A non-contemplative people
The divisions that challenge Australia
Introduction
There is a struggle going on across the Australian society that is difficult to even define. Whilst the media and the think tanks are reporting warning signs on a daily basis there is, as yet, a low level of awareness of any possible social turbulence. The cafes, the bars and the restaurants remain full and the discussion largely banal. There is no sign of revolution in this land. History tells us our revolutionary zeal is muted. What might spark unrest?
The divisions are between the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the indigenous and the immigrant, the educated and the uneducated, the major cities and the regions and the old immigrants and the new immigrants. These divisions are occurring worldwide but each country has its own reaction possibilities. We need to understand our particular circumstances to be able to predict where we are heading.
There are four major issues or challenges that threaten future social order. These issues are social inequality, the well being of indigenous Australians, international outlook and environmental decline. Whilst there is a great deal of discussion going on about the latter three issues, I suggest our future will be most influenced by what happens with regard to social inequality.
In this essay I seek to understand Australia’s particular circumstances via our geography, our history and how we have been formed and are evolving.
This essay is the hardest I have ever attempted for two primary reasons; the mists of daily living enshroud and distract us from a clear sense of direction and our social dynamics are so fluid that the usual reference points can seem archaic and irrelevant. However, we must reflect rather than blunder on.
So, what is not to like?
Australia on paper looks a world-beater. It is everyone’s favourite immigration destination; it continues to find the next à la mode mineral; our institutional structures are sound, our economy is well managed and our location and geography protect us against all that is evil. Our governments function reasonably well, our legal system is independent and corruption and unethical behaviour are relatively contained. Crucially, Australians are fair minded, self-sufficient and open to reasonable argument.
What is not to like about all this? Nothing really except it is only partly true and only part of the picture. This essay is, if you like, a journey along a more shadowy path.
A “discussion” on the Voice
In the middle of a beautiful Messmate (Eucalyptus obliqua) forest in Victoria’s Central Highlands, our walking group stopped for lunch and in doing so became chattier.
The discussion centred on the upcoming referendum on recognition in the Constitution for indigenous Australians. The walking group it seems is strongly in favour and would brook no alternative view. So much so that one felt compelled to inform us of proselyting they had engaged in with neighbours. A note had been carefully drafted and left in a letterbox. Engagement is like that in Australia, polite, respectful and as remote as possible.
We finished lunch among the messmates and walked on; but it seemed there was some unease that all was not quite going to plan with the referendum.
Making sense of who we are — our geography
Geography has a profound influence of any community’s sense of itself.
The map of Australia shows several features of relevance to this sense of identity. The first and most obvious is the size; Australia is huge, the size of continental United States.
The second feature is the extent of arid land and the precariousness of habitable land. Australia lies astride the Tropic of Capricorn and of course this is the “zone of deserts” that includes the Kalahari in Africa and the Atacama in South America. Australia has the lowest rainfall and highest rainfall variability of all the continents except Antarctica.
The final element is location. Australia seems to have been placed as far from other countries as is possible. We are entirely surrounded by sea and these waters extend for thousands of miles in almost all directions.
During some twenty years I lived and worked in South-East Asia and often travelled home from Hong Kong catching a plane in the evening. At dawn having travelled only half the distance, we had arrived at the northern coast of Australia. Gazing down, I was always struck by the immensity of our nation and the seemingly endless sand dunes, ephemeral rivers and salt lakes. Then, only as the plane began it’s descent, farms, trees, pastures, crops and flowing rivers appeared and finally in the last minutes the suburbs and the city.
Australia is vast, extreme, fragile and alone. At one level we have pride in the immensity of the country yet we know there are few of us and we don’t really have a lot of influence. We hope our formidable sea ‘moats’ protect us but, at the same time, we are fundamentally insecure because we know this beautiful place is also a difficult living space.
Making sense of who we are — our history
Our history has a number of interlocking features that have influenced who we think we are but also cloud who we actually are.
There is the near timeless history of indigenous Australians (the Aborigines). They arrived well before the end of the last Ice Age and crossed to Australia via a land bridge. When ice melted the sea rose and left them in splendid isolated until the British arrived. As Manning Clark[1] expressed it, indigenous Australians wanted none of it:
When Captain Cook and Joseph Banks sailed into Botany Bay in April 1770, the officers and crew of the strange vessel had been greeted by the horrifying howls of the Aboriginal women who lived in that place. That howl contained in it a prophecy of doom — that terrible sense of doom and disaster which pervaded the air whenever the European occupied the land of a primitive people.
