@HardBeingGreen

the contrast between the beginning and the 70s and the second half was enormous — not surprising considering the number of important changes made by the whitlam government

along with laws promoting equality for women, non-anglos, for example, there was a widespread conviction in the community at large that these were good changes. compare this to the grudging mood in media, community and parlt surrounding things like The Voice or gay marriage…

so if people had less wealth, less technological advances at their disposal, this was not too great a burden, because we had HOPE - hope for the future, and trust in community values.

i can only speak as a white person, but i think australia was less racist than it is now. we were hardly egalitarian or aware, but at least we wanted to give a shit.

Despite the dismissal, it took a while for the mood to die completely. In 1986 across australia 300,000 people still took part in the (anti-nuclear) palm sunday peace march. It wasn’t illegal to inconvenience business people or newspaper moghuls. (I was very young during the 1962 cuban missile crisis, and spared any real fear we faced the risk of a nuclear winter)

It’s hard to pin down a single date when australia became digital — progress was piecemeal, uneven, and slow relative to larger economies. When you had a problem with a government department or business, you could usually speak to a real person, and have a chance of resolving it. Today, a major purchase or change often involves accepting the risk you’ll get dudded, and won’t be able to fix it.

Whitlam was not the cause of the stagflation /high interest rates at the end of the 70s; (it’s beginning again now, and this is hardly a progressive time).

Neo-Liberalism from the 80s on has destroyed western economies.
two significant features are the now yawning gap between the wealthiest classes, and the rest of us, and the nature of government expenditure.
The problem is never the size of government deficits, but how much govt spending actually contributes to our quality of life. The end of vietnam war required MASSIVE economic restructuring — instead of bombing the shit out of Indo China, we had to revert to spending on families, medicine, communities, and infrastructure. Today, we are back to square 1 where govt expenditure is just sucking money out of the economy (community) to fund
horrendous wars, and profit for its own sake (fossil fuels and prisons)

#AustralianHistory #Auspol