Steve Price: Can Australia still call itself the Lucky Country?
If we’re not prepared to talk honestly about how poorly things are going in Australia, we’re going to end up somewhere we don’t want to be.
Opinion
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We need to have a debate in Australia on whether we are still the Lucky Country.
If we are not prepared to talk honestly about where things are going, we will end up somewhere we don’t want to be.
Australia is sadly heading down the same road as the once great United States and the UK. Crowded cities smashed by crime that are too expensive for our children to buy houses in, living off poorly paid gig work delivering food on electric bikes.
The level of homelessness in major capital cities and larger regional towns has exploded. Low paid workers forced to live in their cars and the demand on charities for food handouts are at an all-time high.
For most of us, the social wellbeing of our country has never been so low.
If you think I am wrong and being too negative just look at a survey published this week at news.com.au.
The survey is based on a Reddit online conversation so probably dominated by younger Australians. That makes it even more depressing — one reaction to the original post said, “I’m in my early fifties and just look around and feel this great country is directionless, boring and divided.”
That set off a passionate debate that all of us must be honest enough to have.
Added to the doubts about still being the lucky country, today we have a bunch of elites telling our children what a nasty racist evil place Australia is. How can anyone be proud of a place with such a violent history of child stealing, land dispossession and racial cleansing they ask.
Schools are telling our kids we were a colonial hellhole full of violent invaders and people like ABC TV personality Laura Tingle labelling Australia a racist country at a recent writer’s festival.
Instead of being sacked, given she can’t do her impartial job properly, she received a slap on the wrist from the ABC boss David Anderson and still unbelievably sits as the staff appointee to the ABC Board.
How can we possibly be proud of our Lucky Country if we are constantly told we are a bunch of greedy racists who stole what we have and should feel guilty about it.
Other reactions to the Reddit survey include one respondent confessing “nothing much to look forward to and be proud of anymore.”
Then this (and the poll has been uploaded a thousand times and has attracted 900 comments mostly negative): “I can’t afford a home, and don’t have a huge family so I’m worried that unless I spend every waking moment working, I won’t have a safe future.”
The reactions also include fears around financial pressure, worrying about old age, not being able to afford a home.
Others bemoaned a cultural decline, a lack of fresh Aussie content on free to air TV and hospitality copping it with pressures on wages, rents and state based taxes like land tax.
There was also nostalgia for Australian brands people grew up with and the number of Aussie stores shutting up shop.
One said Australia was a “shadow of the country it used to be.”
Then this comment that really nailed it I think: “We could once be proud of our world class free healthcare system. No one in Australia had to pay a cent to visit a doctor, you just went. Hospitals’ emergency departments didn’t have 12+ hour wait times, nurses weren’t being forced into doing triple shifts.”
Reactions included complaints about the education system, pressure on teachers and the big concern — cost of living. It was pointed out that we have gone from a country where a full-time employee earning a median wage could afford a home, because the loan was on four to five times your annual salary, not 15 to 20 times.
It makes for grim reading but reflects what many conversations around Australia these days are about. Australia has changed and not for the better and the lack of political leadership from federal and state governments is failing to provide a window of optimism.
A return to the good times seems way over the horizon and for younger Australians it must be very depressing.
Talking to a 26-year-old Sydney lawyer working for a multinational major firm at the weekend, she made the point that despite being on a good salary she doesn’t believe she will ever be able to own a home of her own. How sad is that.
It might be a sign of me getting older, but I hanker for a smaller, safer, brighter Melbourne we once had. A Melbourne that still felt like a village full of passionate sports fans, commuting to a city-based, safe job from a suburban house you were paying off as your children went to the neighbourhood school.
Melbourne to me now is too big, too dirty with out-of-control traffic congestion and too expensive for most people to have the quality of life we grew up with.
Let me finish with a personal example of what’s got me thinking like this. On Tuesday morning walking down Chapel St at the Dandenong Road end a bloke threatened to bash me if I didn’t stop getting in his way.
Dressed in a brown hoodie, camouflage pants and red sneakers I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d carried out the threat if I objected. The confrontation happened just after I walked past an unconscious bloke slumped in a doorway with more than half of his backside exposed.
Clearly drug affected laying in fast food litter, people barely looked as they walked past. Homeless people sleeping in doorways between the Dandenong end of that once glittering shopping strip and Commercial Rd are commonplace.
It seems these days the sort of drug addled, homeless and mentally ill people you would once only encounter on the seedier streets of St Kilda has spread to suburbs like Windsor and Prahran along with the Elizabeth Street end of the CBD and Richmond near the heroin injecting room.
I’d like the old Melbourne back thanks.
LIKES
— Dustin Martin’s 300th AFL game to be at the mighty MCG after he dodged a trip to Adelaide.
— Car buyers finally waking up the Tesla EV’s are not much good and worthless second hand.
— Parents travelling to Canberra to fight back against toxic social media.
— Josh Frydenberg’s sensible decision to accept the standing preselection in Kooyong.
DISLIKES
— NDIS rorts reportedly including purchasing of illegal drugs.
— Huge pressure on hospitality operators forcing pubs, cafes and restaurants to close.
— ADF so short of recruits the Government endorses a form of foreign legion.
— Visa bungles continue to allow violent criminals to stay in the country and wander our streets.
Originally published as Steve Price: Can Australia still call itself the Lucky Country?
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