Then there is the more turbulent period of European exploration and settlement. Whilst others had touched on our shores almost two hundred years earlier; it was James Cook who discovered the more palatable eastern coastline and set in play the establishment of a British penal settlement in Sydney in 1788. Of relevance to this essay were five significant eras of colonial and post-colonial nation building. These eras are as follows:
1. 1788 to 1850 — initial penal settlement and then occupation of the inland plains and establishment of the wool industry. This period saw the inevitable decline of indigenous Australia via mass deaths from infectious diseases, death via conflict with the British over the land and an associated loss of a sense of purpose. This was a fractious and colourful period when autocracy and hierarchy were pre-eminent.
2. 1851 to 1900 — the discovery of gold and the subsequent settling of arable land[2] created the seeds for an egalitarian and commercially driven Australia. This was a revolution based on the soil and what was below it. To quote Geoffrey Blainey[3]:
Whereas the first vital natural resource — the grasslands — had been apportioned in huge lots to sheep-owners, the second vital natural resource was apportioned more equally among tens of thousands of diggers. The democratic flavour of the 1850s came partly from this wide dispersal of wealth and the widespread hopes of finding it.
Whereas the squatters were few and employed many, the selectors were many and theirs were family businesses. The selectors survived through cooperation and strong communities. However it was tough and the settlers came to realise this was not an easy place to live. The bush poets represented the struggles and the triumphs to crop the land and to sell the grain.
3. 1901 to 1950 — began with the formation of Australia. It was a period of isolation that reinforced the ethos of free spirited, open and fair-minded peoples. It was a tough age with war followed by depression followed by war. The contribution of men during WWI was great and the price in death and damage was extreme[4]. When the damaged came home society looked the other way. Sectarianism grew but not too far as the Irish found their niche in society. Indigenous Australians remained on the fringe but they too began an upward path. Cities grew at the expense of the Bush and there were few immigrants[5]. The importance of this period at the sociological level was the consolidation of the Australian identity that formed during the second half of the 19th Century. At the geo-political level we continued to need a ‘big’ friend. The United States replaced Britain as that friend. Society remained largely Anglophile with an attached cultural cringe.
4. 1951 to 1980 — economists call this the Golden Age of steady growth, full employment, manufacturing protection and investment in social protection. A massive immigration program brought two million immigrants from war-ravaged Europe and vast suburbs sprang up to house them and the post-war babies and their parents. Socially the British influence waned but was not extinguished particularly amongst the power elites. Australia became increasingly affluent as our agricultural and, more so, our minerals exports grew and were redirected from Britain to Asia. However it wasn’t all cosy capitalism. The Vietnam War escalated and Australia desperate to keep its new friend sent forces including ‘birthday ballot’ conscripts into this war. Opposition to this grew and grew and finally Australians threw out the longest serving conservative government ever and voted in a reforming Labor Government. Whilst this government only lasted three years it was socially revolutionary. The 1970s saw ever increasing inflation as external factors began to dominate the economy.
5. 1981 to now — persistent stagflation resulted in abandoning of Keynesian for neoliberal economics. Two factors dominated Australia’s socio-economic environment — the abandoning of the White Australia immigration policy for an open, ‘skill based’ immigration from Asia and a rapidly growing trade with China. We sent them food and minerals and they sent us manufactures. Tariffs were lowered to zero and Australian manufacturing collapsed. Older workers retired or were retrenched and young workers joined the expanding service, construction and mining sectors. Education became a major export industry as the government reduced investment in universities. Australia continued to support American military adventures.
The major cities grew and grew but within them homes became too expensive for generations borne from the 1980s on. Three of the four issues that divide society today largely emerged during this period. Workers salaries have stalled whilst those of executives have soared.
In early 2020, enter stage left a viral pandemic! Australia performed relatively well and we were surprised but pleased. However the emerging social issues just got worse.
