Advancing Australia Fair

That’s what is causing so many young people to disengage from the Australian democratic process: the overemphasis on disingenuous marketing ploys to “sell” the party fairytale, while glossing over the accompanying policies. Instead of engaging with the electorate in an exchange of ideas about the direction the nation should be heading, we get bickering and name-calling from our representatives and so we turn away.

To young people such as myself, the two major parties locked in their seemingly endless arm-wrestle for electoral supremacy, offer little more than a choice between Fruit Loops and Coco Pops - both saccharine, hollow in the middle and of dubious nutritional value. You wouldn’t want to eat them every day if you expected to “grow up big and strong,” and neither will Australia.

Perhaps our responsibility as young Australian citizens is better informing ourselves about the proper functioning of a healthy democracy. But in the absence of healthy choices, disengagement seems almost a rational alternative. If only older Australians would become more engaged with what sort of country they would like their children and grandchildren to live in, instead of the houses they would like to live in, then perhaps the major parties would become less inclined to bribe and berate us.

Governor General Jeffrey is right: freedom is precious and should be valued by all of us. What we have in Australia is the freedom to choose, without threat of violence. All of us, not just young people, have the responsibility to become engaged in building a healthy democracy. The foundations for modern Australia may have been laid at Federation, but we cannot afford to rest upon their legacy.

The Australian people, as well as the operation of our political system, now look very different from those envisaged at Federation. Similarly, the world is a very different place. As such, we citizens need to consider what reforms need to be made to adapt to this changed environment. The economy has undergone a radical overhaul during the last two decades, and it continues to be reformed in the purported interests of the nation; surely the same logic applies to our political system and the institutions of government?

Being an Australian citizen, young or old, demands more than merely barracking for a particular political party: Citizenship demands that we imagine what sort of Australia we want to create today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, next century and on into the future. That is the only way to Advance Australia Fair.