The Australian Disease: On the Decline of Love and the Rise of Non-Freedom

Short Blacks

by Richard Flanagan

Non-freedom to the Western mind is inevitably linked with images of backwardness – Soviet tractors, East German Trabants, Kim Jong Il’s haircut. But non-freedom these days is also iPads, iPhones and a dazzling array of less iconic but ubiquitous consumer goods that flood our stores, our homes and which increasingly are used to define our ideas of worth and happiness. It is a full-lipped smile achieved with the aid of collagen made from skin flensed from dead Chinese convicts.

The Australian Disease is Richard Flanagan’s perceptive, hilarious, searing exposé of the conformity that afflicts our public life. From Weary Dunlop to Vassily Grossman, from David Hicks to Craig Thomson, Flanagan takes us on a wildly entertaining and unsettling trip. If we are to find hope, he says, we must take our compass more from ourselves and less from the powerful.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Politics, Australia, Philosophy

43 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 19, 2011

About the author

Richard Flanagan (born 1961) is an author, historian and film director from Tasmania, Australia. He was president of the Tasmania University Union and a Rhodes Scholar. Each of his novels has attracted major praise. His first, Death of a River Guide (1994), was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, as were his next two, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997) and Gould's Book of Fish (2001). His earlier, non-fiction titles include books about the Gordon River, student issues, and the story of conman John Friedrich.
Two of his novels are set on the West Coast of Tasmania; where he lived in the township of Rosebery as a child. Death of a River Guide relates to the Franklin River, Gould's Book of Fish to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, and The Sound of One Hand Clapping to the Hydro settlements in the Central Highlands of Tasmania.

Reviews

[MBC · Rating 2 out of 5]

All of us should heed the following as a warning:
“At a moment in history when the old verities are crumbling, this new far right trades in anger and fear, in conspiracies and known enemies.
It promotes a new consensus that celebrates superstition as knowledge, that is hostile to social and racial difference and celebrates hatred at the expense of reason.
It leads to scientists being not just derided, but routinely threatened with death and intellectual and artistic life seen as at best unnecessary and at worst dangerous.
And all because this new rabid right is interested not in truth, but promoting ignorance; not in freedom of all, but the righteous punishment of those it regards as damned.”

“We confuse robbing the wealth of our land with an idea of national genius. We mistake corporate success for personal prosperity.”

[Mark Buchignani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truth and freedom – the only worthy goals are as never before under persistent attack in Australia, so Flanagan writes in the Australian Disease: On the Decline of Love and the Rise of Non-freedom. The book is cast in the form of a speech in which he likens present policy and action to that of Stalinism, which is nothing more than the flip side of the National Socialism. To read this is to hear described an Australia in crisis for its thundering repression, ostrich-like ignorance, and ultimately for its attack on personal freedom and truth. All in the name of public protection.

And a gold star or multiple gold stars for going along. For conforming. And heaven forbid a spoken contrary perspective. Remind you of other political systems?

And what lessons are here for the US, for the people of the US? Let us look only at our election-year politicians obsessed with their entrenched and immovable ideologies, disagreeing with their opponents only because they are opponents. This is conformity in its most hideous: all democrats bow, scrape, and queue behind their figurehead, rarely if ever daring to speak alternatives or compromises, while all republicans seek the holy grail of unification. Why? To conform in their rally against anything and everything perceived of as liberal.

What lessons? What ever happened to debate, to airing of possibilities, to hashing results from differences, to true collaborative government by the people for the people?

In the US we have two lines: they lead in opposite directions, their members do not (are unallowed to) speak, and they are instructed to vote for one or the other mouthpiece – and in so doing ratify all the line stands for, whether they agree with every aspect or not. Conform left or conform right, and to hell with everyone else. And that in its broadest meaning: heads Stalin wins, tails Hitler does.

[Emmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this in melbourne and finished it up in darwin. i brought it at readings in the state library while i was hanging out with jordyn and charlotte for the last time while down south. it took me a while to read but i feel like i absorbed it and it was a very interesting. it taught me a lot and gave me some thoughts that hadn't ever crossed my mind before. i really enjoyed it and future emily should read it again and highlight the things that she deems as important in a different colour highlighter and compare it to 17 and 10 month old emily.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flanagan has my vote as Australia's greatest living writer, perhaps our greatest writer ever. And his rhetorical brilliance is on full display in this essay of social critique. In it, he savages a great many things, but most of all he seems to lament that Australia is imperfect, that the political Right exists, that politicians do things that conventional ethics deems immoral, that Australian culture is conservative and cowardly, and so on. At once a rousing read and a confusing one, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

If Flanagan had stuck to the idea that Australian society is conservative to a fault, this might've been interesting. Instead, it veered from one topic to another and often became an unabashedly biased political screed against the contemporary political right. The more I read, the more I came to believe that Flanagan, for all his gifts as novelist, is not a rigorous thinker. He is poetic and vague; he has no clear thesis; and after a while the essay devolved from what could have been an attempt at useful, insightful social criticism into an ecstasy of cathartic self-expression. Which is a shame. Because with his gifts, and with his clear love of country and social justice, Flanagan has the potential to be not merely one of the best writers about Australia, but also one of its most effective. See, for example, Toxic, his expose of Tasmanian salmon farming.

