What Sets Us Apart?

While the sharks circle, and the storm clouds gather on the horizon, can the good ship “the Australian Way” continue to deliver the ‘good life’ that Australians have come to expect, as the world’s ‘most successful multicultural nation’, sailing on the seas of stable representative democracy?

It has taken me many weeks to write in a way that responds to the rapidly changing global order: the horror of Israel’s war on the Palestinian People of Gaza and the West Bank (now extended to Iran), the unpredictable craziness and narcissistic transactionalism of President Trump in charge of the world’s largest military force and wealthiest economy, and the growing challenge of climate change and environmental degradation set against humanity’s intensifying short term consumerism. And coming up fast—the AI revolution being led by the rightwing libertarians of Silicon Valley. Here I set out to explore how the newly re-elected Albanese Labor Government is intending to navigate the waters of this new global order.

In his speech to the National Press Club on 10 June 2025, Prime Minister Albanese mapped out his ideas for a uniquely Australian Way of responding to the challenges of this increasingly unstable world, while committing to maintaining a viable system of representative democracy.

He stated that his government recognises that our democracy, our commitment to fair wages and conditions, universal Medicare and universal superannuation are things that bring us together as Australians, and set us apart from the world. And he went on to outline what this means for his next term of government.

The Regenesis Perspective

In my book, The Regenesis Journey (2023), I also explored this idea of a particularly Australian Way to grapple with the intersecting issues now challenging us: climate change and extreme weather events, environmental degradation, growing wealth inequality eating at the social fabric, and unresolved issues in the relationship between modern Australia and its Indigenous cultural foundations.

I noted that there is a growing realisation that some of the core Western assumptions about our place in the universe are up for grabs. We are beginning to recognise that we stand at a pivotal moment in Australia’s history. This means we need to find how to bring together the fundamental and important knowledge systems of our British inheritance and that of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage to shape a new story on behalf of our future generations that responds to the challenges ahead of us.

I put forward the idea of basing this new story on three pillars:

• Caring for Country—combining modern ideas about good environmental management with Indigenous ideas based on the relationist ethos of our human kinship relationship with the rest of the natural world through shared spiritual sentience
• Multiculturalism—celebrating difference in all its aspects: ethnicity, spiritual/religious ideas, gender identity, and creative cultural expression, within the all-embracing Australian value of an inclusive ‘fair go’ for all
• A Circular Wellbeing Economy—redesigning the industrial and agricultural production system on the principles of zero-waste circularity, able to deliver equitable wellbeing to all sections of society.

The Prime Minister’s vision did not identity these three pillars, but all can be found within his ideas of what constitutes the Australian Way.

—Caring for Country underpins the challenge of reconciling the ‘Nature Positive’ agenda of environmental management with ‘Closing the Gap’ strategies to address continuing social justice and disadvantage issues impacting First Nations peoples.

—Multiculturalism is endorsed as an Australian success story in managing immigration and ethnic diversity.

—The government’s agenda for improved economic resilience, with its ‘Future Made in Australia’ campaign, includes support for the work of Circular Australia in redesigning the production cycle to remove waste in the supply chain, while its increased investment in the care economy targets wellbeing rather than merely GDP as the marker of meeting the expectations of the electorate.

A Microcosm of Representative Democracy for the 21st Century

Against the all-pervasive backdrop of climate change and environmental degradation of large areas of the Earth, including oceans, Prime Minister Albanese puts forward a vision of Australia as a “microcosm for the world where all are respected and valued.”

He has located his idea of this uniquely Australian Way within the great project of representative democracy. Its roots in magna carta (1215) as the foundational document of British constitutional monarchy and rule of law, within the wider framework of constitutional representative democracy.

Our compulsory and preferential voting systems is part of what sets us apart within the world of representative democracies, who all share the clarion call of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ echoing from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the American War of Independence (1754-1763), expressed as the ‘will of the people’ as the test of political legitimacy.

In Australia it is the legal responsibility (not just the right) of all Australian citizens to register a vote in local, state and federal elections once they turn 18 years of age. And, allowing for no possibility of political gerrymandering, our system of electorate boundaries are determined by the independent Australian Electoral Commission, which also oversees all aspects of the elections, including the vote count, and where we are able to express our choice in a preferential voting system. For this reason, in the May 2025 election, Albanese’s Labor Party was able to win a thumping majority of 94 out of 150 seats in the House of Assembly, with a 55.28% majority with preferences, yet a primary vote of only 34.5% of the electorate.

The Democracy Challenge

However, as Jonathan White has emphasised in his book, In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea (2024), democracy as a political idea is intimately tied with the idea of progress: that the future is open, able to be shaped by human will and ideas in a continual project of self-correction and adjustment, which we call ‘reform’. But is this future still open, and is it still a collective enterprise?

