Australian Society: What Is Happening?

This book is written at a critical moment for Australian society. The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented social and economic issues, both in terms of the severity and extent of the impacts felt across the nation. People have lost loved ones to the virus, while many continue to experience lasting health impacts of Long Covid. The economic consequences of the pandemic are still reverberating throughout our society. Many businesses closed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, as lockdowns, which were essential for public health, created seismic issues for small to medium sized firms (Molloy et al., 2021). Initially, hundreds of thousands of people lost their employment, and research suggests that many will experience scarring effects as a result of economic hardship and unemployment throughout this time (Foster, 2020; Risse & Jackson, 2021). The lasting effects of family breakdowns and the rise in family and domestic violence and abuse (Morley et al., 2021), as well as the social exclusion of people with disabilities during the pandemic (Goggin & Ellis, 2020), are yet to be fully comprehended. There have been increased instances of mental ill-health among young people which have continued beyond the school closures and lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 (Grove et al., 2023). Waiting times to see child psychologists are extremely lengthy, meaning that many young people are not able to receive the critical support that they need (Mulraney et al., 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic contributed to social isolation among older populations, while increased instances of homelessness have also been a major social consequence of the pandemic (Neves et al., 2023; Warren, 2023). In addition, social work and human services agencies, which provide critical support for marginalised population groups, have faced unprecedented demand; and workforce burnout, turnover and employment shortages are a continuing consequence of Covid-19 (Haralambous et al., 2024; O’Keeffe et al., 2023). These issues are among countless social and economic impacts which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

As these impacts illustrate, the pandemic has both highlighted and contributed to widening social and economic inequalities within Australia. As with many issues that have emerged in the public consciousness during this time, the structural inequalities contributing to poverty, racism, unemployment and gender-based violence were present long before the pandemic (Bower et al., 2023; Grant et al., 2023; Gray et al., 2023; Green et al., 2023). While the pandemic drew attention to these social issues and undoubtedly impacted everyone to some degree, the deepest financial and social implications were experienced by those sections of the population who already experienced marginalisation. Further, the Liberal National Coalition Governments’ response to the pandemic sought to favour capital and business profitability, in the misplaced belief that this would ultimately benefit the broader population (O’Keeffe & Papadopoulos, 2021). This policy approach has shifted power towards capital, deepening the structural inequalities that create issues like food insecurity, housing unaffordability and precarious work. Now, nearly five years into the pandemic, many people across Australia are experiencing cost of living pressures, and are unable to afford basic necessities such as food, heating and housing costs. Poverty has become entrenched in some places and for some populations, who have been socially excluded by decades of policy making that has preferenced the more privileged sections of society (Sydes & Wickes, 2021). This is contributing to a society that is segregated by class, race and ethnicity, with spatial inequalities between (and within) suburbs and regions accelerating to an alarming degree.

While governments and policy makers projected a sense of understanding and empathy during the pandemic, for people who were ‘doing it tough, through no fault of their own’, as then Treasurer Josh Frydenberg repeated throughout the pandemic (O’Keeffe et al., 2022), this empathy has not translated into policy making and political discourse. Unemployment and underemployment remain high. Yet rhetoric around welfare and joblessness has increasingly framed people not in paid work as a burden on society (see Chapter 7, in this book). Even during the pandemic, the Liberal National Coalition implored people who were out of paid work to undertake exploitative work such as fruit picking (Papadopoulos & O’Keeffe, 2023). While labour shortages in these fields highlighted the reliance of many Australian industries on migrant workers, this discourse also reproduced constructs of work and citizenship that framed unemployment as a burden on Australian society.

Alongside the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis has accelerated to an alarming degree, with devastating consequences for Australian people, wildlife and environments since the beginning of the decade (Godden et al., 2022; Verlie, 2022; Verlie & Blom, 2022). Disastrous bushfires burned huge sections of habitat in late 2019 and early 2020. Repeated La Niña weather systems have resulted in many regions experiencing large-scale flooding in 2021 and 2022. Many people in regional and urban areas have lost homes and livelihoods, with some locations on the verge of being uninsurable. While the climate crisis is very much of the present, the extent of the impacts has created grave fears for many as to what the future may hold. This has led to an increase in climate anxiety and uncertainty, among young people (Mayes & Holdsworth, 2020; Verlie & Blom, 2022). This also raises major concerns about biodiversity loss and the potential for food systems to be greatly disrupted by extreme climatic conditions (Lawrence et al., 2013; Verlie, 2022).

