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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Australia for 5 years and my sense is that, as harsh as it sounds, Australia needs to go through an extreme hardship to wake up as a nation. Australia has lived true to its moniker as the Lucky Country - at least two full generations of Australians have never witnessed economic hardship or downturn of any kind. Natural disasters pass the nation by (other than wildfires). Even Covid looked like it was going to give Australia a miss until very recently.

The populous of Australia are fat and happy, and therefore unbothered by the extremely worrying creeping authoritarianism, an economy teetering on total collapse and incompetent local governance. I had real Brave New World vibes living over there.

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One could argue that Australia has always been this way. The full quote is:

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck."

written by Donald Horne in 1964. These words were true prior to 1964 and are still true in 2021.

What saves Australia is the word "mainly".

There are some first rate people in Australia, mostly not in positions of authority, who stop the ship from sinking. Examples are solar power, quantum information and medical researchers, pockets of the Public Service but less so in 2021, people like Donald Horne, ... Mostly things are second rate, but sometimes something first rate breaks though.

(I've lived in Australia since birth.)

Yes, people always miss the full quote. It still remains absolutely correct.

"Just as Samson after being shorn of his hair was left eyeless in Gaza, was this generation, stripped bare of all faith, to be left comfortless on Bondi Beach, citizens of the kingdom of nothingness, who booze and surf while waiting for the barbarians?"

- Manning Clark on the settling of Australia.

This is exactly my feeling. Aussies are constantly whinging about extreme first-world problems and are completely apathetic (or willfully ignorant) of what real hardship is.

As a result the general population is blindly letting the government erode our rights and are too pre-occupied with their own lives to actually realise what's happening.

"blindly letting the government erode our rights"

what else are we supposed to do? how do you stop the government from doing that?

Vote.

Protest - particularly direct action

Challenge them

In Australia people are compelled to vote, so the problem looks like the majority having a different take. Not that I agree with their votes, but you can’t say they don’t vote.

Ultimately what is one supposed to do in a democracy (never mind Australia for a moment) when you’re just not part of the majority opinion on something?

No easy answer. It is called politics.

The culture helps too. In Australia the "democracy is majority rules" meme (which is a lie) is very strong. Just ask the Australian Indians.

Fun fact: Māori people had the right to vote in Australia from the start, Aboriginal Australians (just how racist are they when there is no word in Australia for the first people?) did not get that right until 1967.

It is a tough fight for the Australians.

> In Australia the "democracy is majority rules" meme (which is a lie) is very strong

I don't have much idea what you mean here.

> Just ask the Australian Indians.

Uh, could you explain what you mean here?

> Aboriginal Australians...did not get that right until 1967

I thought that too until recently, but not true.

On the history of Indigenous Australians’ right to vote: https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/indigenous...

On the 1967 referendum:

While many people think that the Referendum gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the right to vote, this wasn’t the case. Aboriginal people could vote at the state level before Federation in 1901; Queensland and Western Australia being the only states that expressly prevented Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from voting.

It wasn’t until 1962, when the electoral act was amended, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were given the right to register and vote, but voting was not compulsory. Full voting rights were not granted federally until Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were required to register on the electoral roll in 1984. ...

When the Constitution first came into being in 1901 there were only two parts that referred to the First Peoples of Australia: Section 51 (xxvi) gave the Commonwealth power to make laws with respect to ‘people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any state, for whom it was deemed necessary to make special laws’; and Section 127 provided that ‘in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted’. ...

On 27 May 1967, Australians voted to change the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them. A resounding 90.77 per cent said ‘Yes’ and every single state and territory had a majority result for the ‘Yes’ vote.

https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1967-referendum

Democracy is not majority rules. Democracy is rule by the people. Minorities matter too, and if minorities are railroaded by majorities it is not much of a democracy.

Voting is important, but much more important is the rule of and access to the law.

"Australian Indians" means the same thing as "Australian Aborigines" Indian and Aborigine are synonyms.

You schooled me on the right to vote! My prejudice leaked out!! I will not let it become bigotry. But I think it is at the federal level. At federation (I thought it was 1905) they really wanted NZ to be a state, and in NZ Māori electorate was a thing, not a particularly democratic thing, but a thing. So to make NZ a state Māori had to able to vote at a federal level.

