Matt Cunningham: Australians are becoming a mob of ill-informed whingers at a time when it has never been as good
The events of the past week would indicate Australians are no longer clever, or grateful for their unquestionable good luck, writes Matt Cunningham.
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Remember when Australia was the lucky country?
We might have misinterpreted the intended meaning of Donald Horne’s 1964 book, but growing up in the 1980s there was a sense that if you were born in Australia, you had effectively won life’s lottery.
It was something to be grateful for.
We listened to pop stars sing We Are The World and ate brown rice for lunch one day a year, glad we didn’t live in a third world country gripped by poverty and starvation.
By 1990, Prime Minister Bob Hawke declared we could no longer be content to just be the lucky country. “Australia must become the clever country,” he said.
But 35 years on, the events of the past week would indicate Australians are no longer clever, or grateful for their unquestionable good luck.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton were both heckled by protesters on the first day of election campaigning.
The young man who gatecrashed Albanese’s press conference was described in reports as an “anti-immigration YouTuber”.
“Everyone my age is stressed out,” he later told reporters.
“We’re all terrified of the next five to 10 years, do you understand that? Because we don’t have any place to go.
“This is our land, this is our country and those people in there are robbing us of our future.” This is someone from a generation that has never had it better.
He’s grown up in a country free of war or famine.
His essential medical and education services have been paid for.
If he wanted to go to university, the government would give him a Higher Education Contribution Scheme loan that he wouldn’t have to begin paying back until his income reached a certain threshold.
And even then, under Labor’s election promise, that HECS debt would be wiped by 20 per cent.
You can understand why the stress of all this must be unbearable.
But here’s an idea for the bloke who reckons he has no place to go.
He could come to the Northern Territory where, if he can’t find a job, it won’t be for want of trying.
In fact the Federal and NT governments have just announced a deal to bring 1500 essential workers here from overseas.
They’re not all coming to do highly skilled work.
They include fruit pickers and hospitality workers and they’re coming because businesses can’t find anyone local who will do the job.
It’s a sure sign the only people in Darwin who don’t work are those who are either unwilling or unable.
If you talk to some of the mango farmers, they’ll tell you they prefer sourcing their employees from East Timor or the Pacific Islands, because they work harder and complain less.
While old mate is in the Top End, he could find himself a property at Palmerston.
There he could buy a nice two-bedroom unit for less than $300,000.
At today’s interest rates – about a third of what people were paying in the 1980s – his minimum repayments will be less than $400 a week. And the NT Government will pay his deposit.
If he gives up heckling prime ministers on the weekend and gets a second job at the pub, he could have the unit paid off in no time. The only person robbing this bloke of a future is himself.
If Albanese’s protester is proof we’re no longer grateful about being the lucky country, then Dutton’s heckler proves Hawke’s dream of becoming the clever country hasn’t eventuated.
She stormed his press conference flying a big blue banner that demanded “no new gas or nuclear”.
We can only assume she spent the pandemic locked up in her room burrowing her way down social media rabbit holes, rather than paying attention to what has been happening with energy systems across the globe. Because without at least one of the baseload power sources she wants to ban, the electricity that allows her to live the privileged life most Australians enjoy, will no longer exist.
No longer grateful for our luck or particularly clever, Australians are fast becoming a mob of ill-informed whingers.
But rather than whinging, heckling and protesting, there’s one thing Australians can do that makes us some of the luckiest people on the planet.
If we don’t like the way we’re being governed, then every three years we can go to the ballot box and vote in a free and fair election.
And that’s something we should always be grateful for.
Originally published as Matt Cunningham: Australians are becoming a mob of ill-informed whingers at a time when it has never been as good
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