Well fellas.. some good points made here and i understand and share your common frustration. The way i see it is that things began to go pear-shape soon after world war two.Sure we were in desperate need of help in the fight against the Japs. England was quiet prepared to use us ..and the rest of the commonwealth, to fight its war with the Germans...EUROPE FIRST and then the Pacific was Churchills call...gawd knows what would have happened if the Yankees had not entered the war. It was however only Japan's mistake in bombing Pearl Harbour that saved our arses.... but... we fell under their spell, that is we progressively became followers of consumerism, and we liked it..so we began to consume more and more till we then began to borrow more and we wanted more and along the way we let our common purpose formed at Eureka and later by the formation of the the Labour Party and our Unionism and all that it brought us in terms of pay and conditions and the idea of an egalitarian society, where Government was to be "For the People, By the People...etc where the primary purpose of the Government was... "The Fair and Equitable Distribution of the Nations Wealth." We let them first abolish Compulsory Unionism,we were told we were entering into a new workers Utopia of consultation and co-operation, we let do away with conditions and allowances and entered the Brave New World of 'enterprise bargaining', the casualisation of the workforce 'Productivity' became the new driving force in the industrial equation... ie, Sunday penalty rates is now under dire threat..etc etc,etc...ad nauseum.we have become simply pawns in the global Corporate game of thrones.. America has become the New Empire, dying in a war...we are told... is the Ultimate Sacrifice, as it has always been and we wave the flag and tell each other that our finest must be blown to pieces in order to preserve ..FREEDOM.. AND...they do and we raise the flag.. half of which still bears the banner that previously enslaved us and we mind our place and bow and scrape and play our role as consumers and its fk you jack.. i've got two cars a boat and a bloody big joint up on the block there, me missus works n' the kids all have I phones.. and I ask where are the leaders with Vision and a sense of Humanity, where is our collective sense of a fair go for All...lost i'm afraid...The Australia i grew up in has long since disappeared...morphed into an ugly selfish beast that does the corporate bidding while being whipped into submission by governments who now want control of everything we do and say and who now have the means to do it. Unfortunately this will continue...until someday some distant day when, Blood will Stain the Wattle.
