‘What Happens Next?’: Is Australia Classist?
Who holds the power in Australia?
Monash University’s podcast, What Happens Next?, seeks to answer that question – and understand how things got to this point – in an all-new, two-episode arc.
Over the past several decades, Australia’s social stratification has become more pronounced. It’s partially the result of economic trends such as trickle-down theory and the increasing casualisation of employment in the gig economy, but there are other factors at play here.
Listen: Taking Us for a Ride: ‘What Happens Next?’ on the gig economy
In this series, host Dr Susan Carland sits down with John Thwaites, chair of the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and ClimateWorks Australia; Bri Lee, author of the book Who Gets to Be Smart?; Rick Morton, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper; and Monash Arts Associate Professor of Communications & Media Studies Dr Tony Moore.
Find out how privilege and disparate levels of access to basic resources such as education are contributing to an imbalance of power and influence in the land of the ‘fair go’ – threatening the egalitarian ideals Australia’s striven to model for the world.
“I don't think any of us want to go down that track where a few billionaires, now nearly trillionaires, own a huge part of the wealth of the country. And not only the wealth – a disproportionate amount of the power.”
John Thwaites AM
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