I’m supposed to be writing about how the NSW election is shaping up for the arts industry but instead find myself musing on the election more generally. In part this is because finding much on the arts policy initiatives is difficult in part because the rout expected is so extraordinary.

I lived in Sydney for four years around the turn of the century, yes, that’s sounds like such a long time ago, 10 years. To be nostalgic for a moment, it was a time when we were excited about the Olympics and Sydney was proud. There hadn’t been Tampa or 9-11, or Iraq or Obama or the GFC. Houses were ridiculously expensive, but they were to get more so, and those who owned them were very happy. Everyone seemed to be watching renovation shows and imagining themselves as property tycoons, shares were going up, the we-can-all-be-millionaires bug had well and truly bitten and climate change and environmental catastrophes were something only fringe dwelling loonies thought was really happening. Ah yes, the good ol’ days.

Looking from afar at the upcoming NSW election, it seems incredible how vicious and angry an entire Australian state has become. The spite is being thrown straight at the Labor government, perhaps deservingly, but it seems that that’s just one of the splashes coming from a molten pool of resentment. Perhaps the government is more representative of the people than any would care to admit to? More than anywhere else in Australia, NSW seems to embody all the political extremes as though the nation is torn through east-west and north-south in the one state.

But what’s also strange is that for all the anger when you try to look at the issues supposedly causing this resentment, they seem somewhat selfish. People don’t want to ride on trains that don’t have air-conditioning. They don’t want to wait for trains. They want the trains to go faster. They want their bills to be lower. They want fewer immigrants. They want their roads to be cheaper and easier to drive on, less congestion. They want hospitals to be more efficient, to not have to wait. But they don’t want to pay more in taxes. They want services but don’t want to pay the real costs of providing them. They want politicians to not help their developer friends and corporate buddies, while for years they’ve believed in the Howard era rhetoric of individualism’s ascendancy over social responsibility, private industry and free market efficiency and have turned a blind eye to the outcomes of avariciousness and getting ‘deals done’. To be fair a media ‘they’ is unlikely to represent anyone well, these collective nouns dwell on generalisations.

Still, it seems a bit late at stage to be getting cross about a lack of infrastructure when government has been so enthusiastically progressively stripped of it’s legitimacy to tax, borrow and build for the people by the people in favour of an outsourced society; one where private interests have benefited. Surely someone will now see the logic that if you tell governments they can’t do things well, they’ll stop trying too? Or, someone will point out that economically efficient public services and infrastructure are ones that are of a lower quality than we’ve had in the past, that the costs of high quality services are unworkably costly, ie. not profitable. Of course, they never were but it used to be we didn’t mind.

But the other killer seems to be a perceived in-action or inability to ‘do something’ and that seems to come down to division. Division and factionalism seem to have been the real killers. Left and right are blurred by the self-interest of a handful of people who purport to represent each side, when the real basis of the split is not ideological but Machiavellian.

Yet for all that resentment, is it so bad? Really? With the plasma screens and the new kitchens and the cheap clothes and the gourmet foods and the astounding constant connectivity to a global community, are we actually so badly off? Why suddenly are people calling for better public services when for so long all they’ve cared about is having more for themselves? I’ve upgraded all that I have, why hasn’t the government upgraded all the things I want from them too? Greed is a beast.

The call for vision that seems to be coming up at every level of politics in Australia and perhaps around the world, not just this NSW election campaign should be seen with more clarity. It’s a call for unity. Unity comes from purpose, laying aside some individual goals for the benefit of a greater communal goal.

The irony is, our successes, our wealth, our achievements having been made leads to this very state of being. Achievement is what has diminished the power of our communal goals and unleashed the destructive competition of narcissism. Is it that when we achieve goals of greater wealth and a ‘more efficient, productive economy’ as we have pursued so vigorously for 20 years, we don’t know why we got here? Sadly, it seems we just need an upgrade, Vision 2.0.

No one really knows what’s happening but they know we’re not keeping up. People have every reason to be uneasy as our economy is morphing before our eyes, not just jobs but careers, business models, climates and beliefs, families and governments. The impact of globalised decentralisation is going to break-up and erode everything that was built in the 20th Century into a new model. We’re atomising.** That can be a good thing. It’s certainly an exciting thing. But it will be a very different world, to live in, to work in and to govern.

I find it fascinating that the ALP may be reduced after this election to the lowest level of representation they’ve had since they first contested a NSW Election in 1908. Now, we really know we’re in a new century, when things devolve and start again.

** Oddly, or perhaps not, the best place to see this global change most clearly in its infancy is the independent arts, that underground arena where change and creativity meet.