After recently doorknocking in an electorate in southern lutruwita/Tasmania, health sociologist Dr Susan Banks shares some suggestions for how policymakers might better address the needs of communities who too often miss out – even in the midst of an election cash splash.
Susan Banks writes:
We know that many Australians are struggling, burdened by the twin assaults of a cost-of-living crisis, and increasingly unaffordable or unavailable housing. In this environment, the domestic adoption by the Coalition and Clive Palmer of Trump-like policies is already happening.
We need to understand why.
Recently, I’ve been doorknocking for the Greens in an ALP-held electorate in southern lutruwita/Tasmania.
I followed George Monbiot’s advice about what to do in the face of despair about the state of the world: get involved with other people – join something, garden together, create “democratised neighbourhoods” and stronger civil society.
Doorknocking means spending a few hours on a Saturday afternoon knocking on doors and asking people what matters to them in the forthcoming election.
It’s daunting. Often no-one answers. Perhaps they’ve sussed who we are and want nothing to do with us. Or it’s a quick and definite “No thank you”.
Sometimes we have a longer conversation about health, or housing, fish farms and stadiums, making ends meet, or the state of the roads. In all of these interactions, there is hope – a normalising of calm and reasonable conversations about what matters to people, and how we might make this a better place.
Even the “no thank you” responses feel like a form of engagement.
When hope is missing
But in some places, and in some conversations, hope is missing.
I’ve now heard many versions of “They’re all the same” about the choice of parties, “I just don’t bother to vote. It doesn’t make any difference”, and “I reckon that American guy [Tucker Carlson] is right – billionaires should be running things”.
These have been disheartening and, for me, hope-free exchanges.
So, I’ve been trying to understand why these Australians, in the land of the legendary egalitarian Fair Go, feel so disinterested, or think a billionaire has something to offer them.
Carlson’s endorsement of Clive Palmer (and his Trumpet of Patriots party) is on the basis that “you have to have people with power on your side”. He’s right.
It’s pretty clear that the people I’ve been talking with, who feel disengaged, hopeless or angry, don’t have anyone on their side.
The places where they live are far from the centre, from the urban, the leafy, or the tidy suburbs. Amenities are sparse. There might be a bus in the morning and another in the late afternoon.
The public parks are a landscape of brown stubbled ground, misshapen trees, and bung play equipment (and there is nowhere for quiet, shady sitting, were someone to want that). The road-verge cupboards intended to house street libraries or community larders are battered, with doors that no longer close; one held a couple of scrunched-up chip packets and some dry leaves.
The nearest shop is out of reach except by car: for those who use wheelchairs or walkers, the journey over lumpy or boggy footpaths is too risky, and the big supermarkets have both been positioned on the other side of town, to catch the trade of the wealthy, commuting to their beachside homes.
This feels like a place of banishment. No-one who could make it hospitable cares to.
Governments will argue, though, that they’ve poured money into such communities: launching multiple projects over decades, intended to ‘fix’ whatever ails them.
I’ve been part of such apparently well-meaning work. Outsiders come in, on nice pay packets, to coddle communities into ‘doing better’: eating more vegetables, getting more exercise, growing their own food.
At the end of the day, though, everyone still goes home to what really ails them – the unalleviated poverty, poor quality (public) housing, neglected and unsafe streets and parks, and the knowledge that they are mistrusted by those with power.
Why else would people keep coming and telling them how to live?
Beyond the election cash splash
At this federal election, there have been multiple promises of measures that appear to lower costs: a $1,000 tax deduction from one, and a $1,200 offset from another, lollies like a five percent house deposit plan or mortgage deductions, cuts to petrol excise and slackened vehicle efficiency standards.
But tax deductions only benefit (if they do) people in work, and mortgage lollies are only for those with sufficient income to be able to save.
Tax cuts are welcomed by many employed people, but they equate with cuts to services, harming the already poor immediately, and the rest more slowly.
Where are the systemic measures to bring people out of poverty, including the one in six children who live in poverty in Australia?
Where is the strengthening and protection of rights – to adequate income, affordable housing and healthcare, all of which build inclusion and reduce the prevalence of chronic illnesses (for example, diabetes, kidney disease, lung and heart conditions, including – in some poor communities – rheumatic heart disease) that are over-represented in disadvantaged communities?
And why do the major parties continue to use the immoral nonsense of mutual obligation to keep JobSeeker payments so low?
If you are living in or close to poverty, exiled from services in a place that is neglected and alienating, people with power are clearly not on your side.
Instead, they are shunning those who favour Palmer, Hanson and Trump as incompetent, stupid, and disposable (or, to quote Hillary Clinton, “deplorable”).
The snobbish, disgusted and oblivious privilege on display contributes nothing to understanding what’s happening and instead cements the division.
As the American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild said, when writing about the rise of Trump: “Our polarisation, and the increasing reality that we simply don’t know each other, makes it too easy to settle for dislike and contempt.”
This suggests that – instead of responding with distaste, further individualising, dog-whistles and mockery – policy at all levels needs to demonstrably address the needs of people who are deserving of consideration and social equality.
Ensuring income support mechanisms provide enough to cover basic needs would be a start, as would addressing supermarket price gouging.
Show communities they matter by attending to amenities and providing long-term funding for those local projects that have been shown to support better health and connection (for example, urban agriculture nature-based solutions like Brisbane’s road verge gardens, the Scrubby Hill social enterprise garden, and gardens at Neighbourhood Houses).
Such programs are also places where policy makers might work alongside community, getting to know one another.
At the same time, perhaps those with energy and time can ask more questions, follow Monbiot’s advice to democratise neighbourhoods, “set up support networks, help those who are struggling”, and press for greater equity, and stronger civil society.
Otherwise, the drift towards concentration of power in the elite, polarisation and alienation can only continue.
Author details
Dr Susan Banks works as a health sociologist in lutruwita/ Tasmania. Her university and community research focuses on marginalised groups, the sociology of emotions, recognition theory and social policy.
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