I want you to travel somewhere in the world, but not anywhere, I want you to go to the cruelly cold cities of London and New York, where for a Sydneysider it will seem like life is on steroids. Things are going to move quicker, people are going to do more and the cities will never seem to sleep. And then just to sting our reputation as a great drinking and partying nation the people will go out harder than us, for longer and on more substances. How embarrassing.

But really this is just the beginning. You’ll start to notice how complacent Australia as a country is, and how much we love to rest on our very mediocre laurels. There just isn’t a sense of urgency with Australians. All of us seem content to live the Australian dream, basically a state of life as it sounds, achieved nearly asleep, with the smallest possible level of consciousness required to avoid dropping down dead.- by Sean Maguire

For anyone who’s reached this point, who's not in a coma and not standing up in their flannelettes trying to work out why the computer is offending them; I’m sure you’ve felt this. I’m sure you've thought this was just the human condition and that you were doomed to be the one person that ‘got it’ while everyone else floundered about. I’m sure you thought this right up until you walked into a bar in London and heard people talking about the future of the Labour Party and ‘why, okay I suppose Britain may need a written constitution’.

And then you got an absolutely tremendous sense of futility about Australia, you started to realise that in education, politics, art (and pretty much everything else other than sport or business) to try to succeed is to be different; and to be different in Australia isn’t difficult but it definitely is demoralising.

For instance, in education you study hard all your young life often avoiding the temptations of the body and the soul while your retarded friends get high on inhalant. Then after years you finally get a PhD, a degree and title so reputable that in any other country you’d be a respected member of the community and possibly a community leader because your PhD represents a life’s work and expertise that can be used to better whatever field you specialise in.

In Australia though, prepare to get ridiculed because you’re an intellectual now and you’re suspicious because we all know you do nothing in those ivory towers but wank off into golden tissues. By the way if you are wearing still reading and wearing that flannelette don’t pretend you weren’t happy when Howard came in and made that world you could never enter seem to be one full of boffins out of touch with reality.

So to continue, are you somebody who has any sense of justice and any aspiration to make this a place of greater equality?

Well don’t bother because you’ll end up getting voted out by the bigots you’re trying to help- probably for a leader who will only oppress them more.

I was now going to write something about art in Australia, but the people who love art know what the problems are and the people who hate art are probably watching motorsports and can’t read; so I won’t bother.

So to go onto some of the idiots that make Australia complacent I’ll start with Monarchists. If you’re a monarchist you’re an idiot.

If you believe a rich old woman that lives 4000 miles away is our best representative- you (and I will repeat) truly are an idiot.

But onto monarchism, how dare this fat stupid country turn its back on a Republic when it was served up so easily on a platter. How dare this country refuse what India, the Irish, and every other country ruled by the British fought so hard to have. Through blood and iron these nations were forged and there would be few who would say their sense of pride and value of what freedom means will ever be forgotten.

But Australia the ‘lucky cunt-ry’ avoided all that and instead we’ve had probably the most gradual decolonisation process in history. No blood, just signing a few documents, a few ACTS and hey presto we’re free.

God, the embarrassment.

And another thing to take from this the 10 year anniversary of that referendum is that if you’ve ever used the mantra ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ you’re an idiot and a strong part of the reason why this country is stagnating in stupidity.

Forget that the constant pursuit of perfection is the only way that anything can be bettered, forget that in any other country saying something is working alright (so don’t bother trying to make it better) would probably result in stoning in the street. No, we should always be that conservative and stupid country that never sees what’s right and socially just until after everybody else has done it.

An ETS?

Let Europe try it first.

Gay marriage?

Let California and England try it, because we’re too worried about faggots deriding our precious institutions

You know what that is like, it’s like when the media writes about young Australian actors making it in Hollywood or that Rudd has been written about by ‘the Rolling Stone’ and we get that peculiar sense of pride. We get that feeling just like our big brother is noticing what we’ve done and mightn’t think we’re as much of a loser as we always thought.

That's it!

We are the perennial little brother constantly assuming that we won’t be able to match it with the big boys, or as the Simpson’s so perfectly put it, we seem ‘born to runner up’.

So how can we possibly have got so complacent in our mediocrity?

God knows. But I know I’m not smart enough to change it so I won’t bother.

But I do know that this sense of absolute stinking stupidity that I feel daily makes me want to run around and break things. All I want to do is open the floodgates and let in all the refugees that deserve to live in a place free from violence. All I want to do is slap someone and say that letting gays marry won’t end the world and neither will pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

We both know there’s no point though.

So to bring this together how do all these seemingly unrelated points come together?

Well it’s this. On this day, the anniversary of when Howard broke our heart's we should remember that Australia is a racist, bigoted, stupid mass of people that are happy with what we've got, who will add no new ideas to the world because new ideas mean change and change is scary for a country happy to wallow in perpetual mediocrity.

Related Stories

Irrational Medicare system delivers inverse health care- by Dr Jeremy Sammut 22 feb  |  Irrational Medicare system delivers inverse health care- by Dr Jeremy Sammut . . read more

Time to start worrying about fish 2 nov  |  Australia's decision to reduce its intake of the endangered southern bluefin tuna has outraged the industry. The global fishing industry is unsustainable, and fishing is second only to climate change as the greatest environmental threat to marine ecosystems- by Sarah Burnside . . read more

CPRS - Why your contributions don't count 29 nov  |  On the day when the 'crucial' CPRS goes to the vote, here are the opinions of an independent organisation that models itself as an empowering tool for consumers. Not surprisingly its focus is very individualistic, but this doesn't take away from the fact that the arguments shown here have been nearly mute from the mainstream debate.  . . read more

NSW Child Porn Laws to Change. Australia, the Philistine State to Stay the Same 10 jan  |  Yesterday it was announced that the NSW State government has received recommendations to change child pornography laws. The changes would mean that once it is has been established that material is unlawfully pornographic, artistic intention would not be considered relevant. With a multitude of Federal and State protections for child pornography firmly in place this punitive change seems set to make the lives of Sydney's underappreciated art community even more difficult- Sean Maguire- explores why we should focus on the intention and not the reaction . . read more

Boys with knives 24 feb  |  Adolescence is a time of violent, primitive emotions, of play-acting and the most intensely lived reality. Boys' passionate assertion of relative worth is developmentally necessary. That child's place in the society of his peers is, for that moment, a matter of life and death- by Moira Rayner . . read more

A New Partnership in Nuclear Diplomacy 13 nov  |  It may appear ambitious, but a diplomatic partnership with India in the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament agenda is of strategic importance for Australia, writes Kurt Winter.  . . read more

IQ2 Debate:"'The pursuit of happiness is making us miserable" 10 mar  |  The pursuit of happiness is a life goal which overcomes many of us; it  invites us to depart with money, time, energy, and possibly happiness itself to attain it. It seems that in a complex, corporate and digitally connected world that the analysis of how to be happy dominates lifestyle columns, psychiatry visits and doctor's prescription pads-leading many to ask whether our conception of happiness is consumerist, transient and idiotic.   Last night, in the stunning City Recital Hall in Sydney, many of these ideas and more, were debated in the latest IQ2 debate, with interesting implications to what things we should pursue in life, where we should find them and whether we can find them at all- by Sean Maguire . . read more