He suggests two trends are undermining the belief in an open, collective future:

• The transformation of collective citizenship, invested in a shared sense of possible futures, into individualised consumers, with expectations of immediate satisfaction via personalised goods and services, at the swipe of a smart phone
• The climate change crisis in terms of the longer-term viability of human settlements in large areas of the Earth, and political instability ensuing from this.

Against this, the Albanese government must persuade Australians that there is a viable long-term future ahead. A future in which the very idea of progress and prosperity can be redefined to overcome the frustration drawn from people’s real experiences, particularly in grappling with the wealth squeeze on housing affordability and cost of living, measured against wages.

Albanese has directly rejected what he calls the corrosive proposition that politics and government and democratic institutions, including a free media, are incapable of meeting the demands of this moment. Notably, in his response to a question by a journalist from The Australian newspaper about whether ‘strategic competition’ in the Pacific meant Chinese aggression, he tartly suggested that Australian journalists needed to develop more intellectual sophistication.

He has noted that while populist right-wing forces, including vested interests in the business community and some media, along with those concerned about inaction on global warming and environmental repair, might seek to harvest frustration with democratic institutions and processes, he sees the responsibility of his Labor Government to disprove them.

For an overview of the democracy challenge, I highly recommend Jonathan White’s book referenced above. Part of his analysis includes the impact of the shift to managerialism and technocratic expertise in liberal democracies, which have robbed them of the capacity to emotionally engage the collective electorate at a time of increasing anxiety about the very possibility of a long term future. He says: “Rekindling a feel for the long run demands more than an act of imagination: it needs organised structures that the individual can identify with and that give credibility to future-regarding actions.”

The fate of democracy in the US is the sobering lesson of what happens when we fail to do that. This is the context in which the Albanese Government is laying out its second term agenda.

Agency and Engagement

Reasserting that long term change, as ‘progress’ is possible, Albanese’s government has placed the focus on delivery of services and policies that matter in people’s ordinary lives. He has emphasised that the ‘how’ of change matters because change that is imposed unilaterally by government rarely endures. Instead, he has declared, “the key to lasting change is reform that Australians own and understand; that clearly serve a national purpose and national interest. And, significantly, change that empowers and engages people with a sense of choice and agency. Change that generates its own momentum and builds its own staying power.”

In this sense, the growing problem of increasing wealth inequality characteristic of late capitalism, which is being seen to undermine US democracy, must be tamed through an Australian version of social liberalism, whereby the State steps up to tame the inherent oligarchic tendency of market capitalism to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few in key industry sectors, particularly finance and mining.

Thus, rejecting the neo-liberal agenda of relying on market forces, the Albanese government is continuing the idea of a social wage compact pioneered by the Hawke-Keating government, as central to the Australian Way. The value of wage income is bolstered via the state’s provision of universal health and education services: medicare-funded primary health care, public hospitals, subsidised critical medicines, education in the form of universal early childhood, primary and secondary education, reduced student debt in tertiary education, and free TAFE education to boost workforce skill capability and adaptation.

This commitment to social liberalism also informs the Government’s attitude to questions about productivity, which is shaping up as one of the core areas of political contestation in this term of the Albanese government.

The other aspect of the Australian Way, which sets us apart is the absence of populist anti-immigration sentiment that is prevalent in the US, UK, and Western Europe.

Attempts by the Coalition and other rightwing parties to politically weaponise immigration in the recent Australian elections, by linking it to the housing crisis, failed. Australians continue to show support for an immigration system that is free of ethnic bias, and is instead based on allocations determined by skills required in the labour market, family reunion, refugee settlement and temporary visas for international students and tourists. This, in turn is matched by the harsh active policing of borders to prevent unregulated asylum seeker settlement, through a regime of offshore detention—policies that sit uncomfortably with ideas of fairness and compassion towards suffering, especially should we place ourselves in their shoes.

Increasing numbers of refugees seeking settlement in Australia, fleeing the impact of climate change and military conflict, is likely to challenge this policy area.

Progress and Prosperity the Australian Way

What are our aspirations for a standard of living that provides for a ‘good life’ in this era of late modernity? Is it a continuation of intensifying individualised consumerism, data mining our emotions via algorithmic capitalism, or is it something else?

Particularly in the US, hitherto the world’s leading exemplar of the doctrine of progress and prosperity, under Trump’s America First agenda modernity’s thin veneer of liberal humanism has been peeled away to expose the stark reality of a culture of intense competitive individualism and focus on the accumulation of wealth and power.

The fossil fuel barons of yesteryear’s military-industrial complex have been superseded by the tech bros of Silicon Valley, shaping what Yanis Varoufakis warns marks the emergence of a new era of techno-feudalism, replacing that of free market capitalism.

Australians now find themselves caught between three forms of anxiety about the collective future of their future generations, as they ponder this promised Australian Way.

