Work less, earn less, live a little: tracking the anti-aspirational voter

Downshifters do not complain; they quietly go about their lives. There is a clash between their values and those embodied in Australia's political culture. They are disenfranchised because much of the political debate is preoccupied with things in which they have no interest or actively reject.

Unlike middle-class whingers, downshifters do not demand that governments solve their problems for them. They have been offered a 'fistful of dollars' but have said 'no thanks'. And those who have consciously made a downward bracket leap are not worried by bracket creep. They are more likely to ask the Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol than give them a $30 a week tax break. They remain concerned about affordability; after all, they have reduced their incomes. But they have also proven to themselves that they can do without many of the things they previously took for granted.

The emergence of a large class of downshifters in Australia challenges the old political parties to rethink their most basic suppositions about what makes for a better society. A preoccupation with more growth and higher incomes is no longer enough. Thumbing its nose at the promises of consumerism, downshifting calls for a sea-change in how we define success.

While the rhetoric sometimes changes, the promotion of consumerist values and growth at all costs is unrelenting and these are precisely the social goals that downshifters are rebelling against.

The pre-eminence of economic factors to the exclusion of others is at variance with the life priorities of downshifters, a divergence that no amount of family-friendly rhetoric can conceal. The main political parties remain a long way from redefining the Australian dream in a way that accords with the actions of the growing class of downshifters in the era of abundance.