I was born here. I love the place. But not everything is perfect. Here are 10 things I don’t like about Australia.

1. We turn 19 year old footballers into over-paid celebrities who get drunk, assault women, and generally make public fools of themselves.
2. We seem to be incapable of curbing the growth in our cities or in managing their ever-growing traffic problems.
3. We have a low level of organ donation.
4. We have allowed our politicians to politicize Anzac Day.
5. We have acquiesed as our Government has reduced civil liberties, following the US lead, after the attacks in the United States of 2001, without governments even trying to prove to us that there is a need to give up individual liberties or that Australia is a target for terrorist attacks.
6. Most Government policy is made in Canberra, and Canberra is not like most of Australia. Compared with the rest of us, Canberra is clean, over-educated, highly-regulated, spacious, neither very rich nor very poor. It worries me that public servants living in the bush capital make policy for the rest of us.
7. Our politicians, on both sides of the House, have failed to deliver action on climate change.
8. We put too much freight on trucks on highways and too little on rail.
9. We don’t spend enough on education. Too often, our universities have poorly-paid staff working in ill-maintained buildings.
10. We have failed, miserably, over several generations, to improve health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people.

No, not sandy beaches and the bush.

Tomorrow is the federal election. A month of political advertising and news got me thinking about what’s good and bad about this country.

Seven things about Australian life and people that I love:

1. We are a secular society.
2. We are a multi-cultural society. If you want proof, catch the number 86 tram from Collingwood to the Melbourne CBD and note the variety of cultures of the passengers.
3. The Trade Practices Act 1974. While the Trade Practices Commission sometimes goes off the rails, it talks loudly and carries a big stick. Together, the legislation and the Commission have encouraged a culture of fair play in business.
4. A comprehensive, reasonably well-organized, high-quality, government-funded health care system that ensures that people get care regardless of their ability to pay.
   
5. SBS and the ABC. Where else is there a 24-hour TV channel that broadcasts almost nothing but news in languages other than English? Today’s lineup includes news in Chinese, French, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, German, Spanish and Italian. And venerable old Aunty has made extraordinary use of new technologies: it was podcasting almost before the word had been invented; iview has revolutionized television in this country; and Aunty now produces things like the news widget shown here.
6. We are a nation of travellers. I know only one adult Australian who has never been off this continent. Most of us have had the courage to save up a bit and get on a plane and go and have a look at the rest of the world. I even have some facts to support this:
   

   Australian residents made a record 6.8 million short-term trips [ie trips of less than a year] overseas in 2009-10
   …
   During the 2009–10 period, Australian residents on short-term trips stated their average time overseas was 15 days.

   The movement rate (number of international movements per 1,000 state or territory population) for short-term resident departures varied considerably across the states and territories. In 2009-10, Western Australia had the highest movement rate (434 movements per 1,000 population), followed by the Australian Capital Territory (429) and New South Wales (331). The lowest movement rate was in Tasmania, with 150 movements per 1,000 population.

   That’s right: over 40% of people in WA got on a plane and flew across an ocean to another country. Overall, 6.8m trips for roughly 22m people is 31% of the population. We’re a nation of travellers.

7. We are an informal nation. When an Australian Prime Minister appears on a radio talk-back show, the general public can ring up and say “Hi John, I want to talk about education…” or “G’day Kevin. I want to talk about health…” or “Hello Julia. I want to talk about infrastructure planning.” Can we really imagine a US President or UK Prime Minister doing that?
8. Oh, yes. And the sandy beaches and the bush.