Clearly, the climate crisis is an urgent social, environmental and economic issue. However, the inaction of Australian governments to develop a meaningful response has illustrated the ongoing strength of the fossil fuel industry in Australia (Porter et al., 2020). Further, this highlights the power of political rhetoric that links economic prosperity and quality of life in Australia, with industries and activities that contribute to climate change (see Chapter 4 in this book). The widespread climate protests across Australia in the late 2010s, driven by young people, highlighted public support for climate action. However, federal and state governments across Australia have instead sought to increase penalties for climate activism that causes disruption (see Chapter 12 in this book).

First Nations peoples in Australia continue to fight against the ongoing impacts of colonisation and dispossession. Young First Nations people continue to be incarcerated at very high rates relative to the wider population (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2022). Police violence towards First Nations people and deaths in custody remain a major social issue, which is underpinned by institutional racism (McCulloch, 2021; O’Brien, 2021). First Nations people are also overrepresented in out of home care, often being separated from families and siblings (Creamer et al., 2022). The potential for the First Nations Voice to Parliament, a key election promise of the Federal Labor Government, offered a promising step towards reconciliation. In October 2023, the nation voted on a referendum for including a Voice to Parliament in the Australian Constitution, which would provide First Nations peoples with constitutional recognition. However, a negative campaign against the Voice to Parliament, which was built on misinformation, contributed to this move being voted down by the public (see Chapter 2 in this book). Progress is being made in other areas. For example, the Yoorrook Justice Commission, enacted by the State Government of Victoria offers the potential for justice, recognition and a re-writing of history.

Gender-based violence and abuse, and discrimination, remain prevalent in homes, workplaces and educational institutions, with inadequacies of the justice system apparent in the inability to support victim/survivors (Foley & Cooper, 2021; Molnar, 2022). Further, gendered inequalities in terms of work, such as the persistent gender pay gap, continue to be underpinned by patriarchal constructs of work and family (Gray et al., 2023; Pennington & Stanford, 2020). Further, while the success of the marriage equality campaign in 2017 represented progress for LGBTQIA + communities in Australia, young transgender people still experience harassment and discrimination, and are at much greater risk of negative experiences of mental health and wellbeing (Strauss et al., 2020).

The political shift towards the right is notable in Australian politics. Exclusionary and discriminatory policies supporting offshore detention of asylum seekers for indeterminate periods of time reflect a hardening of attitudes and an absence of generosity. The emergence of Far Right organisations, particularly visible in anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests, is also significant socially and politically (Nilan & Gentles, 2024). Throughout this book, I analyse how dominant constructs of Australian identity and society, as well as the Australian national imaginary and values, have been reproduced as white, masculine and Christian, in ways that seek to reinforce a politics of belonging that legitimises racism and exclusion. This shift is founded on deep-lying settler-colonial anxiety and fear, which has contributed to a growing section of the Anglo-Saxon, the male population in Australia, to perceive themselves as downtrodden and excluded. While this perception clearly reflects the invisibility of white privilege in Australian society, it is also a highly dangerous perspective that perceives violence as a necessary step to ‘reclaim’ the power and privilege of whiteness.

This book aims to make a contribution in these areas by analysing how these shifts are made possible, how this reshapes power relations within society, what the impacts of these shifts are, and how people can resist these changes. Through this book, I aim to present an accessible account of these social issues, drawing together multidisciplinary research that can help respond to the questions highlighted above. I write this book from my own position as an academic in the Social Work and Human Services Cluster at RMIT University, where I teach and research in fields such as sociology, social work, human geography, political economy and youth studies. This book is not an exhaustive account of Australian society, and there are key issues which are not addressed. I have focused this work on areas where I feel I can make a contribution to the broader academic, policy and public debates around some of the key social issues impacting Australian society.