Hi. "Democracy is rule by the people" - well, I know enough to know that it's not any one thing, or captured by any one definition. How that one differs from "majority rules" I'm not sure. Anyway. Let's not get into that here.

> "Australian Indians" means the same thing as "Australian Aborigines" Indian and Aborigine are synonyms.

Uh I'm not sure where you are, but in Australia it sure doesn't mean that. No-one here calls aborigines "Indians", and far as I know never has.

Hehe it's ok, I think most Australians probably believe that 1967 thing, if they know the date at all, I'm not sure why. The truth is somewhat complicated.

Gee, I had no idea NZ was involved in the pre-Federation conferences in Australia, although sounds like NZ just wasn't very into it. A wise decision!

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

The continent was home to a very large number of difference language groups and languages prior to settlement. There is not one common demonym - in southeast Australia "Koori" is often used, but more commonly people are referred to by the language group to which they belong (eg an Arrernte man).

> Ultimately what is one supposed to do in a democracy (never mind Australia for a moment) when you’re just not part of the majority opinion on something?

I think the only option is to emigrate. I didn’t and still don’t agree with most of the government policies in The Netherlands (regarding immigration, climate, EU, etc), but most Dutch voters apparently do. Eventually the best option is just to cut your losses and leave for greener pastures.

At least this way I am not forced anymore to have my hard earned money taxed on issues I don’t support.

>I think the only option is to emigrate.

In spite of the tendency for part of the US electorate to wish to federalize all government functions, there's still a lot of difference between US states.

That seems to work out pretty well. It isn't like California is identical to Arizona, at least currently.

The yuppies and karens are trying their hardest.

I moved from Australia to the Netherlands as well and felt the same about not having my tax dollars directed where I didn't want them to go. I unfortunately had to move back to Australia and now get to watch my tax dollars flow to the richest companies (including foreign luxury brands) thanks to Jobkeeper.

Actually I moved from The Netherlands to Thailand, since I don't like the way things are going in The Netherlands :)

If you do hope to move to The Netherlands in the future, if you believe it's a better place for you, I hope you can succeed. I would agree based on the news from Australia, that The Netherlands seems the better option of the two.

Yes it is. If only it had Australia's sunshine!

Convince others and keep fighting. There has to be a minority opposition.

By giving up the opposition you create totalitarian state.

What percentage are property owners? Sounds like it's absolutely fantastic free money if you own property.

It is but it's a Ponzi that may well come down one day.

But the only way to realise that gain is to downsize or move out of town. And neither of those options is easy, because of restrictions on development and redevelopment.

Well, I think that's where individual rights and a constitution is supposed to help. If at least you enjoy the rights you get, there's that. Maybe you disagree with how best to run the country so it can protect those rights, but at least you'd have them. And then you could argue that if a majority thinks one way, it might be right even if you disagree.

Otherwise, I forgot which philosopher said this, but the only real freedom is the freedom to choose where to live and the choice of many places with different viewpoints and social norms. That way each individual could pick what matched their preference best and move there.

Unfortunately the freedom to choose where to live is not really something the world provides. So you might be stuck where you are, but if you're lucky, you might manage to get into another place you prefer.

If that doesn't work, your last resort is the activist route. Make your case and change people's mind. It's happened in the past, but it's a tough road.

Is that working? Anywhere?

Yes. In a lot of places.

Can you give an example?

https://youtu.be/pGuSpEt13Ac

This is a good start.

Dudes strongmen literally attempt to kill the (15 year old) kid which can be seen in another video, so you know the act cuts deep as a form of protest...

>Vote.

Compulsory voting with good preference system already in place which means we have a ~90-97% participation rate.

>Protest - particularly direct action

Agree, but increasing using/changing laws to reduce this (declaring environment activists as "terror" groups).

>Challenge them

Not even sure what this means exactly but more people are organizing support for independents/minority parties over the major two. This combined with the ability to form minority governments I think is the best chance for progressive change, but a lot of money is being spent to keep the status quo.

I recently read an article in which protesters were fined thousands of dollars for violating "health codes". A country who cannot allow protest is no free country at all.

