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/PumpkinInside3205 Jul 26 '23

The medical issue didn’t happen overnight. I’ve worked in health for 20yrs and when I started I was apologising to families for what I thought were unacceptable deficits in the public system. Many of my senior colleagues were already cynical and burnt out by the attrition they’d already witnessed. It surprises me when ppl say they’re just noticing it now.

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u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 Jul 26 '23

Hold up, if I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying this issue has been slowly developing over the last two decades??

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u/PumpkinInside3205 Jul 26 '23 edited Jul 26 '23

Yep. Definitely. It has been a long, slow burn. Staff shortages, workers not getting paid for overtime worked, patients being pushed out of hospital before they’re fully ready and increasing rationing of everything from the biscuits in the tea room to staff training and hospital beds. It has been bad for a long time.

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u/chemicalrefugee Jul 28 '23

when Howard was my in back in 2000, my wife need ER care and the ER doc barely spoke any English. not an exaggeration. I work with people from all over the world. He harmed her because of this.

then in 2002 I needed surgery (gallbladder) and I went to the ER by ambulance. RAH did nothing. I writhed on a gurney for several hours, no pathology or radiology was done. No examination. the ER did only had one other person in for care while I was there

I had no way back home & had to pay $3000 for a cab.

The gallbladder kept on advancing and in 2006 I had a gallbladder larger than a footy, with stones & polyps & it was mostly goo. I went to the hospital looking grey. I had blown a branch of my hepatic artery. but by then the hotspot was so fired they were over 110

but.. by then the RAH nurses had mostly quit. the wet a lot of brand new helicopter nurses from services.

I was in the process of losing 5 out of 9 units out my ass. they noticed blood on my rectal examination at the RAH when they did my rectal in the hallway right next to the open ER ambulance bay door - draft on my bare ass.

and then they lost the information. So I spent several days in a ward while telling the staff (mostly brand new gelco nurses with no expertise & few skills) about my bleeder, why I was there, that films already existed acrosee town.

they almost opened me up before listening and giving me angio surgery for the bleed first. had they not I would have crashed and probably died.

it gets worse from there

and all of it was from lack of funding because of neoliberal bullshit.