Positionality

As an educator and researcher, I approach topics such as neoliberalism, colonisation, national identity and Australian values, privilege and power, by critiquing the structures that I have benefitted from, as a white, English-speaking, cisgender male. While I did not attend a private school, and my family has come from distinctly working-class and migrant backgrounds, my parents were wealthy enough to own a home within the catchment area of a high performing public school in Adelaide. Growing up playing sport in suburban Adelaide, I never had to worry about being racially abused by opposing players or spectating parents. When I visited the many beaches that we frequented as children, I never had my right to belong in this space questioned. People have never asked me where I come from, and no one has ever told me to go back to where I came from. While we lived relatively frugally, as a child I never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. I never had my sense of inclusion subject to a national referendum, as in the case of the Voice to Parliament, or a plebiscite, as in the case of same-sex marriage. My sense of inclusion and belonging was always assumed and unquestioned.

Now, I am an academic in a privileged position within a settler-colonial institution, who contributes to the education of hundreds of university students each year. This is something that I wanted to do since my first year as a student at university, and people who helped me along the way assured me that this was possible. I benefitted from those relationships, from having a pathway to university, and from a level of financial stability that enabled me to make mistakes. I could feel included within the university classroom, and possessed the requisite social and cultural capital that helped me to succeed. I had friends and associates who had completed a PhD and could guide me through this. Unquestionably, my social and cultural background, gender and sexuality have conferred many privileges to me and allowed me to pursue work that I find meaningful. In this way, this book writes about social issues, such as racism and poverty, which I have not directly experienced. I do not aim to write about what the experience of racism and poverty is like, but I do aim to write about how power and privilege are used in Australia to reproduce these experiences. While this book is not an autoethnography on how I have experienced these privileges, it is a study of how power and privilege have worked in Australia to preference the dominant sections of Australian society.

Outline of the Book

This book provides critical analysis of different facets of Australian society while highlighting examples of resistance and possibilities for social change. This book is divided into four parts, ‘Identities and Imaginaries: Values, place and power in ‘mainstream’ Australia’; ‘Constructing a business-friendly society: Capital, labour and the welfare state’; ‘From public goods to private assets: Marketising education, health care and housing’; and ‘Capital, place, age and race: Challenging neoliberal hegemony’. The following section outlines these parts and the chapters that they contain.

Identities and Imaginaries: Values, Place and Power in ‘Mainstream’ Australia

This part explores the way that Australian identity and the national Australian imaginary have been constructed and reproduced in politics, media and art, to support a dominant, settler-colonial version of Australian-ness. Through these chapters, I analyse how this vision of Australia is used to confer privileges to ‘whiteness’, by claiming Australia as a white place, and centring whiteness within Australian values, histories, knowledges and ways of being. As I argue, this construct of Australia, including Australian life and Australian people, is used by some sections of the population to exclude those constructed as ‘the Other’. This occurs through the use of borders to restrict entry to Australia, the privileging of white identities, and policies that reinforce Australia’s relationship with Britain. Moreover, this chapter highlights how these constructs specifically frame Australia as a non-Indigenous space and portray First Nations peoples as a potential threat to white sovereignty. The colonisation of Australia is maintained through discourses and values systems that are built on the exploitation of unceded land. This exploitation is framed as being essential to the ‘Australian way of life’, yet is based on the erasure of First Nations peoples and cultures, and the continued dispossession evident in state and federal government support for the mining industry. This is reflective of the way that the Australian imaginary is moulded and shaped to fit neoliberal, settler-colonial objectives that are centred around the maintenance of white sovereignty.

Chapter 2, ‘Australian Identity: Multiculturalism, “Mainstream Australia” and White Fragility’, analyses the dominant, settler-colonial constructs of Australia as a British place, and Australian identity as connected to Britain. While these constructs reflect unequal power relations in Australian society that privilege whiteness, these dominant notions of Australian identity and society are also underpinned by anxiety. Symbols of Australian-ness, such as the national flag, the national anthem and Australia Day (Invasion Day) have all shown deference to Britain, reinforcing the construct of Australia as a settler-colonial nation with strong ties to Britain. National identity is conceptualised in political, media and policy discourses as white, Christian, English-speaking, heteronormative and masculine. This chapter shows how this interpretation of Australian-ness, and Australia, is reinforced through the reproduction of myths and figures such as ‘the digger’, the bushman, Bondi lifesaver and pioneer farmer. I analyse how this version of Australian identity is protected and reinforced by conservative politicians and media, to guard against the perceived threats of multiculturalism, immigration, and reconciliation with First Nations peoples. I draw on Hage’s (2000a, 2000b, 2002) concept of structural white paranoia, and the ‘white worrier’, to highlight how settler-colonial fear of the potential loss of privilege associated with whiteness motivates attempts to reproduce a white, Christian and English-speaking national identity. This chapter analyses the Australian Government’s development of the Australian Citizenship Test and the ‘Australian Values’ statement, to show how the British influence on Australian identity has been celebrated. Further, I highlight how divisive rhetoric from the campaign against a Voice to Parliament aimed to mobilise white fragility and anxiety, to reinscribe Australia as a settler-colonial nation.

