Australian's political confusion

A most interesting discussion here from polling done about what exactly Australians believe politically. After reading all of it, I've decided that we're basically pretty confused. Political commentary on these issues is simply making assumptions about what we believe, rather than actually listening to the public to find out.

Given the cacophony of people yelling from the rooftops over the last 30 years about how good this amazing new economic system was for us all, I suppose it's understandable that the assumption would exist that we're all happy with our economic reforms here over that time. I mean after all, look at how well our economy is doing compared to everyone else's. We must have been doing something right.

However despite our country's economic performance as a whole, there is a significant dissatisfaction with the way it's all working out. The common man is feeling alienated and ripped off by the system. The system that has seen a divide open up in Australia between the rich and poor and is currently only getting wider, in what we once considered was an egalitarian country. You'd think with an economy as successful as ours we'd all be happy, but not so.

I would think that what's going through our minds here is very likely what's going through many other minds around the world, particularly in Europe right now. Yet here we're looking at the gov going back into surplus next year and we're stilled pissed off with the system.

Some of it:

What comes out from this broad snapshot is that what Australians believe about the role of government in our society and economy isn’t necessarily what our institutions believe or practice, and probably hasn’t been for a while. Our beliefs as a country are certainly far removed from many participants in the national debate that pretend to speak on behalf of our population and on behalf of our interests. 

Whatever the faults, foibles or otherwise of these national beliefs – and this isn’t an exercise in either support of, or opposition to them – our national debates on the role of government in our society and economy are becoming increasingly isolated from what the majority of the country actually believes. 

Our public debates assume that the benefits of privatisation have reached a conclusion – the public believes that privatisation was and is a catastrophe and that government should own a larger sector of the economy because we trust government more than large private sector corporations. 

Our public debates assume that smaller government and less regulation is universally beneficial – the public supports substantially higher levels of regulation on just about any topic you care to name and struggles to find something they’d like the government to become smaller in. Our public debates assume that economic reform has been such an obviously beneficial thing to ordinary Australians that it no longer needs explaining – the public believes that corporations took all benefits of that reform, leaving them with little more than a casualised workforce and reduced job security. 

If we keep having our national debates like this – excluding larger and larger sections of our population and ignoring what they believe – they won’t be national debates, we’ll just be talking among ourselves generating ever increasing quantities of public opprobrium, contempt and general unhinging. If you haven’t noticed – this is where we are at right now. 

Our national debates need more participants and institutions talking with and to the public, acknowledging what they believe, explaining the increasing complexity of the world and bringing the population along with them in the debate through persuasion. What we have now – a political system struggling to be heard calmly, institutions talking among themselves and a bunch of vested interests shouting and threatening everything that moves – let alone a media unsure of how to be a constructive participant anymore – it will only end in grief. 

As a country we have an unparalleled opportunity right in front of us – not only in deciding the type of society we want to be, but having the capacity to generate the wealth we need to solve any and all of our problems. It would be a tragedy if we fucked this up because some of us refused to acknowledge how important it actually is to bring the public along with us.

Link