One reason Australians are concerned and fearful is because they are at the mercy of a government now recognised to be hopelessly incompetent and actively dangerous to the economy and its most significant contributors. As the Herald put it last week, this is a terminal case lashing out blindly at its perceived 'enemies', and capable of doing terrible and permanent damage in the process.

There is nothing wrong with citizens wanting better social, economic and environment outcomes in Australia as this will drive national, parliamentary and policy debates on how to conceptualise, innovate and deliver a preferred future for Australia.

Each citizen should become an active citizen and work towards building a stronger, smarter and more sustainable Australia. It is the role of local, state and federal government to create conditions that are conducive to continuous improvement of living standards through education, innovation and entrepreneurship rather than entitlements. The key to delivering sustainable and well paid jobs are agile small to medium sized enterprises which can earn profits across the globe.
This is where urgent reform is needed by all key stakeholders because without healthy and globally competitive firms our living standards will decline as quickly as they have in Europe and the USA.

What a despicable article!
“our citizens feel that we are entitled to be more prosperous than anyone else in the world and, indeed, have a right to expect even greater affluence than we enjoy now”
Our citizens feel no such thing, at least not deliberatively. It’s simply the case that desire is never slaked and the ‘novelty’ of novelty is never rubbed. Thus have we been trained to experience life—via anticipated need: commodified-consumption. Such impoverished life—consumption devoid of complement in need, achievement or accomplishment—is the engine of both glut and the dissatisfaction that those above so hypocritically lament. Are we not constantly lashed to spend? To consume? To find new ways to indulge and amuse ourselves? To drive the economy, to drive growth? To become richer? That is to become poorer, in body, capacity, real experience, and spirit.
“entitlement is a curse that must be removed before it becomes a cancer”
It’s not entitlement, it’s hopeless addiction, pushed by the system that now has the gall to criticise it, and is long-since cancerous!

"....yet Australians are overwhelmingly unhappy with their lot."

Freud, in "Civilisation an its Discontents", makes the observation that the purpose of life is simply determined by the programme of the pleasure principle., and that:

"It is quite incapable of being realised; all the institutions in the universe are opposed to it; one is inclined to say that the intention that man should be "happy" has no part in the plan of "creation".
What we call happiness, in the strictest sense of the word, arises from the fairly sudden satisfaction of pent up needs. By its very nature it can be no more than an episodic phenomenon. Any prolongation of a situation desired by the pleasure principle produces only a feeling of lukewarm comfort; we are so constituted that we gain intense pleasure only from the contrast and only very little from the condition itself..."

It seems Australians are suffering from "lukewarm comfort", so used are we to our fortunate predicament and our abundance.

A good article - however tends toward over generalization. I am on the age pension, and thank my lucky stars every day for the fact that I live here in a wealthy and free country. No one is born with 'rights' other than those either bestowed by society, or fought for by combined individual effort.

...I think Mick Jagger has answered this question in the lyrics of:

“Shattered”.

Pride and joy and greed and sex
That's what makes our town the best
Pride and joy and dirty dreams and still surviving on the street
And look at me, Im in tatters, yeah
Ive been battered, what does it matter
Does it matter, uh-huh
Does it matter, uh-huh, Im a shattered

How can people say we are so prosperous when, because of big business-directed mass immigration over the last few decades, it now takes two above average salaries to own a modest 3 bedroom house, the same type of house that our parents could easily afford and raise a family in on one average salary. Or put another way, 20-30 years ago, an average house required 40 hours of work per week by one member, the same house now requires about 50 hours by each partner - so good luck having any kids. We are working longer for less so that the wealthy can become more wealthy.

Having material possessions (50 inch plasma, ipads, etc.) has never made humans happy and content. It's faith, family and property that makes humans happy - that all three of these elements are waning is the key to understanding the collapse in Australian morale.

progressive pat,

There's not too much "modesty" abounding these days in the procurement of starter housing. Where once a couple would have started out in a typical three bedroom, one bathroom house, perhaps without carpeting, with homemade curtains, etc. - these days houses are decked out to the nines - and they are huge. Add to that that an average of two cars and all the mod cons a house can hold, mostly on credit - and bingo! - you have a recipe for a financially stressed couple who both have to work to meet their debt obligations.

Material possessions, as you rightly point out, never brought anyone extended happiness. For people to escape the debt trap and make more time for themselves and their families, they have to take control of their own destinies and reject the notion of conspicuous consumption.

