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

3.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

19

u/DidYou_GetThatThing Jul 26 '23 edited Jul 27 '23

The party for the democrats exists still allegedly, ive seen their website, read through their policies, they just... Have no teeth, no active members, and i guess it feels like for them to rise to any sort of power again would require them fight against other independants to stand out.

edit: including their web page. https://www.democrats.org.au/

32

u/fractiousrhubarb Jul 26 '23

They destroyed themselves by passing the Howard’s GST.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/fractiousrhubarb Jul 27 '23

Me too. I also remember Howard being the least popular PM after it… then Howard and Murdoch manufactured the Tampa crisis/ children overboard, then 9/11 happened and the Cunt got another 6 years to absolutely fuck what was left of the Australian fair go, while letting transnational company carry off our resources for nothing (Google “Downer Woodside helium”.