The right to protest during a pandemic is dubious, in direct conflict with other peoples rights. It is also self defeating, when the majority consider the protesters arseholes for willfully endangering the general community and don't get around to considering the actual issue being protested.

>direct conflict with other peoples rights

What the hell? Nobody sitting at home in their house has the right to prevent other people meeting peacefully on the street. People like you are what's wrong with Australia, you authoritarian monster! Nobody has the right to stop other people meeting because they might spread a virus to eachother with a 99%+ survival rate that might somehow eventually find its way back to them.

Willfully violating health orders endangers others, who are forced to share public spaces. As a community, we decided the law to protect ourselves (security of person) and the vulnerable (the people who don't have a 99% survival rate if they catch COVID; the immunosuppressed, the elderly, the chronically ill). Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are entitled to security of person and protection by the law. And yes, it also declares several articles further down the right to protest. So the rights are in direct conflict.

It is also worth noting that people can still protest. They just can't do it while violating health orders. Yelling maskless at police on lockdown days is going to get you arrested. Other protests on non-lockdown days with people maintaining social distancing have proceeded fine apart from grumpy words and fear mongering by politicians.

If other people aren't afraid of the virus, you have no right to stop them; it's their choice. Now maybe you could argue you have a right to keep them out of your house, or your personal space, if you don't want to be infected, but you have absolutely no right to stop them meeting on the street far from you.

You do so have a right to take measures for public health, which may well involve arresting people who ignore the necessary measures.

In a pandemic there is no "street far from you". We are in thios together

> You do so have a right to take measures for public health, which may well involve arresting people who ignore the necessary measures.

Do you even understand what a right means? Rights, be it as defined by the US constitution or the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are inherent moral rights, it's not something the government can freely suspend based on some arbitrary utilitarian justification like case numbers. The whole point of those declarations of rights is protecting people from authoritarian governments; if the government has the power to suspend those rights, you have no rights!

Tell me in which declaration of rights is there a right to have armed police attack and lock up people peacefully assembling on the street?

And if you don't believe in rights, believe anything is moral as long as an elected government makes it law, then consider this. Would you still feel that way if the democratically elected government decided it was okay to rape worik's wife/daughter/mother? Would you still feel that way if the democratically elected government decided worik's ethnic group should be sent to gas chambers for cleansing? If not, then clearly you do believe in absolute rights.

"If other people aren't afraid of drink driving, you have no right to stop them; it's their choice"

An appropriate time to look at where we draw the line is when their choices put others in harm's way

People make you are the reason I look forward to the day I have a second citizenship and can renounce my Australian one.

You're welcome here in the U.S. It's not perfect but there are places you can escape this madness.

I mean, stop repeatedly voting for blatantly corrupt parties, for one.

The current LNP are so actively corrupt with their corporate interests, religious interests, repeated exposed in-house scandals, etc, yet the majority of the population continue to vote for them because they ignore it all and just keep supporting 'their team'. The Labor government tries to suggest that they're different, and end up with their own dramas of a similar style, but are kind of not as bad. Kind of.

There are other options out there, but we're all lead to believe that only the 'big parties' can form government. Which only remains true due to the self-fulfilling prophecy of people only voting en masse for the big two parties (and the preference system that funnels votes into those parties).

The likelihood of that changing? Low.

The other solution would be to dismantle the corporate media monopoly that glosses over the actual issues the country is facing, but that's probably even less likely to happen.

Why do you think that people keep voting for the blatantly corrupt LNP? and why are the other parties above becoming corrupt?

Is it possible that the LNP are constantly in power because they are corrupt?

I suspect until just recently it was because of the negative gearing policies, but now that Labor has officially scrapped any changes I feel like the differences between the parties gets thinner and thinner.

3 things. 1. People always look after their back pocket. Any policy that reduce income or wealth is a vote loser 2. Rupert Murdoch owns a majority of print and TV media and has extreme bias for the conservative govt. People do not see any other viewpoints. 3. Extreme divide between rural and urban population. It is impossible to satisfy both. A pro-climate change policy in urban Sydney is a vote killer in regional Queensland.

Organize people who think similarly to you. Turn them in to activists who run for office, pressure politicians, protest, lobby and vote. I know “pressure groups” or “special interests” or whatever they call it in Australia are always derided. But people form these groups for a reason.

