How do you draw the conclusion that the Australian people want this behaviour? As far as I can tell none us want this but once elected the politicians fail to action what the people want. Over and over again...
Australians have become, in my view (happy to be proven wrong), very conservative because of the fact we've had it so good for so long, and therefore are a bit weak / soft and will cling to whatever excuse is presented by politicians that will appear to keep the good times rolling a bit longer, no matter how illogical the premise or how much it sacrifices a future just too far away to be scary yet.
Climate change and broadband as two divisive examples. They cost too much. Standing athwart history yelling Stop!
Start yet another micro political party doomed to the fringes? Even Nick Xenophon gave up after a few years.
Revolution? If you can't succeed as a political party how are you going to build a revolution? And does the ends justify the everything-in-between, along with the very high likelihood of potential failure and after-effects of such failure?
Maybe the silent majority have just done the maths already?
Most of the problems in Aussie politics can be laid at the door of the Boomers, who vote in idiots because they don't understand the issues and are scared of change.
There's a lot of voters out there who are quite okay with the government doing what they think needs to be done to ensure national security.
Given evidence to the contrary they prefer to imagine it as a lie.
So it's not correct today that they condone anything the people in charge are doing for national security they repress the existence of the things they don't condone.
But there is none (relevant) enough.
Because most people care most about stability.
Are you familiar with French politics? For all the crap Americans give them about surrendering in the world wars, the french have had the courage to sideline both their center right and center left parties and now the biggest parties are nationalist and socialist.
For the lower house, we've had many years of the balance of power in the hands of a small number of independents who get an outsized voice.
Yes, if you live in an non-swing electorate, that is strongly held by the incumbent, then you could argue that your vote doesn't matter, but only because there are more people voting for something else. Isn't that how things are meant to work?
Also the fact that (especially with a hung parliament which we've had for years) independents get an outsized voice is a bit of a two-edged sword. It's far more luck than anything else that determines who's in that vote-tipping seat and sometimes they demand all sorts of special-interest stuff in order to let things through.
Pick a government you like and move there, instead of trying to change the government in the place you happen to be born in.
Voting with your feet also changes where you pay taxes. (Unless you are American, then you need to jump through some extra hoops to make sure your mother country doesn't get your money any more.)
You are not only jumping to a new government policy, but the whole package changes. Including culture etc. Yes.
Many people around the world are looking to migrate. If borders were more open, many more people would migrate. About why? You could go and ask some of them. (Or as an alternative, Googling for 'why do people migrate?' gives lots of results to studies etc.)