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andrewstuart

A short education about what matters in Australia, for those who don't live here

* me

* my money

* my house must keep going up in value

* selling mineral resources to other countries

* selling energy resources to other countries

* selling residential real estate to other countries

* selling agricultural land and farms to other countries

* other stuff

Things that matter, but not much, or not at all:

* environment

* other people's financial position

* Australian sovereignty (huh... what's that mean?)

* the countries around us

* Our defence

Things that governments really don't think are serious at all, but they will pretend to think they are important:

* Technology

* Broadband

* Startups

* Entrepreneurship

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I feel this is a little bit facetious. We literally just had an election which, I think, reaffirmed how much climate matters to the average Australian, and how many people want economic security that doesn't involve digging shit out of the ground and putting it on a boat.

I will agree though that entrepreneurship does not rate highly for most people. Most just want a 9-5 they can forget about when they go home. "Hustle" culture is slowly weaseling it's way in, but it's not entrenched yet.

In Australia an election outcome is ultimately binary.

You can't draw a single conclusion about why you ended up with a 0 or 1, based on the hundreds of issues that swirl around at election time.

Unless you want to of course, in which case yes you can read a win or a loss as a clear message on one of the election issues.

There are 151 electorates, each with more than 2 candidates. I think seeing the election outcome as one single binary outcome based on which party achieved government is not right.

You forgot "The Boats" from the super important stuff list.

Your level of concern about "The Boats" is directly related to which shock jock you listen to on morning radio.

I would suggest that most younger people have a well tuned bullshit detector and have a pretty good idea of what is important to their and the countries futures.

Politian's who try to pull the fear lever have a fairly small audience these days, as evidenced in the recent federal election.

> other people's financial position

IMO this is pretty much top of the priorities in Sydney. How much money someone is perceived to have is usually intertwined into their description along with where they live and how much money their parents have.

Australia is more than just Sydney... I've a feeling that Sydney has it's own culture and problems.

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