• The decline in human health arising from the nutritional impact of the industrialisation of the food industry and increasing stress and anxiety on the human nervous system arising from a culture of relentless short term competitive individualism, technological change and income precariousness
• The immediate threat of militarised conflict in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, particularly linked to Aukus and the alliance with an unstable US, as the prospect of intensifying wars in Europe, the Middle East and Africa increases
• The longer-term threat of climate change, extreme weather events and environmental degradation on living standards in large areas of Australia, coupled with the political challenge of managing climate refugees seeking to come to Australia.

How will the uniquely Australian Way reframe modernity’s idea of linear progress and prosperity to meet these challenges?

Relentless data-driven advertising, focused on emotional manipulation, has been matched by access to debt financing to reshape society from one of social collectives to one of anxious consumers, caught on the hamster wheel of debt: mortgages to secure the house of their dreams, and hire purchase and credit cards to secure the goods and travel experiences now regarded as standard fare for working people, and relentlessly promoted in media advertising.

Adding to this new culture of anxiety and excitement about possibilities, has been the end of secure lifetime jobs in favour of ‘progress’ via competing employment options and short-term contracts, together with the allure of the ‘freedom’ of self-employment, shaping a new precariat. Loyalty in the employee or employer to one another, or between the consumer and the service provider has been abandoned in favour of market competition between all players, which has penalised loyalty in favour of ‘switching’ to get the ‘best deal’.

In such a milieu the idea of collective progress towards prosperity has given way to an anxious competition for immediacy. This has been further enhanced by the impact of the growing threat of climate change to assumptions about any possibility at all about a viable future for our coming generations. All this is reflected in rising levels of mental health problems in Australia’s teenagers.

How do we overcome the results of post WWII individualised consumerism in redefining our sense of collective community and investment in a shared future in this age of anxiety?

Can we assert greater national sovereignty over the global technology platforms? Can we embrace greater circularity in meeting the challenge of bioregional sustainability of the continued viability of human life on planet Earth, in the face of climate change, environmental degradation and extensive species extinctions?

As we pivot way from unsustainable and spiritually alienating competitive consumerist individualism, what sort of ‘productivity’ to do we need to underpin a standard of living that ensures equitable access to a ‘good life’ in this age of climate change and rapid technological change via the AI revolution?

Productivity and the Australian Way

The Treasurer Jim Chalmers has declared that the Albanese government has a “responsibility to rebuild confidence in liberal democratic politics and economic institutions by lifting living standards for working people in particular, and an obligation to future generations to deliver a better standard of living than we enjoy today.” He maintains that put simply, the Australian economy is not productive enough.

At its most basic, productivity measures outputs divided by inputs – what we produce compared to the resources such as labour and capital used to produce it. However, large parts of the ‘non-market’ economy including the public service, health care and education are excluded from the official productivity figures. So, what are we actually talking about?

If we are to avoid the American Way of intensifying wealth inequality and social division that is threatening the viability of its democratic institutions and social fabric, we urgently need to articulate what we mean by ‘improved standards of living’, if this is not to be captured by aspirational consumerism at the mercy of algorithmic capitalism.

Surely ‘productivity’ in the 21st century cannot simply be an extension of ideas that drove us to this point of global environmental chaos and collapse through industrialised over-consumption driven by technological change and competitiveness, now on an intensifying global scale?  What are these ‘living standards’ that we seek to lift? What are the measures of a ‘good life’ in Australia for our generations to come?

At its very least, I suggest that expectations about ‘standard of living’ include housing, health, education, physical, financial and emotional safety and wellbeing, cultural expression and enrichment. And particularly in Australia’s proud multicultural context, where our social foundations rest on the world’s oldest continuing living culture, whose deep and foundational Law is encoded as tjukurrpa, Caring for Country, that this ‘standard of living’ includes a new spiritual relationship with the more-than-human world, transcending the Western culture of human exceptionalism.

I will explore further on this question of non-Indigenous Australian’s worldview beyond human exceptionalism in the next post. ‘The Australian Way, Part 2’.

It is no accident that Treasurer Chalmers began his talk on productivity and tax reform at the National Press Club on 18 June, with his tribute to a Queensland Aboriginal Elder, Uncle Bob Butler, as his personal friend in McKay who is facing difficult health issues. As well as paying respects to the customs, culture and Elders of the Ngunnawal people of the ACT, he was signalling, in a very personal way, that the commitment to Indigenous culture has not been abandoned, despite the failure of the 2023 Referendum to establish a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament.

It is now incorporated in the government’s demand that any improvement in productivity and tax reform must meet the aspirations of ordinary working people in a spirit of a national consensus to deliver a dynamic resilient economy to meet the very real challenges of a rapidly changing world order.