Chapter 3, ‘The Beach and the Australian Imaginary’, builds on this analysis of national identity and the politicisation of ‘Australian Values’ and ordinariness. I focus this study on the beach and its position in the settler-colonial national imaginary. The beach is framed as a pivotal space in the Australian national imaginary. Mainstream film, television, literature and art in Australia have portrayed the beach as central to Australian life, culture and identity. Political and cultural discourses construct beaches as egalitarian spaces that are free and accessible to all people. These interpretations obscure the deep inequalities within Australian society, and how these inequalities are reproduced within, and around, beaches. As I show in this chapter, the beach is also frequently claimed as a settler-colonial place, where whiteness is privileged and normalised. This is evident in the construct of beaches as border spaces, where ethno-nationalist groups, individuals and policy making aim to protect territorial sovereignty. To illustrate this argument, the chapter draws on two approaches to boundary and border creation within beaches. First, the chapter studies examples such as the Cronulla Riots and ‘Reclaim the Beach’ protests, which construct beaches as white, settler-colonial spaces. Second, this chapter analyses immigration policy, developed by successive Australian governments, which construct the beach as a literal border in the name of national security. In each of these cases, violence is portrayed by the protagonists as necessary to protect the Australian identity and national imaginary.

Chapter 4, ‘“The Australian Way of life”: Neoliberal Hegemony, Colonisation and Territory’ continues to build on topics such as national identity and national imaginaries, to highlight how the dispossession of First Nations peoples from land and culture continues to be constructed by governments as necessary to maintenance of the settler-colonial, capitalist society. The settler-colonial state has dispossessed First Nations peoples from their land, and imposed a system of values, laws and regulations, knowledge and normalised an extractive relationship with the land. This system is constructed as a ‘common sense’. As I show, politicians and policy discourses frame economic growth, of which mining is a major contributor in Australia, as essential to ‘living standards’ and the Australian way of life. Thus, dispossession and extraction are legimitised through these constructs of the ‘good life’. This argument is tacitly used to maintain settler-colonial relations with the land, which is framed as logical, rational and necessary. Throughout this chapter, I analyse examples such as Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, the destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves by Rio Tinto, and the Victorian Governments’ felling of sacred Djab Wurrung Trees, to show how settler-colonial ways of managing and exploiting the land have subjugated First Nations peoples’ histories, cultures and knowledges, while prioritising exploitative and extractive approaches to the land in the name of ‘living standards’.

Constructing a Business-Friendly Society: Capital, Labour and the Welfare State

There is a significant body of research that analyses the neoliberalisation of Australian social and economic life, and how this has contributed to economic inequality, precarious work and the dismantling of the Australian welfare state. This part draws together much of the research, while building new lines of inquiry and analysis, to highlight how policy making in Australia has preferenced capital at the expense of labour. In these chapters, I show how rising inequality, and associated outcomes such as poverty, homelessness, exploitation of workers, unemployment. underemployment and penalties imposed on job seekers, are a direct consequence of this approach to policy making. In many instances, such as the Morrison Government’s claims that it was supporting ‘jobs growth’ throughout the Covid-19 crisis by increasing business profitability, political discourses frame social and economic restructuring as being in the best interests of the Australian people. However, decades of policy making that has been underpinned by neoliberal tenets of productivity, efficiency, and competition in free markets, has unquestionably created worsening experiences of poverty and exclusion across Australian society. This part analyses key ideological shifts, values and policies that have contributed to this change. The great fallacy of the discourses that have underpinned the neoliberalisation of Australian society, is that individuals experiencing poverty and joblessness, for example, are in this predicament because of their deficiencies. This is particularly evident in welfare policy and discourses, which frame job seekers as lacking the morals, behaviours and aspirations of those Australians who are in paid work. Throughout these chapters, I show how people of colour, older people, women, young people, First Nations peoples and migrants are frequently disadvantaged through this shift.