We are "prosperous". In fact, we are spoiled rotten. But we need to see what we have, stop whinging and start thinking of ways we can maximise our life experience without allowing ourselves to be lead by the nose by the gospel according to "growth".

"The reality expressed by many delegates, a lot of whom were conservatives, is that the world has changed drastically since the turn of the century and will change even more rapidly as the digital era creates more globalisation and innovation."

Utter Rubbish.

Globalisation is rapidly disappearing as the ponzi-central banking, credit (debt) binge reality really starts to hit home globally.

The world has been on a credit binge for 30 years, primarily to pay for cheap energy to drive the mantra of 'growth', its over, do you get it, and we are now in a world of diminishing returns.

"This attitude is a very sensible one in a troubled financial world, but it will not stimulate economic growth."

That's exactly right, it will not stimulate economic growth, Everald, your entire argument is flawed.

China is about to implode economically and Australia is about to feel the results of their 'hard' landing.

As to Glen Stevens knowing anything real, his policy actions leading up to the GFC show his complete incompetence.

I have read some stupid articles on OLO but this one is up there with the best of them.

Just a couple of points.
I fail to see how we have a "legitimate entitlement" to a job and a home! These are not entitlements, but are the result of individual hard work and application.

I certainly did not vote for a government "whose prime responsibility is to create a level playing field". Rather, one which will uphold the constitution and the law. Often I find that the cant about the much vaunted 'level playing field' is just code for wealth redistribution.

Education and a police force are merely 'tools' that can assist in promoting the above.

The tired old tirade against 'consumerism' etc is once again a matter of individual choice. We are all free to spend our money on whatever we like. A plasma tv and iPads or the latest 'cool thing' are never forced upon us, other than those things forced upon us through some form of govt regulation (digital tv changeover, bicycle helmets etc).

As Poirot observes, and I have also noticed, getting into a new home decked out with everything results in a huge debt. However, this is also a matter of individual choice.

I watch with interest the development of Joe Hockey's comments with regard to this 'entitlement' culture some in the community have developed.

I'm happy.

Just saying.

What a strange article. Who says Australians are unhappy? Happiness is a choice anyway to start with.

And this is so contradictory...

'They were asleep at the wheel when their poorer neighbours conquered them.'

In the next breath...

'How do we cure this decadent national illness when too many of us spend our days worrying obsessively that the carbon and mining taxes may downgrade our lifestyle...'

So which is it; Do you propose we remain diligent and look to improve, or are we to sit back and enjoy out happiness and 'stop worrying'?

And who is doing all this worrying anyway?

Sorry I just cant relate to this article at all.

I see again though we have Poirot and Squeers lamenting that people have two cars and consume, and relating that's why people are unhappy. The only people I see who seem unhappy are the people without two cars (By choice of course) looking at the people with two cars and deciding those people aren't happy. 'They just cant be! They get to work faster and they don't have to share, how could that make them happy?'

It's really paternalistic and patronising to suggest people who have decided to go into debt to enjoy a lifestyle aren't happy and the debt is their problem and they would be 'happy' if they downsized. It may just be they don't get enough sex or drugs, or... hang on, WHO exactly said they are unhappy in the first place? How do you even know that?

Anyway curtains, ladders, toasters, rice cookers, blenders, TVs are all infinitely cheaper than they used to be. It would be 3 times more expensive to make your own curtains than to just go to Big W and buy the cheap third world labour ones.

"...They get to work faster..."

I dare say they probably do.

I don't really give a toss whether they're happy or not. Why lament that they've got to work for such long hours or devote more time to some mindless grind because they have chosen to have "all" the stuff and its accompanying debt at once? Why not practice a little delayed gratification in return for a less harried life rather than whining about how hard they're done by?

Houellebecq. Yep, I' pretty happy too!

As usual, Poirot, we agree.
I am conscious though, Houellebecq and others, that I sound like a broken record. The trouble is once you perceive something from the outside, it's hard going back in.
I'm also "happy", whatever that means, though my happiness is born of seeing through illusions at least to some extent. It's perfectly true that we're damned lucky, blessed even, to live in Oz and to have the luxury to be able to philosophise a species of aloof contentment, or in your case cynicism, Houellebecq.. That is, cynicism in the modern sense; I claim Diogenes' enlightened-cynicism for Squeers.