Isn't this more whinging about extreme first world problems?

100% agree. It's almost like Wall-E was written about Australia in 50 years time.

The irony being that 30% of the population was born outside of Australia with a decent part of that in countries which have experienced recent hard times.

https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/30-austra...

No dual citizens in federal parliament. That 30% are, generally, extremely under-represented in the political system. This is by choice of interpretation of the current federal judiciary (High Court).

At a state level, in many states, rules for dual citizens are more complicated, but result in a similar situation.

I can understand the need for this legislation, but it does tilt the balance in favor of 3rd+ generation Australians (as many 2nd generation Australians can inherit their parent's citizenship).

Yes, if your country of non-Australian citizenship allows you to renounce it, that is recognised in Australian law. But it can be a complex process, with little value unless you have political ambitions (or maybe complex tax issues ;-) ).

Melbourne has been in lock down for over 200 days. Sydney is not that far behind.

Massive amounts of people are unable to work, and a lot of us haven't seen our interstate family in almost 2 years.

A few months before Covid started, 180,000 km2 of Australia was burned to the ground, enshrouding our capital and major cities in smoke, making breathing outdoors almost impossible, causing a mass shortage of P2 masks. Many people died. Many more lost their houses.

What sort of additional hardships do you want to prescribe for Australians exactly?

In which 5 years did you live here? Some time in the 90s? We endured the GFC comparatively well thanks to shrewd economic leadership from the Labor government of the time but to say we haven't faced downturn in two generations is absurd. Speaking as someone who has been out of the office due to COVID since March 2020, I'm amazed you can say it seemed like it was going to pass us by "until recently". As for natural disasters passing us by "other than wildfires", those bushfires have killed hundreds of people, burned thousands of homes, killed over a billion animals, cost billions of dollars, and most victims of the most recent bushfire which scorched half the country still haven't received any relief. There are a lot of very misguided ideas about Australia in this thread, but the least someone driving by could do is spare us condescension.

It will not happen. As luck would have it next generation energy will be renewables, Solar, Lithium and Hydrogen. Australia is chock full of these. Steel will still be required and Australia will start producing coal free steel from Hydrogen. The current government has a backwards policy right now but it will change rapidly. The wheels are in motion and can't be stopped.

I've lived here for 6 years and you got it 100%. I feel you mate, feels like their focus has been wrong year after year and it doesn't look like it's getting better at all.

I wonder how much Australia is influenced by people who loathe the US and move from it to Australia because it's far away and yet Anglophone and "western".

> I wonder how much Australia is influenced by people who loathe the US and move from it to Australia because it's far away and yet Anglophone and "western".

No, you don't get to blame Australia's insanity on the US. They're fully in control of their own destiny and are one of the richest, most privileged nations in world history. Australia will have nobody else to blame if they plunge further into fascism from here.

Probably very few. Liberals who are alienated with the U.S. would sooner move to Canada for the healthcare, conservatives alienated with the U.S. would sooner be dead than be alive in Australia without guns if their bumper stickers are to be believed.

It’s a misconception that Oz has no guns.

In 1997 they banned “defensive” firearms. The guns you want because they work well. Semiautos, center fire handguns, pump shotguns. Bolt actions are still possible to get, but not great at self-defense, or overthrowing your government.

Side note… in 1997 these guns were banned, and crime fell. As it turns out though, not only was crime already going down, but there was an increase of 2x police per capita, and curiously crime in the USA fell at a greater rate with no gun ban or large increase in police, crime was high in the 90s for some reason, some people say lead paint bans but the causation is weak.

The only things Americans know about Australia are Steve Irwin and Outback Steakhouse, i.e., nothing.

Ok, but I was referring to expatriates.

Also, you forgot Paul Hogan. And Kylie Minogue. And Nick Cave.

Also, while absolutely nothing sticks in my mind about either, the names of Kevin Rudd and Kim Beazley have been retained in my memory.

I don't think they hear anything that'd make them want to emigrate. We just hear that most of the country is desert, even though when I actually went there everyone (in the cities) turned out to be tanned Scots obsessed with beaches and coffee.

