The Shrinking Nation How we got here and what can be done about it

Over the past two decades, Australia has been experiencing a sustained period of accelerated socio-cultural change, accompanied by existential threats from natural disasters and the Covid pandemic, and punctuated by repeated cycles of political upheaval. The divisive and hyper-partisan version of party politics that has accompanied these events has hamstrung the nation’ s capacity to respond to the challenges of the day – from dealing with climate change, to advancing gender equity, or to renovating the buckling structures of social welfare. At the same time, we have seen the quality of our democracy compromised. In The Shrinking Nation, leading cultural historian Graeme Turner examines a wide range of social and cultural change, including the role played by a media environment swamped by misinformation, the social consequences of neoliberal economic policy, and the divisive legacy of the culture wars, before considering how we might strengthen the bonds of community and belonging that tie our nation together.

Graeme Turner AO is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is one of the founding figures of media and cultural studies in Australia, and a leading figure internationally. He has been writing about Australian media, culture and society for many years, with a continuing focus on the idea of the nation. He has published 30 books, including Making It National (1994), Ending the Affair: The decline of Australian television news and current affairs (2005), Re-inventing the Media (2016) and Essays in Media and Cultural Studies: In transition (2020).

Introduction: ‘ It just feels like Australia has shrunk’ 1 1. Diminished leaders, bad politics 8 The state of things 13 Big country, small leaders 16 Some things the pandemic taught us 21 Bad politics 24 Hope and change 27 2. How good’ s the status quo? 29 Political power? Absolutely. Governing … not so much 39 Slogans rule 45 A weakened democracy 49 3. Down in the hole: The consequences of neoliberalism 57 The end of the great neoliberal experiment 61 From trickle-down to siphoning up 68 The shrinking state and the provisional citizen 77 A personal postscript 82 4. Media and information 2.0: What we know now, and how we know it 88 The transformation of news in the digital era 90 ‘ We create our own reality’ 95 The failed promise of digital democracy 99 Automating culture 102 News and information in Australia 105 The attack on knowledge 110 5. What’ s become of the public good? 122 What’ s the good of the public good? 125 The ABC and the ‘ cultural elite’ 128 Commercialising culture 134 Capping the ‘ wellspring of ideas’ 139 Why is it so? 146 6. What’ s to be done? 150 Disaster zones: The community and the state 153 The media, the digital and the national community 157 The culture wars and their legacy 167 Nationing and cultural policy 170 Conclusion: Somewhere in here, there is a better country trying to get out 178 Curing the body politic 180 The people’ s nation 189 Fixing the shrinking nation 195 Author’ s note 207 Notes 210 Selected major sources 228