After WWII, over a period of only a little more than seven decades, Australia had been totally transformed or had it? In population terms the nation had grown by a factor of three and now has two cities of over 5 million and a third heading in this direction. The large cities are playing a massive catch-up in building infrastructure. The make up and interests of Australia are far more diverse, complex and sophisticated than ever before. The cultural cringe has gone forever. Mother Britain is now no more than an annoying older sister!
Australia had played a major supplier role in the massive expansion of world trade and had been by the side of the United States in five major world conflicts. In terms of population, GDP and technological level, Australia is now a genuine middle level power. Yet for all this, we continue to behave like the little nation in the Southern Ocean, remote and apprehensive about our security. Yet, at the same time, we seem quite disinterested because we are still inclined to think it is all happening very far away.
The evolution of a cultural myth and national reflection so far
What we regard as our core ethos — relaxed, informal, open, generous, fair minded and friendly — emerged and was consolidated during the last half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century. It is an ethos drawn from an inland rural past that has been retained by an extremely urban and coastal hugging populace. How much of this is myth and how much is acculturation?
If we consider the issues that confront us, logic suggests the relaxed egalitarian Aussie is more myth than reality. Society has moved and changed so much that we seem to have lost sight of reference points of substance. For example many of the institutions around which communities grew are decaying and moribund. We can see these changes but oddly we still consider we operate according to the values that come from our past and that enabled such institutions to flourish as useful in giving identity to many.
What then is the reality? It is the four issues that confront us.
The four issues that divide us
Social inequality
The Paris School of Economics charts both income and wealth inequality for many countries. This charting assesses, very transparently, the percentage of income or wealth held for given percentages of households.
These “World Inequality” charts[6] show that, for Australia, over the last two decades both income and wealth are increasingly in the hands of the wealthy. The top 10% of households now possess 57% of total wealth and 33% of total income and the bottom 50% of households now possesses only 5% of the total wealth and 17% of total income.
There are multiple other ways of measuring this social imbalance including home ownership, rental stress, physical and mental health condition, family violence incidence, educational attainment level, debt level and even distance required to reach your work place. The list is endless and it isn’t shortening.
Much of the wealth imbalance relates to investment in housing that has been assisted by taxation discounts or, effectively, subsidies. Buying an investment property has become an almost de rigueur for those in a position to do so. Property investment seminars are a regular evening feature in the more affluent of the larger cities. The Australian societal elite is laced with such rent seeking investors. We might be back in 19th Century England and France talking about characters from a Bronte sisters or a Flaubert novel.
For the past two decades, median incomes have remained stagnant or have fallen as the bargaining strength of labour has faltered whilst executive salaries have increased exponentially. In addition, the protection of working conditions has eroded as much of the service sector became de-unionised. The increase in insecure casual work has added to this work insecurity.
Social housing construction has declined and old public housing demolished to make way for high-end apartments. Homelessness has increased markedly and younger generations are now shut out from home ownership and sentenced to long term but insecure renting.
State and Federal Governments have redirected the burden of taxation from the rich to the poor — income taxation is less and less progressive and direct taxation and tax subsidies for property investment have increased.
Other features of this inequality are declining investment in public education and health and the privatisation of gas, electricity and child and health care without sufficient protection to consumers from profit driven price increases. Once the responsibility for fair pricing was with society but now it is with the individual to make sure they get a fair deal. Risk has been individualised.
The young are disproportionally taking the burden of this distortion of wealth ownership, that is, those borne in the 1980s and later. In 2018, the Grattan Institute concluded:
…..home ownership rates are falling among all Australians younger than 65, especially those with lower incomes. Owning a home increasingly depends on who your parents are, a big change from 35 years ago when home ownership rates were high for all levels of income. Those on low incomes — increasingly renters — are spending more of their income on housing.
In the five years since this report the situation has declined even further. Home ownership is now less than 50% for those younger than 40. Another Grattan Institute report in 2019 highlighted the predicament of younger Australians as:
Today’s young Australians are falling behind. If low wage growth and fewer working hours is the new normal, we could have a generation emerge from young adulthood with lower living standards than the one before it at the same age.
The risks associated with this social inequality cannot be overstated. No society should be able to live with itself if it treats its youth, that is, its future, so badly.
