The Election Results have finally been called and Malcolm Turnbull takes the win. Which means Bill Shorten lost, right? Not so much.

Australia lost this election, by a wide margin. Trouble is, we lost it before it was even called. Before we’d even voted, we’d lost. We might be able to quibble about which major party might be a little ‘less bad’ than the other, or which minor parties we would love to see in the senate or lower house, for what that’s worth, but really, was there any way the people of Australia were ever going to ‘win’ in this election? How about the election before this one? Or really any election since… well since before I was born anyway.

Yes we’ve had one government in my lifetime that successfully dragged us out of debt, and credit where credit is due, that’s an impressive feat! But in other ways the Howard government was very bad for us indeed. Middle class welfare was extended even more than the already absurd levels it had reached (Baby Bonus and First Home Owners Grant to name just two aspects), government dictated savings and ‘investment’ schemes became entrenched and expanded (Superannuation), we committed ourselves to ever more war, and the government deepened its mistrust for the people and took further steps to ensure its monopoly on force and absolute power over Australians (Firearms buyback), should it ever wish to exercise such power. And this is (in my opinion) the best government we’ve had in my lifetime!

On either side of that bad government were even worse ones! And the ones we’ve had since Howard really don’t bear thinking about… which is why I find it hard to get excited about the election results now that we finally know what they are. All we’ve done is confirm the inevitable… more spending, more chaos, more politicians destabilizing and backstabbing each other as if the future of this country is just a backdrop against which they can play out their personal ambitions… and we the people go on losing.

What exactly are we losing?

We’re losing our freedom to choose our own best life, whatever that means for us. And we’re increasingly being told exactly what we can and can’t do, with ever increasing levels of intrusion into our lives and choices.

We’re losing our prosperity and standard of living. Of all places New Zealand is now considered a better place to live and work, with more freedom and opportunity than Australia… The land of the Long White Sheep is now the land of opportunity compared to us!

We’re losing our international standing as a great place to invest, do business, and live, with increasingly xenophobic bans on international investment and ownership, and threats to our credit rating.

Our children are losing their future as they’ll have to bear the burden of the fast-deepening pool of debt which will either have to be repaid, or the interest serviced… forever.

And worst of all, we’re doing it to ourselves.

If the 2016 election results are to be taken as an indication of how Australians feel about spending restraint, about personal liberty, about our childrens future, then the results are in and we don’t give a flying f***. There were small government, low taxing options out there, if only we were willing to look, but we weren’t, we voted apathetically and for more of the same old same old… and on this basis I have to assume that we’re never going to turn this around. Going ever deeper into debt is the new normal. Watching governments screw up over and over again and never be held to account is standard operating procedure. Watching our prosperity and future be flushed down the toilet of ‘free stuff’ is now a human right… And our future is Greece.

I’ve said before that if we don’t change direction we’ll end up like Greece… but now I’m concluding that we’re not going to change direction. There’s no longer an ‘if’, no longer a ray of hope that maybe we’ll wise up and change our habits and avoid the completely predictable and avoidable crisis that is heading our way… there’s no chance we’re going to change direction, and so I’m calling it.

Thanks to the apathy of the Australian people, and the self interest of our politicians, Australia will lose its AAA rating and not enough people will care. Then we’ll see unemployment rising as over-taxation takes its toll, and the ‘answer’ will be to increase spending on welfare and rack up more debt. Then we’ll see consumer confidence slipping as job security falters and we’ll enter a spiral there’s no way out of… or rather there is, but we won’t take it.

This will take time, of course. It’s not going to happen overnight, of course. But without a radical and wide-spread change of heart, it is going to happen. Like the worlds slowest train wreck, that everyone saw coming a hundred miles up the rails when it would have been easy and relatively painless to avoid it. The only Election Results that history will remember is that this is the moment Greece became inevitable, not because it’s too late, but because we don’t care.

Am I wrong? Am I missing something? Can you imagine a feasible scenario in which enough people wise up and get active enough to actually change our future? If so, please tell me in the comments because I’d love to hear it!

So what am I going to do about my newfound pessimism? I’m moving to Greece. No wait, that came out wrong, I mean Greece is moving here… only without the beaches, weather, parties… or anything good. Just the bad stuff. Oh Joy.

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