In Chapter 5, ‘Economic Inequality and the “Cost of Living” Crisis’, I analyse how cost of living is a consequence of decades of economic and social restructuring in Australia. The cost of living crisis is a major social and economic issue that impacts many Australians. Politicians frequently speak about this crisis in relation to the rapidly increasing prices for petrol, housing and groceries. However, political action is limited to minor financial supports that help people negotiate costs in the short term. This chapter analyses how the cost of living crisis, which is often portrayed as an issue for individual consumers, is connected to growing income and wealth inequality in Australia. Governments have been reluctant to address this deeper issue. Drawing on Australian-based research, I highlight how escalating economic inequality is a direct result of Australian government policy, which has contributed to the cost of living pressure for many. Successive governments have sought to reduce taxation and labour costs incurred by capital in Australia. Taxation reforms have a preference for high income earners and capital, and reforms to industrial relations have weakened labour power, facilitating the fragmentation of workforces and weakening income growth. Consequently, capital has captured a growing proportion of profit generated in Australia.

Within many Western societies, the experience of precarious work is associated with the increase in economic inequality (Kalleberg, 2008, 2012). Chapter 6, ‘The Evolution of Precarious Work in Australia: Flexibility, Fragmentation and Insecurity’, analyses the intensification of precarious work in Australia since the 1980s. Through this chapter, I identify four key shifts that have been facilitated by governments in Australia, that have sought to flexibilise and fragment labour, and transfer power to business. These shifts include industrial relations and labour market reform throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, which contributed to the proliferation of casual work and part time work. Next, I examine the emergence of the gig economy in the 2010s which has intensified the flexibilisation of work in Australia and contributed to the exploitation of vulnerable population groups including migrant workers and international students. Following this, I show the Australian Government’s policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic prioritised support for workers in more permanent positions, while using the crisis as a rationale for providing capital with greater flexibility. Finally, I show how automation and digitisation reflect a further shift towards precarity for many workers in a range of industries. Governments and industry lobby groups present these changes as essential for the nation’s economic prosperity, yet each of these shifts heighten risk and uncertainty for workers. Significantly, the evolving precariousness of work in Australia has disproportionately impacted workers who have experienced marginalisation and discrimination in other parts of their life.

The escalating experiences of precarity across Australian society are associated with the increasing numbers of people who are employed in casual or part time roles, high rates of underemployment and a lack of ‘good jobs’. While this shift increases economic inequality, it has also meant that more people are requiring welfare support. Chapter 7, ‘Poverty and Punishment in Australian Welfare Policy: From the Cashless Debit Card to ParentsNext’ shows how Australian governments have developed increasingly punitive and coercive approaches to welfare policy in the past 25 years. Punitive welfare policy, underpinned by concepts such as mutual obligation and welfare conditionality, obscures the structural changes that have created joblessness and underemployment. This policy shift has transferred blame and responsibility towards people who are not in paid work. This chapter highlights policy discourses that construct welfare as a burden to society and cost to taxpayers, while framing ‘welfare dependency’ as a consequence of poor choices, morals and behaviours. Conversely, participation in paid work is framed as a reflection of ‘good citizenship’, whereas policy discourses interpret unemployment and underemployment as a result of the apparent deficiencies of population groups who are most represented in these categories. This chapter highlights programs such as the Cashless debit card, Enhanced Income Management (eIM) and ParentsNext, as examples that coerce and penalise population groups that government perceives to be recalcitrant. I also show how the Australian Government’s Target Compliance Framework is implemented to track non-compliance with mutual obligations and justify penalties, which are disproportionately handed to people from the most marginalised backgrounds.

