When Sleepers, Wake!: Technology and the Future of Work was published in 1982, my predictions about the potential impact of the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Revolution were regarded as wildly exaggerated and hence not taken seriously. Thirty years later they read like a statement of the blindingly obvious and could now be dismissed as, ‘Well, it was always inevitable, wasn’t it?’
‘Equality’ dropped off Australia’s political agenda in the 21st century. Both sides of politics recognise that winning elections depends on winning votes from ‘aspirationals’. So progressive taxation was dropped, education is more stratified in Australia than the UK or US, and governments and political parties have abandoned ‘needs based’ policies
The Australian colonies began very unpromisingly as a convict society built on Aboriginal dispossession. Nevertheless, robust elected institutions soon developed. There was responsible government by the 1850s, full manhood suffrage by the 1860s, the secret ballot (a local invention) and payment of members