I think the degree of movement Tim Dunlop thinks Labor has on any given issue at any one time is vastly overestimated. Degree of movement is the whole rationale behind incrementalism, and progressive Partys don’t have a wide degree due to the aggressive media and geopolitical environment they exist in.

Although Labor only just lost the 2019 election, they still lost it. Bringing on possibly the most damaging three years of Liberal/National strangulation of this country of that period.

I think Tim Dunlop underplays the importance of the old media in the new media landscape. Top 100 News & Politics YouTube Channels in Australia, dont know what the Burma channel is, but you get to 7, at Friendly Jordies, before you can argue you actually have anything left of centre. The old media isn’t as dominant as it was, but it still sets the agenda most often. And still has far reach across the voting public, enough to shape the hair brained narrative blaming the PM for the Bondi terror attack.

Thankfully independent media are growing in number, many are far more open to a non-billionaire alligned worldview. Some examples are,

• Guardian
• Ette media
• Independent aus
• Michael west
• Deep cut
• Crikey
• Urban wronsky
• Friendly jordies
• The shot
• The Klaxton
• John Menadue
• Cheek media
• Abby Dib
• Declassified
• Equator (monthly politics,culture, not sure if this fits.)
• Inside Story
• Antony Loewenstein

^Please reply if you know of more, i’ve been casually adding to this list, I don’t know yet to what end, but the degree of fragmentation is hurting these outlets, so I think some kind of public known central repository for readers to find these outlets would help.^

The geopolitical situation is an even larger challenge. There is an authoritarian shift in this world, and there is no reason to think Australia or any democracy can survive it. Author Sven Beckert apparently talks about this in his new book ‘Capitalism’ when he discusses the actual age of capitalism being older than the Industrial revolution in Britain, and capitalism surviving under many forms of governance, be it authoritarian, monarchist, democracy, dictatorship, there are many examples, democracy is just one, the best one, but just one.

So we can experience a significant degradation in our democracy without any significant effects on the capitalist system, just look to the USA to see this happening in real time.

For a country as small as Australia this shift poses a potentially existential risk to our Nation as we know. Whether we like it or not we are on a geopolitical tightrope. In 2025 the ‘Great Game’ as it was once called over a century ago before WW1 has been relaunched. Due to the growing power of nations like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar etc; but also through foolish and decadent policies of the USA and foolishly utopian policies of the Europeans.

Australia is completely linked to the US tech stack, financial stability relies on the US, our military and it’s technology are also dependent on the US. These are systemic structures you can’t change overnight except with a major and extremely costly break from our largest ally.

This restricts the types of overt or outwardly large movements to progressive policies that will be tolerated by our erstwhile and increasingly authoritarian allies and benefactors. A Machiavellian view and action and reaction framework is the only choice for Australia in this world. Luckily for us, we’ve already been practising this for the last decade or more between the maws of Chimerica.

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Finally there are certain touch-stone issues such as housing that not enough Australians see a problem with yet to take significant action on. I can only hope that we can get a grand generational bargain on housing in this country before a government of any stripe does something so stupid as to open the market to the private investment houses, such as venture capital…