From Public Goods to Private Assets: Marketising Education, Health Care and Housing

This part builds on the analysis of neoliberalism in the previous chapters, by analysing Australian government attempts to commodify social goods such as education, and create markets for human rights such as housing and health care. In chapters exploring each of these examples, I show how marketisation in these vital areas restricts access to quality services and compounds issues of inequality and exclusion. However, rather than conceptualising disadvantage and inequality as a problem, policy discourses in each of these areas perceive these outcomes to be a natural consequence of peoples’ differing capacities, morals and values. Markets are therefore viewed as arbiters of fairness, where people are able to acquire high quality education, health care and housing, as a result of the privileges that they have earned. In many ways, this construct of markets and public goods rests on an assumption that Australia is an egalitarian society, where people have equality of opportunity. As Prime Minister Bob Hawke said in a television interview for the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988, ‘“There’s no hierarchy of class…everyone starts out as that guy or that girl, irrespective of where they have come from, is an Aussie and has got as much right as anyone else”. This conceptualisation of class in Australian society has contributed to a legitimisation of social and economic inequality, which is exacerbated through marketisation of education, health care and housing.

Within Australia, as is the case in many Western countries, education is framed as a key means for achieving social mobility. According to this logic, people engage with education as a form of human capital development, to make themselves fit with the needs and demands of labour markets. As Raewyn Connell (2013) has argued, education in Australia has been transformed into a commodity that people purchase, rather than a public good that is ostensibly available to all. The creation of markets for education, through the massification of tertiary education and via the significant growth in government funding for private primary and secondary schools, has resulted in unequal access to quality education across social and spatial borders throughout Australia.

Chapter 8, ‘Uneven playing fields: Australian Education and the Commodification of Opportunity’, studies the commodification and marketisation of education. Through this analysis, I suggest that the concept of opportunity itself becomes a consumable that people purchase for their children, by investing in private education. In Australian education policy and discourse, this privilege is assumed to be a ‘right’ that parents have supposedly earned through their own hard work and entrepreneurialism. This reflects the presumption that opportunity is relatively equal, and success and achievement are the results of merit. Drawing on a critique of merit and the frequently misused concept of the ‘meritocracy’, this chapter analyses the reproduction of arguments claiming Australia to be a place of equal opportunities. I highlight how the supposed ‘level playing field’ is anything but level for Australian students. In many ways, the reproduction of the myth of the meritocratic society in Australia conceals the social and financial inequalities that shape opportunities in education. This chapter proposes epistemological equity, both-ways education, and First Nations educational sovereignty as related pathways for decolonisation, and redressing the injustices of the ‘meritocracy’.

Chapter 9, ‘Healthy Markets or Health Equity?: Neoliberalism and the Rationing of Health Care in Australia’ analyses the shift towards privatised health care and health insurance in Australia, which has contributed to widening health inequalities. The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly illustrated the deep inequalities that exist in many wealthy Western societies in relation to health. While public messages have espoused community values and togetherness, the lack of timely access to affordable health care is a significant issue that has affected people from marginalised communities. This chapter traces the privatisation of the health sector in Australia, including health insurance, health care and the shift towards private ownership and management of hospitals, to highlight how access to quality and affordable health care has been rationalised. Through commodifying health care, successive Australian governments have contributed to health inequality, within a deeper experience of economic inequality, housing insecurity, precariousness of work, unemployment and underemployment. These social determinants of health which are directly associated with rising inequalities, highlight the need for systemic, structural change that is underpinned by a health equity approach in Australian policy making.

Housing affordability is a major social issue in Australia. The cost of housing and rental accommodation has increased substantially in recent years, facilitated by government policy which has preferenced home ownership and accelerated the growth of housing markets. Alongside this shift, governments have increasingly withdrawn support for public housing. This is a key driver of housing insecurity in Australia. Chapter 10 ‘Capitalising on the Housing Crisis: Territorial Stigmatisation, Urban Renewal and Displacement’ shows how governments have facilitated the sale and demolition of public housing by constructing these buildings as ‘problem spaces’, that are inhabited by ‘problem communities’. This discourse is reproduced in sensationalist media reporting that frames public housing towers as derelict, lawless spaces that support crime, drug use and sex work. The reproduction of these stigmatising discourses of people and place is integral to ‘urban renewal’ programs which promise to demolish these spaces, eradicate social problems and create a gentrified space that generates revenue for the government. Renewal programs, and measures such as ‘social mix’ housing, resemble a form of class warfare that governments and institutions such as the media have waged against public housing residents. In 2023, the Victorian state government announced plans to demolish 44 public housing towers, leading to the potential displacement of up to 10,000 public housing residents and their communities. This continues a major trend in housing policy within Australia, whereby public housing on public land is effectively made available to private housing developers. Consequently, some of the most marginalised members of society are displaced and disconnected from the diverse communities that they belong to. I highlight examples of communities in public housing who are resisting these discourses and policy measures, by reframing the discourse around public housing and its residents.

