At a time where our nation is facing its biggest problems, progressive politics appears to be characterised by conflict aversion

Australia is a country that seemingly has everything.

One of the wealthiest countries in the world, we have peace, democratic stability, fresh air, clean water, abundant resources, and international influence. But for a country so privileged we also have some surprisingly big problems.

Australia is facing an equality crisis. Children are living in poverty. Women are being murdered by their partners. People living in residential care are malnourished. Indigenous incarceration and child removals are increasing. Australian governments are failing to uphold civil liberties and political freedoms.

And, of course, all this inequality is set against and exacerbated by the rapidly worsening climate and biodiversity crises caused by our collective determination to subsidise fossil fuel expansion and ravage our natural environment.

The problem is not money. The share of Australians’ combined incomes going to corporate profits is well up, as are CEO salaries and fossil fuel subsidies. Our government just sacrificed $200 billion on tax cuts, and it is going to spend almost $400 billion on nuclear submarines we may or may not get.

This continent and its culture are ancient, but the colony of Australia is young. There is no need to trace back through millennia of successive empires to understand how we got here. None of our leaders has been forced into faustian pacts to save their citizens from starvation or tyranny. While the solutions to some of our problems are complex, it’s not hard to see where to start, and what things need to stop. Our governments knew how to end whaling and asbestos mining, and they know today how to fix the big problems hitting Australians.

Despite our growing, collective abundance, Australia is facing a notable deficit in one thing: the courage to confront and fix these problems.

As our nation’s prosperity has increased, complacency and caution has taken the place of boldness and bravery. With the rapid intensification of neoliberalism over the last 30 years, our leaders have sold us the myth that “doing the right thing” means taking care of number one, and providing for others means there will be less for us.

Increasingly, what follows a big policy announcement in Australia is not a big, structural solution but a series of incremental “announceables”. Instead of systemic reform, a tired array of political tactics and interminable bureaucratic processes are typically dragged out: commissions, committees, strategies, reviews, consultations, economic modelling and endless cost-benefit analyses. When implemented in good faith, these processes should justify and facilitate policy changes, but in the current context they serve to delay or water down ambition. The result is the continued status quo of increasing inequality, injustices and environmental decline as millions stand by and watch.

The failure of successive leaders to communicate the gravity of the climate crisis and to do the most basic things climate scientists say are needed to sustain life as we know it — stop opening new gas and coal mines, stop clearing forests, and rapidly restore our ecosystems — is an abject and unforgivable demonstration of this performative inaction. Australian governments, senior public servants and industry leaders have known for decades what causes climate change and
what its impacts will be. Yet ecosystem collapse is consistently treated as an economic inconvenience, rather than a moral imperative.

Much is made of the powerful grip industry and media oligarchs have on Australia’s democracy. There is no doubt that the pursuit of profit and self-interest by a select few continues to have a disproportionate influence over our policymaking. But is it the identity or alleged “power” of these influential individuals that is important, or the failure of our leaders and public agencies and institutions to stand up to them?

We are all guilty of taking the path of least resistance or acting out of self-interest sometimes. We have all stood by when we could have done more because we wanted to avoid conflict or didn’t want to lose social acceptance, financial stability or access to power. We’ve told ourselves we can make “change from inside” or convinced ourselves we are too small to make a difference.

Recent commissions into the Robodebt scheme, institutional child sexual abuse, government use of consultancies, to name just a few, have made acutely clear what the consequences of collective silence and inaction can be.

To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just one step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”

This is in no way to suggest Australians are bad people. Actually, we inherently want to do the right thing. While neoliberal economics has us convinced that individuals should and do act in their own selfinterest, in fact, there is significant evidence to suggest that humans have an evolutionary and biological predisposition towards altruism, not selfishness.

Just as there is evidence pointing to the innate altruism of humans, there is also significant evidence demonstrating that humans preference morality over economics or efficiency when it comes to making big decisions. Of course, morality is subjective, but humans immortalise in history, religion, art and culture those who saved lives, sacrificed themselves and spoke truth to power. It’s hard to recall a historical figure who has been celebrated for their centrism, fiscal pragmatism or techno-optimism.

Even former Prime Minister John Howard, a devout follower of the neoliberal doctrine, reinforced this theory at least once in his life. In response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Howard negotiated aggressively with states, resisted the gun lobby, implemented a nationwide tax, and fought his own constituents and Coalition
partners to introduce nation-changing gun laws and regulations, to ensure such a tragedy could never be repeated.

This is not to martyr or ignore the other significant harms that Howard went on to inflict on our nation after these first few months in office. But it shows just how quickly governments can make big things happen when they want to, even those who claim to believe in “small government”. It also shows that Australians are willing to
accept increased tax and regulatory burdens if it means saving lives.

The Port Arthur tragedy resulted in the deaths of 35 people and within months John Howard had passed laws to stop it happening again. No one attempted to bright-side the opportunities that gun laws would bring in growing the economy or creating investment and business “opportunities”. No one suggested that weapons manufacturers should be consulted or be allowed to influence process. No consultants were commissioned to project job losses in the firearm industry.

Governments are remembered for what they did, not the economic modelling they commissioned. Indeed, Labor governments are remembered for implementing bold, nation-changing ideas in accordance with the principles of the Labor Party constitution: the abolition of poverty, the redistribution of economic and political power and the social ownership of natural resources.

The Whitlam government introduced Medibank, free tertiary education and passed historical sex- and disability-discrimination laws. The Hawke government gave us Medicare, convinced the world not to mine Antarctica and floated the Australian dollar. The Rudd government apologised to the survivors of the Stolen Generations and steered Australia through the global financial crisis with a publicspending package. And the minority Gillard government negotiated a carbon price with the Greens that successfully lowered emissions and created the NDIS.

But bravery is like a muscle, and it atrophies without use. At a time where our nation is facing its biggest problems, progressive politics appears to be characterised by caution, conflict aversion and the need for validation by the private sector more than ever before.

The modern Coalition doesn’t seem to suffer from this affliction. While the current Labor government shrinks its ambitions to make itself as small a target as possible, the Coalition unapologetically proposes the reintroduction of government-owned power stations and a $600 billion nuclear-power industry.

That rapidly growing inequality and the worsening climate and biodiversity crisis is killing Australians should be enough of a reason for our governments to overcome their terror of being accused of fiscal negligence or economic recklessness.

In government and public institutions bravery means using the levers of power with integrity, even when others don’t. It means doing what is required to fix problems, not just what is sufficient to avoid them. It means standing up to the party or those with perceived power. It means acting in the public interest. It means telling the truth.

The rest of us are not off the hook either, regardless of what industry we are in. If we claim to care about childhood poverty or violence against women or extinctions, then we must be brave enough to speak loud enough for our leaders to listen.

And if we aren’t brave enough to take these steps — to change ourselves and our country — then let’s hope we are brave enough to face the consequences that will come with doing nothing.