But back to the article, I'd be willing to bet a large percentage of the population decidedly do not want "to be more prosperous than anyone else in the world", and that even more would be willing to forgo it and even cut back a bit in favour of modesty if it meant Australia didn't have to become a bloody great quarry and home to 50 million upwardly mobile zealots. It's about time we threw out governments who only know this manic line, the mantra of growth at any price.
Everald ought to approve of me, I don't want a bar of the capitalist cornucopia. I still know how to take pleasure in simple things, and to wonder at the wonderful--such as the wonderful meekness of cattle--human cattle that is.

'Why lament that they've got to work for such long hours or devote more time to some mindless grind because they have chosen to have "all" the stuff and its accompanying debt at once? Why not practice a little delayed gratification in return for a less harried life rather than whining about how hard they're done by?'

Who?

I agree, but who are you preaching to? Delayed gratification is a cheap way to enjoy things more. Works well in the bedroom too. Instant gratification is also good at other times.

The point is I suppose... after you:-) That's what people think. I mean they don't want to be a hippie living on a farm with no friends to talk with about lentil recipes. You need a critical mass of anti-capitalists.

Regardless I find that people will complain about anything. It's an enjoyable past time. It's self evident that they are living the life they want to live, because they are not choosing to change anything. It's most ill-mannered to point this out though, as it rather deflates people and shows a lack of emotional intelligence.

But I don't see people complaining really. Maybe I should listen to more talk-back radio.

Dear Jon J,

You wrote:

<<One reason Australians are concerned and fearful is because they are at the mercy of a government>>
(("now recognised to be hopelessly incompetent and actively dangerous..."))

The first line says it all. Whether the government of the day is recognised or otherwise for what it is and what it does, a government is a government is a government and anyone who is at the mercy of one is rightfully concerned and fearful, even if it were the best of its kind (which it obviously ain't).

People should be able to live their own lives, on their own terms, by the dignity of their own efforts (plus the good-will of others when/where indeed necessary), refusing any of those crippling and humiliating entitlements and handouts from immoral, involuntary and violent bodies such as the state and its government.

'The trouble is once you perceive something from the outside, it's hard going back in.'

That's pretty arrogant. You perceive from the outside that your ideals and what leads to your happiness is right for others, and they are just too dumb or naive to realise this.

'cut back a bit in favour of modesty if it meant Australia didn't have to become a bloody great quarry and home to 50 million upwardly mobile zealots.'

It's ok as long as the Quarry isn't visible from the back yard really. 50 million yuppies would be a problem, but think of the market for Japanese restaurants and those leather boat shoes (Sorry don't know the fashion term for those shoes). Actually I can relate to the yuppies as well as the pikeys, I like saying the word Portfolio and pretending to know the sq metre-age of my house.

'It's about time we threw out governments who only know this manic line, the mantra of growth at any price.'

I think it's quite possible for you to have your anti-capitalist utopia in the exuisting capitilist system (There may even be a market for that, I'm sure there must be some good lifestyle accessories you could buy apart from Che berets;-). In fact I feel you're bragging about your 'outside'ness, so why does it matter to you so much? Why do you think your values and perception of the world would be right for others?

Isn't it more fun to just watch em squirm and go Na ni na ni na na, you're a slave to the Military Industrial Westfield Parking complex?

Or maybe that's what you're doing now...

Verging on the namedropping there Everald…

"SPEAKING at the Prime Minister’s Economic Summit in Brisbane in June, Reserve Bank Governor, Glen Stevens, told 150 business leaders… [followed by] I chatted with other delegates about this strange attitude, and there was a general consensus… that we are entitled to be more prosperous than anyone else in the world and, indeed, have a right to expect even greater affluence than we enjoy now."

Okay, I edited out 14 words from your fourth paragraph but I think it clarifies the problem by eliding the presumption of 150 business leaders about the feelings of the citizenry to make a point about exactly who expects the right to greater affluence.

It's the gall of this form of a sense of entitlement that makes voters angry – and as long as we are doing well enough with our lot in life to have spare time to care, if being angry makes us happy – then so be it.

Oh, and good luck with getting those 150 business leaders to agree with your "On all other matters, we should look after ourselves and stop blaming governments when we get into trouble."

I'm old enough to remember being taken on a two bus trip to a large city department store with my mother as she made another layby payment on the curtains that, when she had finished paying for them, were going to replace the donated old bedsheets that were serving as window coverings. As a special treat the kind staff took me back into the storage area to look at our curtains which in only six more months of payments would be able to go home with us.

