Uhhm, sorry, any empirical evidence for the central claim here?

Actually, more to the point, is empirical evidence required in the social sciences or do people in that field just get by making broad brush statements with little or no hard evidence to back it up?

e.g. "Why does it appear to be un-Australian to call Australian society racist?" Any empirical data to back up this claim? Or just a vibe? What's the benchmark?

Sorry, you haven't convinced me this is anything more than the idle scribblings of a publicity seeking academic.

How refreshing to have, as one of us, an hypenated former English subject who can advise Antipodeans on subjects such whingeing, gender and race relations,economics, our Monarchy and life in general.
These topics form key aspects of the A division of whingeing in which Australians, so often, fail to be competitive.
We really do need all the help we can get.

Just a bit of background.

We are selling assets, borrowing and allowing massive environmental damage to occur with mining.......all because Australia is panicking for income to support our growing population's appetite for infrastructure and jobs.

Our manufacturing is collapsing, our World rankings of our universities and school leavers academic standards, are falling.

As Paul Keating said, " population growth will lead to unemployment, if you don't grow the economy ". The opposite is also true, that you can have full employment if you don't grow the economy........if you stabilise population growth.

Denmark with a basically stable population of 5 million , export all over the world. How ? Because they invest in education, technology and efficient, high end capital intensive manufacturing.

Australia can't, because we invest in more people.........which is an investment in more pollution.

The billions spent on growth infrastructure and services, must be spent alternatively on education, health and emerging technology.

Forget "bank" and Business Council economists pushing for more population growth.........this is the last thing we need.

In the meantime we have 2.5 million Australians either unemployed or underemployed, trying to cope with rising housing costs, electricity
charges, traffic jams and a general feeling that we have lost control of our country to big business and dodgy developers.
Cheers,

Ralp

[Deleted for abuse.]

"access to senior roles"

It's not the whole picture but as I've pointed out before when that particular claim pop's up.

In relation to where I live

Local councillor - female
Local mayor - female
My local member - male
State premier - female
State govenor - female
Federal member - male
Prime Minister - female
Govenor General - female
Reigning monarch - Female

On my local council
CEO - male
4 GM's - 2 male, 2 female

In the public space there certainly does not seem to be a lack of access to senior roles.

R0bert

I would like you to tell all those elderly parents of the disabled adult child they had forty or fifty years ago to go make their own luck. I would like to know how they have the potential to join in the rewards of the lucky country when they are required to care around the clock and into their dotage. Great coming from a Brit whose fellow disabled citizens have legislated entitlement to service! Here we have just been rated the twenty-seventh out of twenty-seven OECD countries in our opportunities for the disabled. The one thing that could return a bit of equity to our lives, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, has been sidelined as "only in a strong surplus" economy by Tony and "possibly in seven years time" by Julia, which will be long after she's around. Our governments don't see the support of their disabled as a core function of government. So I suggest that you, as a sociologist, get out and see what it's like at the other end of the Bell Curve before telling us how well off we are.

Good post, Ralph Bennett

Yes, conditions are worse elsewhere, but there is such a thing as living in a fool's paradise. Many of us who are "whinging" see the unsustainability of it all and don't want our children and grandchildren to have far worse lives than we did.

Why do I think that the author will be regarding most of the comments so far as pretty good supporting evidence for her assertions?

What a misleading heading. The author implies Australians are whingers and then goes on whingeing about Aboriginal health, treatment of illegals and criticisms of the PM. The author seems to be the champion of whingers supposedly because most Australians don't agree with her views on illegal arrivals, the aboriginal industry and the feminist victim mentality.

Don't you just love it when new (or relatively new) immigrants to the Lucky Country go to such lengths to tell us what's wrong with us? And from a scholarly academic no less, and a senior lecturer in Sociology at that. Why, she must be right, hey! What a poor ignorant lot we are.

Thanks for that. We all promise to be so much better in the future.

