What of your apathy, Kevin Rudd?

Kevin Rudd’s “The complacent country” is so typical of the platitudes of this failed politician and, in fact, prime minister. “Our challenge is to sound the alarums and so turn our national politics around” is a laughable statement from someone who, given every opportunity, failed in everything but his platitudes. For a leader who won the right to change the course of this country to say Australians risk becoming “a people increasingly overwhelmed, confused and frightened” is completely disingenuous of the spirit of the people who, across successive governments of the past 20 years, including his, have been bullied and divided by lies, secrecy, fearmongering and scare campaigns and, then, by incessant legislation to prevent us knowing, arguing, disputing and protesting. Governments that in truth have shown little to no regard for our Indigenous people and their rights, culture, beliefs – all of which seem to have fallen to a pervasive Christian ethic that mocks its very core principles in its treatment of refugees or asylum seekers, its attitude to gender diversity, its misogyny, xenophobia and excessive self-interest in its legislative and representative houses. Australia has always been parochial, Kevin, but its isolationism, protectionism and nationalism are born of the past 20 years of politicians pushing wealth into ever fewer hands, greater struggles for the majority and poverty for too many. How can our representatives condemn the human rights abuses of our biggest trading partner when we mimic them in our treatment of difference, in our surveillance, in our rights to free speech and our rights to freedom of information? You could have given Australia more than an apology to our First Nations peoples, though even that was more platitude than substance.

You had the opportunity to make this a better place; the apathy is yours and the many others who lead this country. Own it.

– Ian Ossher, Dover Heights, NSW