Indigenous and immigrant Australia haven’t yet shaken hands
The dispossession of indigenous Australians that happened in the first decades of the colonial era has not been properly acknowledged or fully addressed. This is despite massive investment in redressing this wrong via material support to indigenous Australians in more recent years.
It would be far too simplistic to suggest that the sorry state of Aboriginal welfare can be corrected by the simple act of recognition. However it is an important step and this is essentially what the planned referendum for later in 2023 is about. The referendum question asks the Australian people for the Constitution to be amended to include provision of a body to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and that Parliament determine how this Voice will operate in terms of composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Indigenous Australians now number more than 800,000 or 3.2% of the population.
However, in spite of a recovery in population from the lows of the end of the 19th Century, there remain many problems. The past alienation, prejudice and racism has born a legacy of distress that carries through to the present time. Commentator and activist Stan Grant[7] describes his feelings such:
We have felt the brutality of Australia. We have had our land — our inheritance — stolen. Our language was banned. Our children have been taken away. We have been herded into missions. We have been forced onto the margins of society. We have lived in tin humpies and tents. We have been powerless before the state. Welfare Officers and police have invaded our lives at will. We have been told to become like white people, yet when white people loved us and had children with us they too were punished.
He appeals hopefully to us, immigrant Australia, to come forward and embrace change:
My country, I have hesitated to tell you of these things before. I have never been convinced you have wanted to hear. There are those now who will shrug. Others may pause and move on. But something else is moving in our country. We are looking again at reckoning with ourselves. I can feel it and many have told me you are ready.
Indigenous Australians are ten times more likely to be in prison than immigrant Australians. Indigenous Australians suffer disproportionally from youth suicide, a range of preventable diseases, family violence and other social dysfunction. A national program called ‘Closing the Gap’ has 17 social, health and educational targets that have budgets for improvement. To date there has been little progress in meeting these targets. Indigenous Australians form a disproportionate number of the total poor in Australia.
It is intended that the recognition and establishing of the Voice will precipitate other changes including treaties and truth telling that go towards improving the well being of all indigenous Australians.
Polls suggest that the referendum may not succeed. It is a tough bar to leap when there isn’t consensus on the proposition. The Federal Opposition, Liberal and National Parties are campaigning for No.
Whilst having recognition of First Peoples in the Constitution is seen as very likely to win the support of a strong majority of Australians, there are questions over the need and importance of having the Voice referred to in the Constitution. The main argument for having Voice to Parliament stated in the Constitution is:
It has been tried in the past but without the clout of constitutional recognition it’s been too easily sidelined.[8]
The question of indigenous Australia’s disadvantage is not of itself a divisive issue. There is a general acceptance that this is the case. The division lies in how and who should be responsible for reducing this disadvantage. One side of the political divide is focussing on ensuring the Voice is enshrined in the Constitution and the other side sees no need for this. It seems the debate is not about recognition but rather the process towards recognition. This is unfortunate and might have been managed better.
There is much to be done. As the anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner expressed it:
It was not one problem but a series of extraordinarily intricate and difficult problems.
Australians are yet to show a willingness to solve these problems.
A nation distant and ignorant of its region
A question was asked recently during a popular quiz show — who was the longest serving president of Indonesia? The contestant had no idea. Questions of this sort are often greeted with blank looks on Australian quiz shows. It shouldn’t need to be said but Indonesia is our nearest neighbour beyond Papua New Guinea and with a population of 275 million is the most populous Muslim majority country in the world. We really should know more about Indonesia and the whole of South-East Asia but we are actually blissfully ignorant of our region.
This ignorance extends to much else of what is happening in the world. A cursory viewing of the nightly news or the daily newspapers will provide enough evidence of a very blinkered sense of what is happening beyond the Melbourne Cricket Ground. If we look overseas at all, the view doesn’t extend much further than the goings on of the British royal family or a range of Hollywood celebrities.
However, it is at the highest level that there is most concern. Since Federation in 1901, our foreign policy has been a replica of the current “protector”. That was Britain but is now the United States. With China and the United States in a struggle for dominance in East Asia our unquestioning alliance to the latter may not be in our best interests. China, as our largest trading partner, is a country that would be better to cultivate rather than seek to crush. Whilst we need to be wary of China’s motives, adopting an aggressive posture towards it should not be our default position.
