Deficit deeper than economy

A teacher wrote to me recently about why my work had become important to a bunch of 17- and 18-year-olds in southern Sydney. 'High school has not worked out for my students and they are having another go at completing Year 12 at TAFE. The students must choose a research topic for the NSW HSC.

'To my surprise many have chosen topics related to happiness and youth. They are concerned that they and so many of their peers have mental illness. Others have chosen topics related to consumerism, wealth and misplaced priorities. Others have chosen to research tribal societies, their values and way of life as they feel strongly something important is missing in our modern life.'

A UK colleague said: 'At various events involving ordinary office workers and factory workers I asked them why they thought there had been a large rise in depression. Quick as a flash people say "because you never have enough, you are never good enough and you never get there". They experience profoundly what you are talking about.'

The problem was wittily expressed in a recent letter to the London Review of Books: 'Recently, in duty-free, when I asked to be spared the huge, thick plastic bag for the single small item I had bought, the assistant said there was no point in living if it had to be with constant deprivation'.

I wrote in 2011 that as the Labor Government stumbled in a new political landscape, the Opposition under Abbott had had an easy time by playing to voter cynicism. But should the Coalition win government as a result of this strategy, I said, they, too, would quickly confront the systemic disenchantment of an electorate that might not itself fully grasp the reasons for its disquiet.

If Abbott and the Coalition are to avoid this fate, they will have to be much less preoccupied with the budget deficit, and pay much more attention to the 'moral deficit', and to defining a new sense of national purpose and meaning.