PS. We can become a Republic when we think the time is right, and we don't need anyone to tell us to grow up - we are a big kid already. (If the author has a problem with the Queen of the county she abandoned, that's her (the author's) problem, but we'd prefer if she left her prejudices behind, thanks all the same.)

Seems someone has really got into the swing of 'whingeing', and with no help from us - but usually we expect someone to get to know us a whole lot better before they start tearing the strips off.

Talk about how to wear out your welcome. If I (and we) weren't so accommodating, non-sexist, non-misogynistic, non-racist, non-violent, non-homophobic and almost universally environmentally friendly, why then we might actually take offence.

As for the difficulties being faced by our indigenous people, this is an exceedingly complex problem, and our governments are working hard to find an effective and harmonious way forward in their (our indigenous people's) best interests. Taking snipes from the sidelines, and with no knowledge of the factual situation is unwarranted and, to be frank, more than a little disingenuous. Same goes for the asylum seeker issue.

(We aren't being colonised for a second time, are we?) Can our education system be in peril of self-destructing?

[Deleted. Racist and abusive.]

Why am I reminded of that famous movie exchange in "A Few Good Men"?

Col. Jessep: "You want answers?"
Kaffee: "I want the truth!"
Col. Jessep: "You can't handle the truth!"

Apart from a blanket "where's your evidence that we're like that" defence, posters here seem more concerned with beating up on the messenger, rather than use the article as the catalyst for a little gentle self-examination.

The writer is, apparently, a "hypenated former English subject who can advise Antipodeans on subjects such [sic] whingeing", someone who "seems to be the champion of whingers supposedly because most Australians don't agree with her views", a person who should "get to know us a whole lot better before they start tearing the strips off", and finally - classically - " a person from a third world society".

I thought that last contribution from LEGO particularly illuminating. The article has no value, in LEGO's view, because the writer is black. And from Britain, too, that well-known "third world society".

Let's face it, we're in a pretty good place right now. The ability to take on board a little objective criticism without a knee-jerk reaction - "don't diss me, ya hear?" - is a sign of emotional maturity. I feel we may have some way to go yet.

[Deleted for abuse.]

Now I'm really confounded – when I read the article I just giggled thinking it was an attempt (poor) at irony or satire. You know, the idea that whingeing is complaining about something that is not important or warrants that response.

It's all there in the last paragraph…"So get over this irrational sense of gloom and entitlement Australia!" On the presented issues of race, gender, republicanism and the economy… "understand that you also need to make your own luck and not expect it on a silver platter for all of your life."

See, do you get it? "Stop whingeing!" about race, gender, republicanism and the economy, et cetera.

Now whining on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

[Deleted. See comments on the same commenter above.]

Can our education system be in peril of self-destructing?
Saltpetre,
It's been in that mode since 1972 and it is an absolute miracle that some individuals escaped the brainwashing and managed to uphold what little common sense is left

Australians wingh because they are good at it, You can always find something to have a good wingh about. The weather has been a good topic for a good wingh for generations. Look at all the winghing that goes on about our parliamentarians, all for no good reason, but it happens.
Many years ago i worked in NZ, and got out of the habit of refrigerating beer, because that was the norm, and still don't refrigerate beer. Can't give any away, everybody here wants it to be cold. Winghing is what it amounts to. You don't know what you are missing out on, a good hot bottle of beer.

a good hot bottle of beer.
579,
that explains it all !

I'll drink to that individual, but definitely not in hot beer.

I think our author may be guilty of the very crime we are charged with.
And may be in position of far too much self confidence.
Any group or country could face charges like this.
Constructed and put together for a reason.

Hilarious the first time you were ever forced to swear allegiance to Betty Windsor was when you ditched England to become an Australian.
This new age of 24/7 right whinging has come about because the Liberal party religious right faction leader Abbott, is probably the greatest pomie right whinger Australia has ever imported, along with a compliant totally corrupted right whinger media, (see Monkton video at Get Up) "really sums up the new right whinger media situation World wide". The billionaire 1% control all media and all we get in the media is right whinging. You think it's bad here, have a look at Fox News right whinger channel, it never stops right whinging?