Luck started running out for the ‘The Lucky Country’ when our gormless politicians took up “many of the pathologies of crowded,socially divided societies like the United Kingdom or the United States”, according to U.S academic, Joel Kotkin (city-journal.org). We have also embraced politics more associated with “Manhattan liberals” or “Silicon Valley oligarchs”, whereas we used to be “unpretentious” and dependent on resourced-based industries.

OECD statistics show that incomes of the Australian middle class have been dropping by over 1%, every decade, since the 1980s. The middle class, in size, ranks below the OECD average, and millennials are more likely to “sink into poverty” than they are in all other advanced nations except Greece and Latvia.

The ALP, once the party of the working class which helped people to attain ‘middle class’ status, is now the party of the professional class - “media, finance, public service”: all concentrated in the largely “family-free” inner cities.

The economic elites benefit from the “flow of natural resources” to Asia or by pushing climate-change ‘mitigation’ programs, but they have “little stake in domestic production that makes use of Australia’s mineral wealth.

There is a “gradual deindustrialization” of Australia.

Australia’s commitment to renewable energy “dwarfs” that of even the most committed green-leaning countries. We have, per capita, about 5 times as many renewable energy installations as the EU, the US and China; and ‘even’ 2.5 times more than “climate obsessed” Germany. Not to mention some of the highest energy costs in the world, up 130% between 2015 and 2017.

The author sees Morrison as having an opportunity to grab working class votes from Labor. Can’t agree with that one, Joel; the Coalition is only a little different from Labor, and their main claim to government is that they are not Labor.

There is much in this article that I cannot review in 350 words. It needs to be read in full. I’ll just end with a sentence from the final paragraph: “Today, many Australians face an uncharacteristically bleak future”. (‘The Once-Lucky Country’, Joel Kotkin)

the professional class - “media, finance, public service”: all concentrated in the largely “family-free” inner cities.
ttbn,
Yes, these "experts" have relentlessly undermined the Nation of the "fair go" & turned it into a gimme, gimme, gimme crowd. Now that the tide is turning against them they're panicking & resort to fake news tactics in the hope that the working class will be hood-winked again.
Something though tells me that their tricks are no longer working. They've hurt too many for too long !

Yeah. I don't think that the election result is as cut and dried as we might have thought any more. Politics is at an all time low.

If Labor gets knocked back we might be in with a chance to recover in every way.

I suppose those to whom a wharped mentality dictates to bring this Nation to its knees will vote Labor, the rest will vote conservative to prevent the change to worse ?

Most of the 16,424,248 people registered to vote will vote the same way that have every election. Only 5% of voters - the swingers - will change the government - or not. 3% of those eligible to have not bothered to register. I believe (there are no stats that I an aware of) the most voters will vote according to 'how to cards' of whoever they put first. Although I am a Conservative, I don't think the AC will get many votes at all. One Nation seems to be doing everything it can to lose support, and the Greens are similar. So, as always, it's Liberal or Labor. Given the information I posted elsewhere: that it is not politicians who are calling the tune anymore, the election cannot save Australia. Unlike the U.S, we can't even elect a decent leader who has the power to override the crap from his own party. Why do we bother! The 3% of Australians who don't register to vote might be on to something.