When Will Someone Call Bullshit?

Introduction

I suppose for my second post I had to take a second to think about why I feel like I need to write this (blog, vent, thoughts, stream-of-consciousness, meandering delusions - take your pick). Like many Australians, I’ve spent years scrolling past headlines, rolling my eyes at Question Time clips, and muttering ‘what the fuck’ under my breath at the latest political scandal. Most of the time it’s not even a scandal. Just another muttering from our supposed representative who seem so disconnected from the reality of what it’s like for a regular person.

Maybe it was watching our political class pat themselves on the back about “cost of living relief” while my grocery bill kept climbing. Maybe it was one too many times hearing about “better economic management” while watching friends get priced out of both the housing and rental markets. Or maybe it’s just the crushing weight of realizing that the system isn’t broken – it’s working exactly as designed.

Most of all it’s that I think about the future. I’m someone who has chosen not to have children and a huge part of that is this: we are robbing from future generations with the way we live, and many metrics show that even in the developed world, their standard of living WILL BE WORSE, than those living today. This, genuinely, just can’t be ok.

The Breaking Point

Let me acknowledge something upfront: I’m privileged. As a doctor, I earn a living wage and am largely insulated from many of the economic pressures crushing other Australians. I’m not personally struggling (although I have had periods in my life where things were pretty cooked) to make rent or choose between filling a prescription and buying groceries.

But that’s precisely why I feel compelled to write. Every day at work, I see the human cost of our failing systems. I watch elderly patients’ families break down in tears, stretched to breaking point trying to find affordable, quality care for their parents in an ailing aged care system, [whose problems we know about](https://www.royalcommission.gov.au/aged-care, but are basically putting band-aids on. These aren’t isolated incidents (and this is just one area) – they’re symptomatic of a broader systemic failure.

The reality is, you don’t need to be personally suffering to recognise injustice, and once you see it, the term “The Lucky Country” takes on another level of oxy-moronicism. In fact, maybe those of us who are comfortable have an even greater responsibility to speak up. Because while I’m okay, I’m watching:

• Families forced to choose between work and caring for elderly parents because aged care is either unaffordable or unavailable,
• Young medical colleagues who, despite their professional status, can’t even dream of buying a home in the communities they serve,
• Private health companies, WHO WE ARE BASICALLY FORCED TO SIGN UP WITH, continuing to provide junk policies that do not improve overall healthcare.

At some point, comfortable silence becomes complicity. And I’m done being complicit.

Beyond the Daily Outrage Cycle

Here’s what I’m not interested in: rehashing daily news cycles, playing into culture war narratives, or adding to the noise of hot takes and gotcha moments. There are enough voices doing that already.

I don’t want to talk about “It’s the economy stupid”, or how the government has my back with cost-of-living relief, or another net-zero target that may or may not be met (and even if it does it will be via creative accounting not meaningful emission reduction).

What I am interested in is examining the meta-patterns. The systems and structures that keep producing the same outcomes regardless of which party is in power. The economic frameworks that consistently favor the few over the many. The political machinery that turns democratic participation into theatrical performance.

Because here’s what I’ve realized: while we’re all arguing about whether Labor or Liberal is the “better economic manager,” we’re missing the bigger question of why our economic system needs to be “managed” in ways that consistently benefit the same small group of people (as evidence in the book Rigged.

The Real Conversation

I’m not trying to get into left and right (being Marxist-curious this is hard!). It’s not about Labor versus Liberal. It’s about looking at the game board itself rather than just the pieces being moved around it.

I want to explore:

• How economic policies shape political participation (and vice versa),
• The real impacts of policy decisions on everyday Australians,
• The mechanisms that keep power concentrated in the hands of the few,
• Ways we might actually change the system rather than just complaining about it,

The framework for our currently political system, although long-standing, has now been heavily impacted by the failure of neo-liberalism. We now live in a system where politics does not serve the constituency, it serves the market, which is ersatz-Capitalism at best or neo-feudalism if you’re particularly pessimistic about it.

Better Than Sad Face

I suppose at the end of the day, this is as much therapy as it is commentary. Writing helps me process the cognitive dissonance of being comfortable in a system that I can see is fundamentally broken. It helps me organise my thoughts about why, despite my relative privilege, I feel such deep, heavy and inexorable unease about the direction we’re heading.

The truth is, I’m tired of the helpless anger that builds up watching our institutions fail the people they’re meant to serve. I’m exhausted by the political theatre and duplicity that masquerades as governance.

Most of all, I’m increasingly exasperated by how we seem to collectively shrug our shoulders at problems that will define not just our future, but generations to come.

So I write. Not because I have all the answers – no single person does. Not because I think my voice is particularly special or important – it isn’t. I write because staying silent feels like acceptance.

I don’t think it’ll all be politics. There’s other nice stuff in the world. But if I’m really honest with myself this is what causes me the most distress. The most anger. The most frustration. And the thing that underlies all that? A deep, and profound feeling of helpless. Like watching the world’s slowest car crash and being able to do NOTHING about it.

If nothing else, at least I’ll have documented my thoughts as we continue this strange decline into whatever comes next (and in the meantime save a little on therapy). Because something tells me I am going to want to remember how we got there.

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Banner image by Black Forest Labs

Model: Flux Ultra v1.1

Prompt: An artistic, abstract drawing depicting the need to make some sense of a world that doesn’t always make sense. Feelings of frustration and desperation juxtaposed with hope.