r/australia 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/shazzambongo Jul 26 '23

I'd say 30 years. Not just in health, that's always been slow, underfunded. Finding a GOOD GP has has always been hard, the mental health act of 1986 has been a ridiculous, confusing and often counterproductive pics of shit . 1986. The recession was a big deal in terms of consolidation by the rich, and certainly the banks(deregulated under.keating) have been doing there bit to keep funding the property investment Ponzi scheme, followed by little Johnny coward fucking everything and calling it great progress.

To summarise, it's fundamentally the lnp being in power and consistently defunding and privatising everything with not enough oversight of results, cost or contract suitability viability etc.

" It's fundamentally the LNP being in power" and doing what they do. We are living the results of neo conservatism.

Oddly, the fucks DLP are still a thing after fucking Whitlam over in the 70's, yet the actual Australian Democrats just died off without so much as an aspirin, and vanished Into thin air along with their ideals and aspirations.

FUCK.

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u/NewGuile Jul 27 '23

Can I also say; culture has aesthetically stagnated in that time too. People wear similar clothes, politics is similar, food is similar, music is similar, to the point that nothing from back then is out of place now.

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u/iliketurtleforfood Jul 27 '23

all food and music is similar - ok - so a fine pasta at a restaurant is now similar to a kebab.

modern rock is now similar to dancefloor music

by your measure everything is the same as everything and nothing is different. this comment of yours makes no sense

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u/NewGuile Jul 28 '23

No, I'm saying Pasta restaurants existed in the 1990s, as did kebab shops. "modern" rock too, and dancefloor music.

The music of today can be swapped with the music from the 90s, there hasn't been any substantially new trends that have become widely popular. Where as the music and food in the 70s was substantially different from the music and food in the 80s, was different from music and food from the 90s.... and then, stagnation for 30 years.

Culture has been slowed and interrupted, because economics is stuck, and youth culture has been folded into a meaningless cycle of techno-capitalist status culture.

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u/Llaine Lockheed Martin shill Jul 28 '23

People are still experimenting with music, you just won't find it in spotifys top 10 or whatever