Someone shared an article about Australia’s productivity slump in one of the finance forums I occasionally dip into, and the comments section was exactly what you’d expect: half the people blaming migrants, half blaming “LNP cronies,” and a handful of people actually engaging with the substance. The article itself was worth reading. The response to it was a decent snapshot of why we can’t have nice things.

Let me try to untangle some of this, because I find it genuinely interesting, and because the usual political takes on it miss almost everything important.

There’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in Australian political discourse — “the lucky country.” Donald Horne coined it back in 1964, and here’s the thing most people miss: he meant it as a criticism. His full quote was that Australia is “a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck.” Over sixty years later, it feels like we’ve leaned so hard into the “lucky” part that we’ve completely forgotten the warning embedded in it.

The news hit me like a punch to the gut yesterday. Two kids – a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old – stabbed to death in Cobblebank, not far from where I live here in Melbourne’s west. Twelve years old. That’s barely older than my daughter was just a few years back, when her biggest worry was whether she’d make the school basketball team.

I’ve been scrolling through the discussions online, and the range of emotions is palpable. There’s grief, obviously – how could there not be? There’s anger, frustration, and a deep sense that something is fundamentally broken in how we’re handling youth crime in this state. But what’s really getting to me is the feeling that we’re all talking past each other when we should be finding solutions.

The ongoing debate about the EU’s AI regulations has been lighting up my tech forums lately, and it’s fascinating to see how polarized the discussions have become. While scrolling through comments during my lunch break at the office today, I noticed a clear divide between those championing unfettered innovation and others advocating for careful regulation.

The conversation reminds me of the early days of social media when we collectively failed to anticipate its profound impact on society. Working in tech, I’ve witnessed firsthand how the “move fast and break things” mentality can lead to unintended consequences. Those targeted ads that seemed harmless in 2010 evolved into sophisticated manipulation tools that now influence elections and mental health.