These days I am happy to be able to share some of my good fortune in life with those less well off by buying household furnishings regardless of where they were made. It's my modest effort to share the wealth around – exactly the reverse of expecting greater affluence.

Houellie,

Who?

Sorry, you must live in a particularly lukewarmly comfortable part of the country surrounded by fellows who never complain.

My take on our nation is that its mostly comprised of people continually belly-aching about one thing or another who never stop to realise how good they've got it

I'm not preaching to anybody - simply making an observation is all.

'if being angry makes us happy – then so be it.'

Oh I read feminist articles just for that very purpose. I even read the executive style section of the smh but that's more just to mock.

'I'm old enough to remember being taken on a two bus trip to a large city department store with my mother as she made another layby payment on the curtains that, when she had finished paying for them, were going to replace the donated old bedsheets that were serving as window coverings. As a special treat the kind staff took me back into the storage area to look at our curtains which in only six more months of payments would be able to go home with us.'

That's gold!

Never happened though. As Killarney would attest, the misogynist patriarch of the household would have spent that money on beer and hookers. Or maybe seat covers for the Kingswood.

My late mother never forgave Woolworths for rejecting her vouchers for a dinner set. She was silly enough to save them all up for a complete 6-setter (cups/saucers and dinner and bread plates), where the woolies powers that be assumed people would claim them as they came. She was within the claiming deadline but they just didn't have that much stock left.

See, told you I'm working class stock squeersy.

"Never happened though." True dinks, did so – the misogynist patriarch of the household, or Sir as we called him, being too busy working three jobs to provide for (then) four children under seven to know he wasn't supposed to be a teetotaller or own more than a BSA Bantam – or not have a sense of entitlement.

Still, I remember us all as being happy… It wasn't until we were teenagers that my parents learnt they were supposed to complain and whinge. To their credit, they learnt their lesson well and made up for lost time.

Middle age tempered them and by the time the last of my siblings moved into their own home my parents, putting on a brave face, pretended to be happy.

my understanding is that the party the vast majority of Australians want as Government was not at the talkfest in Brisbane. Most Australians are happy and that is why they despise a Government that lies, protects abusers of union money and turns border control into a joke. Very easy to bury ones head in the sand when surrounded by backslappers. The fact we don't want to become like Greece and Spain is why this wasteful Government is despised.

Me, I've taken to complaining big time of late. After my return the the CSA's clutches it seems like I've got plenty to complain about.

R0bert

As Jon J said

"One reason Australians are concerned and fearful is because they are at the mercy of a government now recognised to be hopelessly incompetent and actively dangerous to the economy and its most significant contributors."

To that I would add that the media is relentless in its pursual of political conflict and in fact manufactures it if it does not exist, simply to keep the show going. Also, the public watch as our completely incompetent Government strangles the golden mining goose in the name of Labor Party ideology while claiming to be great economic managers. Everyone can see it is the miners who are making the Govt look good and are perplexed as the Treasurer speaks of rich miners as if they are taking money away from the community. Maybe he doesn't know where the money is coming from.

Well I'm not happy that we have a totally incompetent government.

I'm not happy that the feminisation of our education system is resulting in kids that can't add without a calculator.

I'm not happy that housing costs such ridiculous amounts of money. My first house cost just 2 years salary. It was not much of a house, but I was happy with it.

I am happy that our food is so cheap. It used to cost my folks about a third of their income. I can even shout myself a grain fed Angus stake now & then.

I am happy with my 3 cars. Even if they are quite old, I usually have one going.

I am happy that when I walk down the paddock, my old stallion comes when called, with a friendly nicker, even if he is just after a carrot.

I am happy that my kids are all doing well, even if one is into McMansions, that is after all her prerogative.

I am happy to wake up every morning, even if it does hurt a bit sometimes. It means I'm a winner. I made it past the three score & ten.

What the hell more could I want.

Interesting to think we can make money of the ageing of Asia ? I am just waiting until 50 (not that many more years) to allow me to retire with no Visa hassles to Thailand, on a retirement visa. I am currently in Cambodia doing some volunteer work in the interim.

