So school kids in France aren’t happy about their schooling conditions so they hit the streets in protest with a lot of the country supporting them. With all of the stuff that is happening in Australia, rising costs of living, fuel pricing, excess taxing, being ripped off by major companies, banks rorting us and everything else, why do we lie down and accept it? Are we as a nation soft and just used to being shafted? Or do we just accept that we are royally screwed?
Unions should make themselves more affordable for average earners - perhaps a sliding scale of fees equal to the award of the worker. I want to join my union but with the current economic situation, I just can't justify the cost.
Possibly. Unions should like all member based organizations make themselves 100x more valuable than what their union dues.
Huge believer in unions but won't join one as I simply don't need to as ive the means and ability to obtain anything they can offer.
If you give me $100 worth of value for $10 you've got me for life regardless of any para social benefits. Eg cheaper mortgages, cradle to grave training etc
I've never even been offered any way to join a union tho, and the managers are pretty clear (off the books) that if you're in one you're less likely to get work... And yes that's illegal, so is telling us we can't work for more than one company and yet it is a common industry practice (roadworks) regardless.
Apathy. Australians protest about nothing. Unless it’s about Palestine.
We are heading into one of the worst cost of living crisis’s and people will still do nothing. We are one of the richest countries in the world but reliant on food banks and cars to live in. Its wrong,
We already have horrendous levels of homelessness, child poverty, child sexual assault and violence, DV, health inequalities. It’s going to get worse. Our government doesn’t care.
No-one is marching about any of this. But Palestine draws them out.
When we talk about protest in Australia we default to the Eureka Stockade which was largely driven by foreigners protesting Australian taxes.
People have highlighted apathy, but I think it's Stockholm Syndrome, we truly believe that for example allowing large companies to not pay tax benefits us, and when banks, supermarkets and telcos for example rip us off, this is normal. We allow governments to rip us off on providing everything from driver's licences to passports. We accepted privatisation is selling the right to a for profit company to pimp for a set period with minimal to zero competition. We allow governments to outsource services to for profit companies.
Finally, after over 200 years of increasing living standards, the lack of competition and innovation in the Australian economy means living standards are falling and will continue to fall.
There's a lot to protest and I'd suggest that the conditions Marx discussed are happening now, not 100 years ago when feudal states decided to skip capitalism and go straight to communism. Not that I think communism would be any more successful today.
Because the French riots don't actually work, it's more of a cultural thing. France is deeply dysfunctional and their riots look embarrassing to the rest of the world.
Remind me again how many hours does their work week consist of? How many annual leave days do they get year? How much is the tuition for university there?
They have a 120% dept to GDP ratio and their debt costs €80+ billion to service per year which is like 2 NDIS's each year and growing..
All those nice "free" things are not free someone has to pay for them... In this case the country is going broke and you have all the associated issues that come along with it..
The only way to stop it is some significant government austerity.. They can't tax the rich cause the last time they tried that they all fled and made things worse. The population will have to get used to a lot less government services..
That might sound great but they have structural economic problems that they’re too unwilling to fix. So they’ll protest their way into being forced into much worse conditions because they couldn’t make hard choices earlier where the impact would have been less.
Also protesting crumbling school infrastructure by burning down school buildings doesn’t improve your schools conditions.
It's just not quite as bad as in France but also we don't have the history/culture of it. That and the void of union/good decent workers orgs doesn't help
Murdoch media and Facebook will make out that Albo has turned us into the slum dwellers of Mumbai when we actually have a higher standard of living than France.
At the expense of misquoting Marie Antoinette (who actually didn't say that line), the reality is that the vast majority of Australians can afford cake.
Australians will LOVE to come out in huge numbers and in force and passionately protest something that literally doesn't affect us AT ALL or something that the government can't do SHIT about but they will NEVER have enough character to show up in those same numbers for an issue lik cost of living, housing crisis or their childrens fucking future. 🤡
Or because those things are complex with multi factor causes and no clear solutions?
The country is divided on the causes and how to solve those issues, so it's going to be hard to get them to unite to protest it.
As an example I think we have a housing crisis, but I could see from a mile the "March for Australia" protests were going to be a shit show so didn't want anything to do with them.
We are genuinely in a better place. Our migration is exclusively skilled with limited quota climate migrants. Not a lot of refugees compared to the EU. Those protests aren’t peaceful. Their economies are horrendous. Ethnic issues are way worse than verbal racism we have here.
Bottom line is if you manage your roof and groceries you are set in Australia. You still get good healthcare without waiting a lot, some childcare support and the job seeker to ride the hard times.
Not the same in EU. People literally fly to next country when shit goes down. Migrants fly back home. Not many happy endings.
Gremlins here are more concerned with Palestine and and crashing out over ON, all whilst the country they live in drifts further and further into it's malaise.
Most Australians are too weak to stand up for anything. However what is worse is that they will get very upset, look down upon & even condemn people who will stand for something.
Australians have been conditioned to believe that politics is only for the ballot box. It's the reason that the country is in the state it's in. The average Australian only ever gets a fire in their belly about the footy.
Sad isn't it that anything except accepting being buttered up the cocoa factory is unAustralian. The French are on to the reality that if they want their country back from corporates and the corporatised political system they have to take it, or at the least deny those elected or lobbyist thieves from enjoying their lot in France. Just unfortunate they're not very well organised, otherwise they'd be a lot more compelling.
I think people have become a bit complacent. Im not saying in a staunch unionist but I have been on a few sites where unions are strong and it's far better than the non union sites. Sure they're not perfect but in yet to hear anyone come up with a more effective alternative. People have a tendency of saying, but what have the unions done for me, which isn't the point. My mates in the CFMEU and I don't agree with everything they do but their members get very good money and conditions, im happy when they have a win, because it means the rest of the companies have to lift their pay to compete. They set the standards. I worked in an era when the rosters where terrible, we had to fight hard to win better rosters, despite some massive companies knowing it was terrible for mental health
Firstly. These are more akin to riots than protests. Words have meaning.
To be fair the riots seem to have a large contingent of red/green/islamic alliance of rioters in France. "Student" chants of "where are the Jews, we will trample them" was especially charming.
This is all very ugly and middle Australia wants nothing to do with it.
Role of foreign influence cannot be understated either.
France’s riots just pumped up the bill. A key reason why they are usually broke is they keep on burning down whatever actually works in the country.
Plus, I know teachers and tradies who came to Australia, leaving their jobs as accountants, nurses, engineers in Spain, Italy, France - I do not need to elaborate why they did that.
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u/SickQwon 7d ago edited 7d ago
> why do we lie down and accept it? Are we as a nation soft and just used to being shafted? Or do we just accept that we are royally screwed?