Capital, Place, Age and Race: Challenging Neoliberal Hegemony

In this final part, I analyse the ways that neoliberal hegemony is maintained and reproduced in policy making, institutions and place, in ways that reinforce ownership and exploitation of, and exclusion from, Australian places. I highlight the development and use of technologies and regulation that prioritise capital accumulation. This is evident in the discursive framing of Digital Agriculture as a means for enhancing productive use of farmland, and in the use of regulations and laws to criminalise protest that disrupts capital accumulation. In addition, I show how this settler-colonial hegemony is maintained in numerous spaces within Australian society, such as schools, media and through policing strategies, to position African Australian people as ‘the Other’. This is a further example of how power imbalances within places are operationalised to reproduce the dominance of a settler-colonial Australian identity. These chapters highlight the evolution of this interpretation of the Australian imaginary, as being operationalised in different ways to maintain neoliberal hegemony within Australian places. In these chapters I show how people and communities are, and can, resist these conceptualisations of place, to resist this dominant imaginary and create a more equitable and inclusive society.

In Chapter 11, ‘The Promise and Peril of Digital Agriculture: “Unleashing” the Value of Natural Capital?’, I analyse policy discourses produced by government departments and authorities, corporations and lobby groups, to show how digital agriculture is constructed as an unavoidable, essential development to support global food security and improve Australia’s agricultural competitiveness. As I show, the proliferation of digital agriculture, through the use of sensors, algorithms and Big Data, has the potential to fundamentally reshape farmers’ relationship to land and their capacity to make on-farm decisions. These discourses construct farm land as natural capital. Digital agriculture is claimed to ‘unlock’ and ‘unleash’ the economic value that this capital holds, by enhancing its productive use through decisions informed by data. Through this discourse, technological knowledge and data usurp farmers’ knowledge of their land and practice, which is framed as guesswork. In doing so, this shifts decision making responsibility towards owners of the technology. The land is re-inscribed as something that can be known and acted on through technology and the data it creates. However, farmers’ limited uptake of technology is framed as a key policy problem. As a result, governments have implemented policy measures to facilitate technology use, while political and corporate discourses draw on previous constructs of the ‘good farmer’ as one who uses technology, to infer that smart, modern approaches to farming are driven by technology. This intensifies the framing of land as an economic resource as part of the settler-colonial project in Australia.

In Chapter 12, ‘Rebellion, Civil Disobedience and Repression: Young People, Place and Protest in Australia’, I explore the privatisation and enclosure of public spaces and natural environments, through state-driven repression of young peoples’ protest. I draw on adult constructs of young people as political actors, who are either framed as impressionable ‘adults in the making’ that are vulnerable to indoctrination, or as a danger to be monitored, managed and suppressed (Bessant, 2020). Each of these constructs seek to marginalise young peoples’ political action. First, I show how school strikes, such as the 1998 anti-racism protests, and the 2019 School Strikes 4 Climate, were disparaged by political leaders and mainstream media as actions by young people who lack knowledge, and whose place is at school, not protests. I argue that through these actions, young people necessarily inserted themselves into the public debate on these issues, and made their political dissent visible in city spaces that are dominated by adults. Second, I highlight how (mostly) young activists use civil disobedience in Australia to challenge exploitative and extractive practices on land that has been claimed by the Crown. These actions resist the adult-imposed construct of these natural spaces as resources, assets and ‘natural capital’, by using their bodies to stop the economic exploitation of these places. Politicians and mainstream media have framed these activists as a danger to be policed, punished and penalised. Recently, state and federal governments have implemented a series of policies that criminalise protest, including civil disobedience, imposing heavy fines and potential prison sentences. This is a strong show of force, reflecting the authoritarian turn taken by neoliberal societies. However, this also highlights the weakening social licence for continued environmental exploitation at a time of climate crisis. Through their protests, young people are reconstructing cities and natural spaces as sites of resistance, by challenging the adult hegemonic control of space.