Personally I think that boat has sailed, Australia is way to xenophobic (they took my grandma's old age place from 'er darn 'em !) to allow that to happen and countries like Thailand are taking the middle income retirees by the "boat load". The very ones we could make money off (I know, a horrible thought for some, making money, providing jobs etc) as a business concern in Aus: building retirement villages and communities, providing them with entertainment and affordable medical care, easy retirement visa's etc (see how we fall down on just about all of those fronts ?) If Thailand ever needs more semi-skilled and unskilled workers (janitors, labourers, groundsmen, cleaners), they will just open the gates to the Burmese and Cambodians, for example. We'll drown 'em off the coast instead :)

Unless you think its flogging them walking sticks etc in which case, good luck with that, they are ahead of us in the manufacturing stakes.

40 years in construction -blue collar- work taught me clearly that those who most desperately need to go on strike for better pay/conditions, simply can't afford to do so.
Strikes in the 70's and 80's were always led by the highest paid; miners and wharfies. They could easily afford a week or 2 off.
I don't think it's the low income earners who are doing all the whinging today, either. I confess, I've been in that category for the past couple of years (business only ticking along), and I'm constantly surprised at how affordable the basics are.
Of course, things are wearing out, and very soon will need to be replaced. In that, I feel a bit like the USA.
It's -as always- the middle class that's making all the noise, and what they're cranky about is the widening gap.
The realisation that their aspirations become more expensive, and less achievable, every year.
It's all (always) about the GAP, stupid.
As middle class incomes fall, and upper class incomes rise, tempers flare.
People who have never experienced wealth find it much easier to do without than people who witnessed their parents' relative affluence and wonder why they can't have as much.
The kids buying Mcmansions today weren't around to witness their parents' humble beginnings. They see the house after the improvements, with the curtains and the carpets, and that's where they want to start.
And when we see our elected representatives giving themselves the wealth we aspire to as they achieve little or nothing, while in the same breath telling us that rises must be linked to productivity...
I'm reasonably happy with my lot. Like Hasbeen, I'm surviving.
But it still irks me that people with so much, still want more.
How much is enough?

Sorry, Houellebecq, if I sounded a tad arrogant above. I did say 'once you "perceive" something from the outside, it's hard going back in'--i.e. I don't see myself as actually occupying some transcendental realm, God-like. But I do have some hard-won philosophical perspective, and it does frustrate me that the vast majority adapt their opinions to their gendered, lifestyle or other interests and them pass them off as somehow valid in themselves.
I think a sort of sense of entitlement does pervade, but it's not generally the sense of entitlement Everald criticises, I think it's more that people take the benefits of living in Oz for granted, especially the younger generation. I'm also old enough to remember my parents dragging furniture and old carpet off the tip, my mother being menaced by the milkman for an $80-something bill--which was big money back in the 70's, and me being forced to wear my father's prison issue shoes (he was a screw) to school etc.
What I condemn is the sense of entitlement the fat cats gloat over; their the worst when it comes to myopic self-interest. Blokes like Everald and his mates, sitting comfortably on their hoards, spinning fables about themselves and condemning the sense of entitlement to things they can afford to despise.
What about the sense of entitlement of the rich. Why are they entitled to live in the clouds?

The sense of entitlement of anyone, rich or not, seems worse when they don't think about why they think the way they do, Squeers. At its extreme we see psychotics living in castles they've built in the air and they are happy – so long as they've got neurotics working to pay for them and obsessive compulsives doing the cleaning.

If someone is occupied with scratching subsistence survival they don't usually have the luxury of the time to think they have the right to be happier. The opposite to those who don't realise how good they've got it, is that they don't genuinely realise how bad it could be.

Philosophical perspectives are useful but keep reminding yourself – as someone said – 'You're not the first to think, that everything has been thought before.'

But since that was Houellebecq it might be worth examining it for hidden meaning.

I like that, WmTrevor; people should think "about why they think the way they do"--and that certainly applies to me too!
And of course we all live in habiliments of one kind or another, it's just a matter of whether we've used flying buttresses in the construction and installed dungeons and servants' quarters.
This is also worth pondering: "Philosophical perspectives are useful but keep reminding yourself 'You're not the first to think, [and?] that everything has been thought before.'
Perhaps that was Houellebecq's meaning--I don't have time to check and he's a slippery character, as you imply, who seems to delight in sophistries.
As do I! Though I try to abstain.
And, upon reflection, I am the first to think from my unique perspective (personal, cultural, political, historical); it's not so much that everything's been thought before, as what's been thought before conditions our thinking and deadens originality.
This is the problem with the deconstructionists, who've made a fetish of textual reality, a discipline out of defeatism and pessimism of the intellect. Thus today, to quote Brecht, "To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated".

