It's a complicated (and somewhat regional) story. But at the root of it is something our politicians have known for a long time, which has made (for example) co

It's a complicated (and somewhat regional) story. But at the root of it is something our politicians have known for a long time, which has made (for example) constitutional alterations almost impossible to achieve: Australians are very, very easy to scare when it comes to any change from the status quo. All a politician has to do is hit the 'this will affect your standard of living' riff (whether justified or not), repeat it endlessly, and a change is usually nixed. Why? It would require a book. Donald Horne's 'The Lucky Country' covered some of it. My (highly contestable) short version is that Australian culture is preturnaturally shallow. There is nothing that holds our society together other than material consumption. Citizens are somewhat aware of this, and are (perhaps subconsciously) terrified of what might happen if anything threatens our lazy prosperity. We have nothing to fall back on - no heroic national myths, no exceptionalism, no religion, no idealism, no common ground.