In Chapter 13, ‘Racism and Resistance: African Australian Challenges to Spatial Management Practices in Australian Institutions’, I draw on Ghassan Hage’s (2000b, 2002) concept of spatial management to analyse how racism and discrimination exists in Australian places and institutions. Spatial management is used by members of the dominant social and cultural group in Australian society, as a nationalist practice of exclusion to manage belonging. Throughout the chapter, I study practices of spatial management, perpetrated by different actors within different spaces, which have been targeted towards African Australian people. I highlight examples of exclusionary practices and discourses in schools, mainstream media and social media, policing strategies, policy making and within communities. These examples, including racial profiling conducted by Victoria Police, discriminatory media discourses that have criminalised young African Australian males, and policy making that has targeted people resettling in Australia from South Sudan, all involve the constructions of African Australian communities as a problematic population. Furthermore, policy makers, politicians, media commentators and people within schools draw on their privileged position in Australian society as part of the Anglo-Saxon ‘in group’, to portray African Australian people as ‘the Other’ who do not belong. Through these actions, policies and discourses, different actors in Australian society engage in forms of spatial management that seek to minimise and regulate the presence of African Australian people in Australian spaces, which are framed as ‘white spaces’. In relation to these examples, I highlight how African Australian people and communities challenge these constructs, by producing alternate narratives of their communities, resisting and subverting discriminatory stereotypes and engaging in legal action and advocacy to challenge institutional power.

What Does This Book Aim to Achieve?

This book analyses key aspects of Australian society, by unpacking the structures, discourses, ideas and values that contribute to inequality and exclusion in Australia. Through these chapters, I study the distribution of power in everyday activities, such as work, education and accessing health care, while analysing how the construct of everyday spaces, such as beaches, cities, schools and workplaces contribute to exclusion, un-belonging and repression. In these examples, I aim to understand how power is accrued and expressed, in ways that confer privileges to the dominant classes and cultures in Australian society. Further, through studying these places, practices, institutions and processes, I aim to identify key barriers to change, by considering whose interests are protected through the maintenance of the status quo. In addition, I aim to identify and analyse opportunities for change and resistance, and draw attention to the ways that change is happening. This book brings together sociology, geography and political economy research, as well as research that is centred around youth studies and the sociology of youth, and critical social work. This multidisciplinary approach reflects the ‘Australian Society in a Global Context’ course, on which this book is based, which is taught to students in undergraduate programs that include social work, psychology, youth work, urban and regional planning, environment and society and other degree programs within RMIT University.

This study aims to draw attention to contemporary issues in Australian society. However, in much of this work I aim to understand the present by understanding historical shifts that have occurred. In this way, the research for this book is underpinned by a series of key questions:

  • How is the experience of the present shaped by histories, discourses, power relations and ideas? Whose version of history is accepted as being the most accurate?

  • How does this shape how we make sense of the present?

  • Where is the space in our society for alternate stories and histories?

  • How has knowledge been constituted, and who determines what knowledge is?

  • What is the ‘good life’? How is the good life measured and achieved?

  • What are the mechanisms of society which distribute freedom, choice, opportunity, and which determine how social and economic resources are shared?

  • Is there a difference between what is fair, and what is just?

  • Why does economic inequality persist in a country where economic growth has been sustained for over three decades?

These are fundamental questions for people studying, living in and working in Australian society. I cannot guarantee that this book provides clear answers to all of these questions, however, they have guided my thinking in relation to this research, and my teaching in this course.

As I tell students that I teach, we need to be able to think about the things that happen around us, that impact us and others. In turn, how can we contribute towards creating a more equitable, more inclusive, kinder and more empathetic society? To become competent, critically thinking graduates, it is essential to understand how the social world is constituted. This is important in recognising how social structure impacts those who you will aim to benefit through your work, and critical if you want to your work to shape society in a meaningful way. If we don’t understand the drivers of inequality or exclusion, for example, then it means that we are less able to act upon this. If we are not able to identify and act on the sources of inequality or exclusion, our capacity to affect change is limited.