I spent a sizeable chunk of the weekend watching The Slap again. If you take that show to be representative of Australians and the way they live, then yes I think you could easily be led to say that we are a) miserable, b) have a sense of entitlement, c) xenophobic, in the sense of being suspicious of anyone except Me, and d) live in a place entirely devoid of a sense of community and shared culture, and it's only the tortured relationship we have with our stuff, and our fragile sense of existential angst in the face of the vast meaninglessness of it all, that engenders any sense of purpose in our existence.

And OK, if you live in Melbourne, as the show's characters do, then that's quite possibly a good summation of your life.

But here it just looks like we are seeing another case of someone who puts too much store in economic matters, and who is forgetting that life consists of more; that consumption facilitates your existence, and not the other way around.

My sense is that this is the mistake that people in politics and other areas of public life have been making since... well, since the departure of Paul Keating we just don't seem to talk about anything interesting any more, except how to make things better - which is difficult when we don't know what "good" is in the first place.

But people are so wonderfully adaptable that they can believe in anything they can observe might possibly be true, as long as it suits them. So ok, I can see where the author of this article is coming from, but unless it is meant as a think-piece then I'd say it's pretty thoughtless.

Why shouldn't we be unhappy? We live in the richest land on earth, with the most prosperous and still functioning economy? Yet, the rich just seem to get richer, the poor get comparatively poorer, the former middle class is being progressively absorbed into the ranks or the poor, or those who live below the poverty line; thanks to things like exponentially expanding gap between the haves and the progressively expanding have nots!
Our riches are being plundered by foreign interests, who used nothing more substantial than a letter of credit of debt funded equity, which by the way, we eventually pay for in full and then some, to extract from us, our national wealth and or treasure.
We are unhappy because the Greens will not settle for practical pragmatism, but want perfection, even if that perfection reduces us to little more that a stone age agrarian society.
We need to get rid of this tail that wags the dog eco-fascist element, while we still can, even if that means formerly unthinkable alliances.
Alliances, that finally allow practical pragmatism to prevail, and unlock the wealth of low carbon energy resources the greens are currently trying to lock away, under the guise of environmentalism.
We need to take the possibility of another Great Depression very seriously, and stop shooting ourselves in the economic foot.
Instead of listening to endless green negativity, we need to crack on with growing the economy, and those things we already have to capture and store carbon, like farmed algae.
Of course we are dissatisfied, with endlessly repeated more of the same old, same old BS and power struggles, when everything that is happening around us, demands the sort of progress, only ever available, through genuine bipartisan cooperation and consensus!
Rhrosty.

The lack of Net-Free-Energy derivitives (Coal's pollutants disqualify it) and the media sexualisation and subsequent overpopulation of a finite & desertified Australia ensure it will become a 3rd world nation within a generation under a rich-poor divivde that sets 1% of the nation against the other 99%. Glen Stevens must know this.

Meanwhile closer to home we have fools like Ken Henry and Julie Bishop who want increased economic growth by more immigration. This causing lower living standards for 99% but bigger net profits for their proposed, schemes. These schemes of course under scrutiny, turn out to be PONZI schemes, Pyramids of social classes replacing what used to be DEMOCRACY.

Hell if low intellect, low breed politicians and their fiscal apparatchiks can screw us over in ILLEGAL Ponzi schemes at will under phony electoral mandates why is Glen Stevens rebuking us about our attitudes to entitlements? Clearly we have no entitlements at all:

Jobs are offshored,
Education is trumped by immigration of no-frills skills,
Police are mistreated, understaffed and likely to be privatised,
Hospitals Are too busy treating sick immigrants (visit any emergency dept and hear the foreign languages)
Aged care is carefully sequestered to private companies who use drugs and poisoned carpet with underfloor heating that reduces lifespan. There will never be an ageing problem only a windfall surplus from aged care in future budgets. The aged dilemma will prove to be Ponzi's best trick for increasing immigration to continue building the base of the Australiana Pyramid scheme.

Seguay to song:

I wanna make a POnzi scheme
Just like Barry OFarrell
I wanna Build a Ponzi city like Sydney
Paid for by NSW
I wanna make Ponzi castles
And treat all of its citizens
To big fat TAX, polluted air
Just like dirty rascals.
Da Dat Dah Da dah dah dah!