‘The Idea of Australia’. Why adopting a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude to Australian politics may be seductive, but it certainly isn’t guaranteed
Julianne Schultz in The Guardian Sun 12 Oct 2025
Australians are rightfully proud of their robust election process, yet surveys suggest very few fully understand it.
Beware of political leaders encouraging apathy, patting your hand and assuring you that the status quo is all hunky dory, encouraging a very Australian “she’ll be right” attitude, there’s nothing for you to do.
For decades conservative political leaders have fostered this in Australia.
There are now worrying signs that the Labor government is embracing the same approach – wrapping complex issues in painfully slow and cumbersome bureaucratic processes, closing options before they are fully ventilated, reducing access to information, banning protests and responding to constituents’ letters with AI-generated gobbledegook.
After the transformations and turbulence of the Whitlam years, Malcolm Fraser aimed to “get politics off the front page”.
Years later, after the Hawke and Keating governments oversaw the restructuring of the Australian economy and society, John Howard came to office saying it was time to stop the endless seminars on Australian identity and become “relaxed and comfortable”.
Now we risk drowning in a tsunami of information: another wave hits before we have registered the first. News is even more transient than it was in the days when it became tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper.
Easier to not worry, she’ll be right.
When Anthony Albanese reiterated his commitment not to have another referendum in his term in office, after his “splendid” lunch with King Charles at Balmoral Castle, he effectively closed the door on a final resolution to the debate about the sort of society Australians want in the 21st century.
Two years on it is clearer than ever that the conduct of the 2023 Indigenous voice to parliament referendum was damaging, brutal and divisive, based on encouraging ignorance and apathy – if you don’t know, vote no. Yet more than 6 million Australians found out and voted to begin righting an historic wrong.
Since then, a few tentative moves, but virtual silence. First Nations leaders – representatives of the bottom million – have not even been noticeably present in the big policy forums focused on the hot buttons of “cost of living” or “productivity” or “housing”. It’s comfier under the “white blanket of forgetfulness”.
In her snappy little book When Australia Became a Republic, Esther Anatolitis documents the long, slow history of political change; of the times when the powers-that-be resisted transformation until it was inevitable and normal – and no one really noticed.
As co-chair of the Australian Republican Movement, the change Anatolitis focuses on is tied to relations with Britain: the painful process of separation in the 19th century, the battles over the constitution both in the colonies and in negotiation with Britain, the appointment by the prime minister of an Australian governor general despite the objections of the palace, the dismissal, bicentenary, and Mabo and Tony Abbott’s ill-fated awarding of imperial honours.
It might work out in the end, but is near enough good enough? What is there to be afraid of in re-examining a 19th-century document?
Australians are rightly proud of their robust electoral processes: the secret ballot, compulsory voting, an independent Australian Electoral Commission. But survey after survey shows that they are woefully ignorant of political history and civics.
As the US president takes a sledgehammer to many established institutions and norms in his country, the first response of opponents is that “it’s against the constitution”. As of August, 384 legal challenges had been mounted against his executive orders, 130 upheld so far. (One exception has stood out: a legal resistance led by a patchwork coalition of lawyers, public interest groups, Democratic state attorneys general, and unions has frustrated Trump’s ambitions. Hundreds of attorneys and plaintiffs have stood up to him, feeding a steady assembly line of setbacks and judicial reprimands for a president who has systematically sought to break down limits on his own power.)
Australians are woefully ill-informed about the nation’s founding document yet still wrap it in aspic.
Blackfella Films tackles this in the new series The Idea of Australia, based on my book of the same name, broadcast on SBS this week.
The second episode focuses on the making of the nation and features a series of vox pops at the Federation Dome in Sydney’s Centennial Park.
The interviews were shot less than a year after the 2023 referendum, but even in this most affluent and highly educated part of Australia, those walking in the park that day knew little about the constitution or federation. “I don’t know much about that stuff,” one young man said suggesting “Captain Cook invaded Australia with a bunch of convicts at Port Botany”.
demands people accept responsibility locally and personally, and imagine and exercise their political agency
I don’t blame him or the others interviewed. Civic education in Australia is slapdash at best, and the incentives to not pay attention are seductive. This is why the community independents movement is such a threat to the status quo, as it demands people accept responsibility locally and personally, and imagine and exercise their political agency.
Conservative political leaders like to talk about rights and responsibilities. The primary responsibility of any citizen is to pay attention – only then can informed decisions be made and change occur. She may be right, but as we are witnessing in the US, there are no guarantees.
Julianne Schultz is the author of The Idea of Australia, and an executive producer of the SBS/Blackfella Films television series of the same name, hosted by Rachel Griffiths