Throughout our history fear of foreign invasion has been our obsession. First it was the French, then the Russians, the Germans, the Japanese and now the Chinese. However, it is the now discarded White Australia policy that is most emblematic of our greatest fear; the fear of being overwhelm by Asian hordes. At one stage this was shrouded in something called the Domino Theory that, loosely translated was a fear of Communism. It is also the same kind of jingoistic fear that enabled unprincipled politicians to argue convincingly to the Australian public that boat refugees were throwing their children into the sea as a “tactic” to allow them to reach Australia.
Perhaps the greatest weakness in our attitude to others is that we need to be on a certain side. We seem to be incapable of acting with our best interests as the highest priority. We have a fear of being on the wrong side more than having the right position in international affairs.
Our political leaders often react to perceived threats in a xenophobic way because they know it wins votes from a society prone to fear of what is beyond our shores. Otherwise, why would a recent prime minister want to attack China over the origins of Covid-19?
Underlying the xenophobic fears is the fear that goes back to the early days of European settlement. This is the fear that there are not enough of us and that this is an inducement for others to flood in unannounced and uninvited.
This brings us to the question of the Big Australia — a target of having a population of 50 million plus. This is an argument couched in both economic and social protection or political terms. For the former it is argued that high population growth is essential for economic growth and for the latter it is argued that a large population is essential to dampen enthusiasm for unauthorised entry. Both the economic and political justifications for the Big Australia are fraught because there is a missing ingredient — the environment. This is the fourth challenge.
A nation in denial about environmental degradation
The world has been slow to react to climate change. Scientists and economists were seeing the signs of it back in the 1970s. It was called a form of externality then. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were the price paid for a low cost-high value lifestyle.
However, this is not just about climate change. It is about an attitude towards the whole environment. Ever since 1788 and possibly before then, we have exploited our environment without considering the cost of the externalities. The full accounting of this “raping and pillaging” approach is frankly overwhelming so let us briefly cover a mere morsel of this — the over-extraction of water from the rivers of Murray-Darling basin. By the 1980s, there was awareness that too much water had been allocated for irrigation. In 2007, in response to the deterioration of river system ecology attributed to the Millennium drought (but more correctly to the over-allocation of water), the Federal Government initiated the Murray-Darling Basin plan. After more than a decade of negotiation with irrigators, the outcome has been less than satisfactory. The river system water quality continues to decline with blue-green algae outbreaks and fish kills occurring at increasing frequency. Initially assessment of environmental needs was carried out without consideration of the impact of climate change. This was little more than a subterfuge. After around three decades there isn’t yet a satisfactory outcome in spite of billions of dollars pouring into irrigation efficiency upgrades. There is a continued irrigation farmer-led resistance to “entitlement buy-backs”. At one stage farmers decided to stage a burning of the M-D Basin Plan in a fashion reminiscent of the book burnings in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.
It took until 1995 for the climate change to be formally recognised on a world scale. The first United Nations Climate Change Conference (Conference of Parties — COP) was held in Berlin in that year. Since then a COP has been held almost every year — that’s some twenty-eight years of talking and planning. The wheel of climate change action is only now ever so slowly beginning to turn.
This northern summer record high temperatures were reached and much of the Mediterranean was on fire. Here in Australia, we had hell on earth in the summer of 2019/20 with who-knows-what to come.
At the political level the debate on action to halt climate change has raged since 2007. This debate was based on ideology and commercial interest rather than science. Australia as the world’s leading exporter of coal reacted badly to the idea of a carbon free world. Slowly but surely our nation has been dragged kicking and screaming to the table of firm commitments. The Labor Government elected in May 2022 is committed to reaching zero emissions by 2050.
Will this be enough to save the planet from devastating consequences? Probably it will not be. What few appreciate is that until we reach zero GHG emissions the planet will continue to heat up and it will take hundreds of years to return to pre-industrial revolution levels of GHGs in the atmosphere. Even now we have only an incomplete idea of how many environmental and ecological tipping points of irreversible damage will occur.
At a more general environmental perspective, Australia has and continues to practise denial that leads to species extinction. Planning policies are developed that deny the ecological and other environmental constraints that exist on our delicate continent. At present, population targets give no consideration to environmental needs.
