Australia's social contract is broken
There is an unprecedented crisis at the core of contemporary Australia. It’s not a scandal, although there are enough of those, with politicians amassing fortunes, supermarkets robbing shoppers, media monopolies strangling public debate, right-wing criminals abusing the courts to silence truth, a National Anti-Corruption Commission born rotting from the top down.
The crisis is larger than any one scandal or problem. It is a national crisis, unprecedented in its scale.
A country is a collection of people who agree to follow its laws and contribute to the greater good in exchange for governance, security, and opportunity. This exchange is called the social contract. It has defined life in liberal democracies for centuries.
In Australia the social contract no longer exists.
Australians with full-time work can’t afford housing, can’t afford to have children, and can barely afford food and medical care. The situation is even worse for part-time workers, the unemployed, the disabled, and the elderly who don’t own a home.
Young people are told to save more, to ‘get a better job’, but the cost of housing is unattainable, and the cost of university has skyrocketed, to the point that the average graduate will spend decades paying off obscene fees, with interest. For what?
Young people see political leaders who received a free education. They see university executives who are paid more than the prime minister. None of this is sustainable.
The birth rate is below replacement level. The desire to have children has not dropped. It’s the ability to pay for them, and for a stable family life, that has evaporated. None of this is sustainable.
Australia’s rancid media, of private schooled journalists with secure housing and a culture of smug ignorance, working as foot soldiers for parasitic billionaires, is not reporting on the true scale of this crisis. But it is here. Right now.
Observant Australians have watched the social contract’s destruction in slow motion, fully avoidable, but accelerated or ignored by those in power. Young people have watched years of political theatre and quietly accepted a brutal truth: no one is coming to save them.
Without hope, without a functioning social contract, what’s left?
Fear turns to anger. Hopelessness turns to anger. Envy turns to anger.
The 20th century showed what happens when governments don’t fulfil their side of the social contract. In Italy. In Spain. In Germany. We see it now in Trump’s America.
This is the crisis in Australia today.
The Canberra adversarial style of government isn’t working. The absence of conscience voting doesn’t help. The unwritten LibLab pact which never prosecutes ministerial wrongdoing and nest-feathering is more due to the quality of the candidates seeking high office.
Thanks for this post. In my opinion, this is the root cause for social issues like DV, increasing suicide and extremism. Additionally, our socialisation into capitalism and economics has life defined as working in a job and being focused on winning against others to achieve more wealth. In the end, even in the best of the Boomers years, wealth accrued to the rich and bribed whilst the bulk of workers could afford a reasonable retirement. Life is more difficult to find now. At least I didn't have to live with the propaganda machine the press has become nor the plethora of self-serving products called politicians.
Beyond all of that, we've broken the planet's climate which will yield wars and death. I'm amazed at how craven the world's leaders have become.
Cheers!