If there's places Americans want to go, it's Canada, Europe or Asia, though I think their opinion of Europe is a little overrated if anything.

If I am not mistaken most of the immigration to Australia is from UK, India and China.

That may be, but do they hate where they came from the same amount and do they talk about it as much?

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

It ain't all men out there

Men also means people, humans

To men.

I see your point and how the language has been masculinized but the meaning still stands as of now.. until the next changes take place. Language is evolving and these will inevitably change as well at some point.

You’re talking about it like it’s far away. Yet here I am saying this is an out of date convention and everyone gets their hackles up as if it is such a horrific inconvenience to include others in their ideas. The change has already arrived, only some stragglers angrily clinging to the old way.

It’s a quote. One doesn’t typically alter a quote unless it’s unintelligible if not altered in some way.

You can quote whatever you like however you like, but it ain't all men out there. Relying on such worldviews to understand the world leaves you with a truncated world.

As the other poster pointed out the word men has multiple meaning which depend on context. The meaning is clear to me and no need to modify it. Next time you quote it you can make your own changes.

The idea that ‘men’ is a universal stand-in for people is no different than saying White is the universal stand-in for people.

Nope. White has never had that meaning at all.

Please look into the etymology of a word before making whimsical arguments.

You’ll have an awful time with Chinese where words have many different meanings depending on context.

I didn’t say it did have that, I said it is the same as doing that. Hilarious to accuse me of whimsical arguments while you morph me into the straw man you need to be right.

> Strong men create good times.

Or sometimes they just kill each other in cycles of violence spanning generations.

> Good times create weak men.

Or they enable amazing things like the internet, modern medicine, and empires that last 1000 years.

Sorry, but I've seen this pithy quote before and I wish it would go away - it's simply not true.

I think you’re misunderstanding the quote. You’re right but so is the quote.

Strong men fought for our rights, fought for the allies and which led to long lasting peace and security.

These are the times that breed weak generations who have no moral compass and have been squandering basic rights and civil liberties.

The foundations of the internet and computing were built by people from the cold war when modern civilization was a technical glitch away from ending at any given time. Half the stuff in networking is decades old, written by people who are decades older then that and raised by the generation before them. Implying the internet is a byproduct of the recent "good times" seems a bit disingenuous.

The internet (FAANG if you want a concrete definition) and modern medicine are both multi-trillion dollar industries; for very fundamental reasons. I'd argue their relative success would probably occur in both good and bad times.

The foundations of the internet were laid during the post war boom era. It was considered by some a golden age. The modern internet is a product of successive booms in the 90’s and 2000’s.

The internet came about because of the cold war and the attendant arms race. Empires that last were all born in blood and fire and terror, and universally spend more blood to maintain cohesion against the outside.

What type of la la fantasy histories have you been reading? Fat happy people maintain the status quo. Hungry desperate people innovate.

Anyway. The world wide web is probably what you meant. And yes, universities and science and medicine makes progress during peaceful times, and ultimately the quote is facile and glib. There is a nugget of truth there, however.

Establishing a frontier in human well being has historically required limiting the power of the state in ways that support the relative liberalizing of its culture. States historically require blood sacrifice before any power is ceded. It takes strong people to achieve and hold progress., and the quote encapsulates the notion that there is a place in the natural order of things for strong individuals to shake things up. For principles to be held to at great cost, however inconvenient or even fatal it may be for others who just want to perpetuate "good enough".

The fallacy is that good times can't produce good and strong people, which is wrong. It's just a simple matter of conviction being stronger when provoked by trauma than abstract rationalization.

> Hungry desperate people innovate.

Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, Werner von Braun, William Shockley, John von Neumann, ... those just come off the top of my head, I could keep going for pages.

Yeah, a bunch of hungry desperate people there.

I mean sure, some were deeply flawed or had tragic lives, but that wasn't from being hungry and desperate. They were not poor, and they were supplied with ample resources to pursue their visions by governments or private companies.

That quote is just too much of an oversimplification. The real situation is far more complex and nuanced, and like I said in the other reply it matters a lot how you define strength and how you define good times.

Before their genius was recognized, how were the lives of those people?

Normal.

Depends a lot on your definition of strong and your definition of good times... which kind of makes it a meaningless bit of cornpone so I agree.

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