The response of the Australian people to the climate emergency has been muted and fickle. The conservative parties, in opposing action on climate change, mounted virulent and vigorous campaigns against carbon taxes and resorted to nominal and token grant schemes when they were reluctantly forced to. During the “climate wars” the price in prime ministers was heavy — ultimately five were to lose their jobs in part because of a failure to act. As for the Australian people, we got what we deserved.
Since 2006, the Lowy Institute has been undertaking annually a poll on attitudes to action on climate change[9]. This poll asks people to choose between three options:
1. No action until certain and without cost;
2. Action is not urgent and proceed at low cost; and
3. Action is urgently needed and should occur regardless of the cost.
This polling has been highly volatile. The public mood has been very and emotive under the influence of politicking, economic crises and environmental crises. This is despite the need for immediate action to bring down GHG emissions to zero as soon as possible. For example in 2006, 68% of those polled were strong supporters of action but only six years later this had fallen to 36%. This is remarkable for something about which the evidence is overwhelming. Since 2012, the support for action has climbed back up to just below 60% but could easily decline again if economic conditions deteriorate.
There continues to be a reluctance by a majority of society to commit to living more sustainably.
Who are we and why we need to know
In understanding the Australian ethos we might get an inkling of how we will deal with the four major issues that challenge our nation. However, basing the likely future path of a nation on something as ethereal as ethos is quite fraught. It presumes too much about a “common set of characteristics”.
Notwithstanding this I have considered what some credible observers of the nation’s psyche have concluded.
The first of these is that doyen of Australian history, Manning Clark. His comment relates to a disconnect between the open and casual “style” of the digger and his deep-seated conservatism. Clark wrote of the response of Australian soldiers on the Western Front to a major mutiny in 1917 within the French Army[10]:
The Australians were mutinous in their language and casual in their dress but dismissed mutineers contemptuously as ‘f…… no-hopers’, ‘fellers who ought to have their heads read’, ‘bloody fools who had gone clean of their rockers’. Their past had not fashioned them into participants in any Boston Tea Party or creators of a Paris Commune. Ignorant of their own history, they were doomed to go on repeating the past.
I suggest this casually dressed conservatism carries through to the current times.
Donald Horne wrote in The Lucky Country :
Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. A nation more concerned with styles of life than with achievement has managed to achieve what may be the most evenly prosperous society in the world. It has done this in a social climate largely inimical to originality and the desire for excellence (except in sport) and in which there is less and less acclamation of hard work. According to the rules Australia has not deserved its good fortune.
Horne considered “the fair go” originating from earlier times remained part of the ethos as did a suspicion of the motives of the elites. Australians, he wrote, “like people to be ordinary” and “to be different is considered an affectation”. With regard to the acclaimed “mateship” characteristic he suggested it was more to do with what team you belonged to rather than some sense of common belief.
He also highlighted a capacity for adaptability not in a visionary way as he defined us as “a non-contemplative people” who can improvise but not invent. “She’ll be right, we’ll just give it a go” is how he expressed it. Horne warned that the combination of scepticism and adaptability could involve distrust of “the expert”. Finally he concluded that the greatest deficiency in Australian character is with respect to creativity.
Geoge Megalogenis in his book, Australia’s Second Chance, What our history tells us about our future, expressed the Australian ethos in the following way:
Australians crave attention and status, but we can’t take a compliment when we’ve earned it. This is the Australian Duality[11] — we are a seemingly confident but ultimately anxious people. We are engaged with the world, but carrying a cultural chip on the shoulder.
He further highlighted how Australian leaders relate to the outside world:
….. Australia assumed, correctly, that the mother country, the big country and the business partner didn’t think about them a great deal — but their indifference made us more willing to please.
In The Australian Moment he stated that Australians “generally fear self-reflection”.
Social commentator Sean Kelly[12], in his recent biography of our last-but-one prime minister observed how Australians respond certain issues:
We are always splitting ourselves in two, then turning away from the half that troubles us.
Kelly suggests this splitting is drawn from our geography:
We have always known that we are a land of extremes — of fire and flood — but these extremes dominate the way we think about ourselves too. We insist that we are extremely this, in the hope that it will drown out the possibility — the likely truth — that we are its opposite.
