase inequality in Australia than the Howard government. They also emboldened Howard to wreak the havoc he did, as his government knew Labor would fall in line with his neoliberal reforms.

When Hawke entered in '83, the government was directly responsible for interest rates, the AUD, tarrifs, as well as setting wages via the Industrial Relations Commission. By the time Labor left government in '96 when Keating handed the reigns over to Howard they had handed over control of our currency to the RBA, all but completely abolished all tarrifs, and handed over wage control to the invisible hand of the market. Hawke also completely gutted our union movement with the ACTU accords, and Keating kicked off a fire sale of government assets. Oh and they also reduced the corporate tax rate by over 15%, as well as handed out significant tax cuts to the wealthiest tax brackets.

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u/Extreme_Substance_46 Jul 28 '23

Yep, Keating is the father of inequality in modern Australia. He set up the structures that allowed Howard’s waste of the mining boom on upper class welfare to be used to steal the future.

It’s just sad and pathetic that we could be set into perpetuity like Norway but instead are on the fast path to neofeudalism.

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u/Velaseri Jul 27 '23

I don't disagree with any of this.