Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving prime minister and founder of the modern day Liberal Party, in his famous speech The Forgotten People, on 22 May, 1942, about those who belonged to the middle class of his days, claimed that “in a country like Australia the class war must always be a false war”.
Another old timer from the other side of the frontier, Tom Uren, an ALP minister and deputy leader under Gough Whitlam in 1976-1977, remembering his days as a prisoner of World War Two on the Thai-Burma railway, would make references to the Australian egalitarian spirit that saved the lives of imprisoned soldiers, either because of the more equitable distribution of their portion of food, or because Australian soldiers, unlike their British counterparts, used to look after each other.
These two examples, along with many others that helped create an egalitarian tradition in this country, a tradition unfortunately long gone, are fundamental components of the so called Australian character and Australian myth. In relation to most of the countries of the world, Australia still remains for most of its people a lucky country, but the egalitarian tradition is vastly eroding.
Thirty five per cent of all Australian students are enrolled in private schools. Those who do manage to get into the tertiary sector and to graduate find themselves, at the beginning of their lives, with a debt of approximately $40,000. On the other hand, quite a few of those who do not manage to gain an education find themselves unemployed. Only in the state of Victoria for example, not to mention Tasmania, youth unemployment is in the vicinity of 18 per cent.
Potential first home buyers, both with a deposit and an income, are being kept out of the housing market at record rates throughout the country, since investor activity, as the housing experts claim, is driving up property prices. Vulnerable people who do have a job, a home, or a home loan, again, living in the state of Victoria, are having to pay extreme energy bills. These bills are not the result of the carbon tax the Abbott government wants to abolish from the very beginning of the 44th Parliament that opened this week. These bills are the result of the privatisation of the State Electricity Commission after the election of the Kennett state government in the early 1990s. The cost of electricity, according to the Australia Institute, increased in Victoria by 170 per cent from 1995 to 2012.
Inequality in this country is growing. Inequality is aggressively back. Powerful sources of social and state reform that lead to more equality, such as progressive ideas and progressive politics, are marginalised. The great enforcers of equality in the past, namely the labour and trade unions, are withering away. The Australian national tradition of having or of achieving a more egalitarian society has been under siege in the last few decades; it is becoming a myth and an era to remember.
Yet not many voices can be heard loud and clear in this political and social cycle. A highly concentrated and controlled media define or limit the agenda not around bread and butter issues, not around ‘kitchen table issues’, but around other important matters, such as asylum seekers, or the abolition of the carbon tax.
Issues that can politically rally Menzies’ forgotten people, the under siege Australian middle class or less privileged Australians, hardly get a mention.
Alternative policies in the areas of housing (public and private), health, education, or mineral company taxation to name a few, policies in areas that can determine electoral outcomes and make a real difference to people’s lives, are forgotten.
The Australian dream of home ownership and of general wellbeing, the Australian myth of having or of achieving a more egalitarian society, is becoming more distant for more and more people. If the terms of public debate and public engagement do not change and do not broaden, Australia is in danger of heading down the American road.