Kevin Rudd proposed that vision was lacking in the national lexicon. He wrote[13]:
Australia’s political culture tends to look askance at the idea of a national vision. Our reflex instinct is to lampoon the notion that we might actually want to create a better country than the one we have.
He argued that the formation of a new national identity was critical to the creation of such a vision. He implies this vision is needed to counteract trends towards nationalism, isolationism and/or simple complacency.
Julianne Schultz presents an observation on the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. She writes of an absence of relationship[14]:
Generations of settlers, old and new, have generally preferred to think of Australia, literally and figuratively, as a blank slate on which their dreams could be etched.
She also highlights the alternating promise and deflation of a society evolving but then not:
The prevailing ethos was increasingly inclusive, tolerant, egalitarian, independent, ambitious and engaged with the region. Ideas are fragile and need to be nurtured, but these produced such a prosperous and decent society, it was tempting to think they were robust. Then, in the early years of a new century, they came under serious challenge.
Over the decades since the 1960s, as my country and I grew up, I witnessed remarkable changes in social relations and understanding. Values stretched to embrace equality and justice, and acceptable behaviour changed. But still we cling to myths that help us live with contradictions, and lull us into not analysing so we don’t have to take responsibility. There is a persistent reluctance to grasp the knowledge needed to create new narratives and opportunities that might displace fear and allow a dynamic hybrid reality to flower.
The society that has grown on this continent and its islands is, at its best, generous, open minded, curious, respectful, ready to adapt and accommodate. At its worst, it is puffed up with hubris, complacent, lazy, judgemental and angry. We have built enduring institutions, a strong economy, rich cultures and respectful values. Too often, though, the default response is grounded in fear rather than the generosity that should amplify the gifts we have been given, and those we have taken without asking.
Finally there is Claudia, a young person who I met in the course of my daily routines. Claudia is studying allied health whilst acting part-time and teaching yoga and her partner writes screenplays. Claudia told me of the young women in her yoga class:
They come, they look at their phones in an absent minded way and then they leave. There is no engagement unless you consider looking at what is streaming is engagement.
Herein lies one of the features of the era of social media — it is surprising that it is a little more than one decade during which we have lived in this era. Still, it is rapidly reforming us. The social media algorithms are changing us into a society of individuals whose connections are highly electronically controlled. World leaders may still strive for face-to-face interaction but not so much the rest of us. If there is to be a revolution it won’t be shaped by late night boozy discussions in some gloomy back room bar.
What I find with all these observations is that within the Australian character there is a capacity to detach and see what ever it is as ultimately, ‘none of our business’. It is a kind of detachment that works quite well when dealing with particular problems or difficulties. However it is not great in terms of facilitating a broad level of social improvement.
It is interesting to scroll back to the 1960s and the emerging opposition to the Vietnam War and particularly against “the birthday ballot” conscription. Initially the decision to send troops to Vietnam drew considerable community support but over some years opposition grew and became more militant. In the end, partly on the back of opposition to Australians participation, a Labor Government was returned to power after a record 23 years of conservative government. Conscription ended with by a simple proclamation made by two men — the Prime Minister and his deputy. As such my invitation to present at Puckapunyal was cancelled. There was no follow up letter!
In respect to the deteriorating social inequality within Australia, there is no evidence of substantive political opposition to what is happening. It is actually the reverse of this. In 2019, the conservatives won office because the Labor Party over promised on tax reform and the voters got nervous. The voters reacted exactly as Clark’s WWI diggers did on hearing of the French mutiny. We have no stomach for uprising. The wild colonial boy died a long time ago!
In his revamped Australian history, Geoffrey Blainey[15] gives an entertaining account of the social changes that have occurred over the last seven or so decades. I have lived through these changes but even so I am quite incredulous of the extent of this change. How did we manage it? Perhaps the answer is — we did, so never mind, just get on with it! However I don’t think so because the prosperity pendulum is swinging back from that seemingly ever-upward trajectory.
All these social observers are suggesting that we are disinclined to action unless there is an emergency and then we find it wasn’t a bad idea after all. Right now, with regard to the four issues, it isn’t a bad idea after all! The time for delaying is over.
An uncertain conclusion
Amongst the above threads of geography, history, historical observation and reflective contemporary commentary there is considerable contradiction — immensity and fragility, achievement and inertia, insecurity and complacency, solidarity and fracture, development and contraction and, most critically, vision and myopia.