Australia’s Productivity Commission’s recipe for addressing productivity improvement has set the framework with five pillars of reform action:

• Creating a dynamic and resilient economy
• Building a skilled and adaptable workforce
• Harnessing data and digital technology
• Delivery quality care more efficiently
• Investing in cheaper, cleaner energy and the net zero transformation.

Again and again, with these five pillars in mind, Treasurer Chalmers returned to the theme of doing things ‘together’ through an open process at the proposed Productivity Round Table. He called for all sectors to engage with the very real trade-offs required to deliver the revenue and economic dynamism to fund the care economy, meet growing defence costs, and deal with growing intergenerational wealth inequality. Given that the Opposition Coalition, as a political party, is facing serious challenges in redefining its purpose and electoral appeal, the private sector now faces a Labor Government that is firmly in control, and a world order whereby old assumptions no longer hold.

Chalmers set out three demands:

1. That reforms be in the national, rather than sectoral interests
2. That they be budget neutral or even better, budget positive
3. That proposals be specific and practically deliverable.

Jericho, an Australian economist, has stepped up to the challenge of meeting Chalmer’s three criteria, with these tradeoff suggestions:

• Revenue: Abolish the diesel fuel rebate used in mining, transport and agricultural sectors
• Expenditure: Increase R&D funding (currently less than 0.4% of budget, compared to Japan’s 1.4%)
• Revenue: Remove the instant asset write-off for small business
• Revenue: Remove tax incentives for investment in residential property (capital gains discount and negative gearing)
• Revenue: Levy GST on private health insurance and private education fees
• Expenditure: Put dental into medicare.

The Australian Way in the Indo-Asia-Pacific

What does the productivity and resilience agenda look like when it comes to foreign policy and defence? In particular, although we find the government continuing to talk up the Aukus Agreement, behind the scenes one can easily detect moves are afoot to reconsider some of the assumptions on which it has been based, particularly when it comes to the nuclear submarine deal with the US and the UK.

Richard Hames takes this further, along the lines advocated by Paul Keating, asking us to consider a distinct pivot away from the traditional Western alliance with the UK and US, towards leveraging our commitment to multiculturalism as a strategic posture in the Asian Century, where “true security will come from webs of mutual understanding, from cultural translators who can navigate civilisational divides, and from recognising that our diversity isn’t a vulnerability to be managed but a strategic asset we’ve barely begun to utilise.”

He asks: “Imagine harnessing Australia’s unique ethno-cultural fabric as strategic infrastructure of bilingual professionals, working hand in glove with leading Aboriginal thinkers such as Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson chairing Track II diplomacy sessions with ASEAN counterparts, exposing the shallowness of great power posturing . . . while Vietnamese-Australian cybersecurity experts monitor disinformation flows in the Mekong Delta, their dual heritage allowing them to detect nuances invisible to monolingual analysts.”

Hames, with his longterm involvement in futurism, asks us to consider that “where ANZUS offers only the blunt instrument of military deterrence, our civilisational advantages provide something far more powerful: the capacity to prevent conflicts before they begin, to de-escalate tensions through cultural understanding, and to rebuild shattered regions without the baggage of colonial history.”

With the end of Pax Americana under President Trump, as Australia plots its path in the new multi-polar world order, old assumptions are rapidly being cast aside and new possibilities are being shaped, all the while against the ever-looming background of the inescapable impact of climate change—on energy systems, food production, patterns of human settlement, and sovereign risk.

A Test of Intellectual Sophistication

Rejecting the neo-liberal recipe for assertive militarised nationalism and rampant competitive individualism under market forces unrestrained by regulation and government oversight, Albanese has declared: “It is the mission and the measure of a Labor government to give the enduring ideals of fairness, aspiration and opportunity renewed and deeper meaning for more Australians. To deliver reforms that hold no one back and drive progress that leaves no-one behind.”

To meet this challenge the Albanese Government must take up the challenge that the Prime Minister delivered to The Australian journalist at the National Press Club on 10 June this year—the need to show more intellectual sophistication, not just in terms of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific, but in the reframing of our human relationship with the more-than-human world.

This sits in marked contrast with the fevered AI dreams of the tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley: that we stand on the precipice of crossing the silicon-carbon divide with the evolution of a new super intelligent digital species, and an ability to colonise the planets of our solar system. In the spirit of the mind-body split that pervades Western culture, they dream of finally escaping into a disembodied mindsphere from the supposed limitations of our physical carbon embodiment, when God banished us from the Garden of Eden.

For a radically different view of the world of carbon, I recommend you read Paul Hawken’s book, Carbon: The Book of Life (2025), which he dedicates to the traditional Guardians of the land upon which it was written, the people of the Coastal Miwok nations. Hawkens reminds us that carbon enables and informs every aspect of consciousness, a benign sovereign directing the expression of the living world.