A level of contradiction is no bad thing but it becomes problematic if it is not in balance. At this point in our history, this is our situation and gives rise to the four major issues of concern. It seems the Australian society lacks a capacity for firm action on these major issues. There are the three ‘A’s that are standing in the way — aspiration where we ask, ‘what is in it for me’?, apolitical where we ask, ‘why do I need to be involved?’ and anticipation where we ask, ‘how could they possibly understand?’.
In 1950, as the post war migration program was starting up, Australia’s population was just over eight million and now it is approaching 26.5 million. This tripling of the population is extraordinary for a developed country. We are projecting a doubling of this population well before this century is out. Yet, we have little idea of how this will work. We seem to be ignoring that we live on the most unique continent ecologically and arguably the most sensitive environmentally.
Furthermore, this period brought with it social and economic changes of major significance. These changes range from the microwave to the no fault divorce. Socially the change was the most significant of all — from over 95% Anglo-Celtic to a highly diverse amalgam. Set against this dynamism there is a continuing and near static belief in an innocent “boy (or girl) from the bush” fair minded identity that emerged around the turn of the 19th and the 20th Centuries. Frankly, this is preposterous!
Australia might continue on its benign path but this is unlikely without significant change. The divisions, principally relating to the four issues are widening and are threatening our sense of who we are. Given that our sense of who we are is already uncertain, this is a risky proposition.
To end this essay I will go back to what I wrote in the third paragraph. This is that the most important issue of the four is social inequality. It is the most important because it plays directly into all of the others. A society with a well-balanced wealth and income profile will function better and be happier. If there isn’t change, our society will corrode and become dystopian in manner perhaps best defined as neo-feudal[16]. Political theorists are increasingly discussing a move from a neo-liberal to a neo-feudal world.
Our government’s intention (or is it an absence of intention) is that the solution is to continue to expand via immigration led population growth with an effective doubling of population well before the end of this century. This is not the first time that such optimistic support for an easy outlet existed. It is, as history shows, unlikely to be so easy for us. Unless our four issues are effectively dealt with, this idea of a Big Australia is a recipe for chaos. Diversity is a lauded characteristic but there are signs of division because this diversity is not providing equality of opportunity. Regional areas are struggling particularly those reliant on coal and gas. In the cities, inner suburbs are swinging and fringe areas are struggling. We have a “pool” of temporary migrants filling important but low paying jobs without security or social benefits. We have indigenous Australians doing well and not doing well at all. Finally we have young people who are thwarted from opportunity whilst a few have blue skies opening up.
We must change these inequalities for the good of all of us.
End notes and references
[1] Manning Clark, History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, (Abridged Michael Cathcart) 1993
[2] I have written two connected essays on selection:
https://www.openforum.com.au/the-mystery-and-the-legacy-of-australias-immigrant-selectors/
https://www.openforum.com.au/the-hard-lives-of-the-selectors/
[3] Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People — The rise and rise of a new Australia. Penguin Random House Australia, 2016
[4] With some 420,000 men enlisted (1 in 6) and 62,000 killed and 156,000 wounded, Australia’s sacrifice was one of the greatest in WWII.
[5] The number of foreign-born halved from 25% to 12%.
[6] https://wid.world/country/australia/
[7] Stan Grant, Talking to My Country, Harper Collins, 2016
[8] Thomas Mayo and Kerry O’Brien, The Voice to Parliament Handbook, Hardie Grant Explore, 2023.
[9] https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/report/2023/
[10] Manning Clark, History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1993 (Abridgement by Michael Cathcart), pg 485.
[11] My italics
[12] Sean Kelly, The Game, A Portrait of Scott Morrison, Black Inc, 2021
[13] Kevin Rudd, Defining Australia’s national identity, The Saturday Paper, 31 August 2019
[14] Julianne Schultz, The Idea of Australia, A search for the soul of the nation, Allan Unwin, 2022
[15] Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People — the rise and rise of a new Australia, 2017, Penguin Random House Australia.
[16] Neo-feudal is a theorized world order to evolve based on current economic trends. In this order many, possibly the majority, are superfluous to the mainstream economy and are retained in a semi-serf status by the elite.