Nonetheless, Flanagan touches on some important social problems.

Does Australia still have the courage and largeness it once had when it pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage? Or will it simply become the United Arab Emirates of the West [...] will it continue its retreat into a past as a colonial quarry for the empires of others, its public life ever more run at the behest of large corporations?

He seems rightly disgusted and ashamed about the way we're squandering our vast natural wealth.

We understand a once-in-a-century resource rush as an immortal fact of our own country. We confuse robbing the wealth of our land with an idea of national genius. We mistake corporate success for personal prosperity. Yet a few days after BHP announced a record profit of $22.5 billion, Australia's biggest ever, ABS statistics were released that show Australians' total disposable income fell for the first time in fourteen years.

He is afraid that Australia's prosperity, which despite the above is nonetheless tied to some degree to the fortunes of our mining companies, has created a new society that

understands only self-interest, believes only in cynicism, is committed to nothing more than its own perpetuation, that seeks to ride the tiger by agreeing to all the tiger's desires, believing it and not the tiger will endure, until the tiger decides it's time to feed, as the mining corporations did with Kevin Rudd, as News Limited is now [doing] with Julia Gillard.

In all of this, Flanagan laments that Australian politicians and the Australian populace does not care enough about the problems of institutional capture by vested interests such as Murdoch's news empire and mining lobbies. But that's not true. The Murdoch problem has been widely discussed for decades. And Australia had a minerals resource rent tax until it was axed by Abbott's Coalition in 2014. This was not a popular move at the time. And in 2025, there remains widespread public support for that tax's reimposition. What political and popular cowardice is Flanagan raging about? Is he just angry, as we all are, at people like Abbott? Perhaps so. But he doesn't say that. He seems to think that Australia for all of its history has been a loser bastard.

Another topic Flanagan makes much of is immigration policy and right-wing politics in general:

‘[The new far right] celebrates superstition as knowledge, is hostile to social and racial difference, and celebrates hatred at the expense of reason. It leads to scientists being not just derided, but routinely threatened with death, and intellectual and artistic life seen as at best unnecessary and at worst dangerous. And all this because this new rabid right is interested not in truth, but in promoting ignorance […] Rather than recognising the complex task of building lives together in a world of difference, its rhetoric promises an apocalyptic liberation’.

I despise this. Not because it is false—in many ways, the new right is much as he describes—but because he is so tribal: the new left can also be described this way. Some differences are irreconcilable, and it is of course possible to argue that immigration restriction might be, at least in some ways, better for the host nation than unrestricted immigration. The woke movement was and is tyrannical: it was frequently anti-scientific, censorious, prejudiced, and hateful of certain kinds of free expression, including artistic expression (there are plenty of examples of people disliking films simply because of the director’s or the film’s politics; see e.g. Mel Gibson and S. Craig Zahler). This kind of tribalism is beneath Flanagan. Or maybe it isn’t. If so, that’s disappointing.

I like what this book could have been, especially with Flanagan as author. But perhaps Flanagan is too steeped in his novelistic deepities to write much compelling non-fiction. He hews too close to emotion, too far from the truth. I want him to rewrite this and be much more lucid, clear, single-minded, and ruthless. As it stands, it is pretty and rousing, hysterical and forgettable.

[Robyn Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Flanagan as always - provocative and thoughtful. The mantra is - don't agree. Like Weary Dunlop, Tom Uren, Bob Brown, and a digger on the Thai-Burma Railway during WWII - Slappy Oldham, don't agree. 'More than ever, in this new age, Australians need once more to recover their voice, and that power of not agreeing with power' (p.54).

[Craig Hodges]

If the following comment best encapsulates Flanagan's sentiment: "we need to take our compass more from ourselves and less from the powerful if we are to find hope." - then yes, I want to read his thoughts on the subject. Certainly.

[Chavelli Sulikowska · Rating 3 out of 5]

I much prefer Flanagan's short and snappy prose to his long, morose tales. In this petite edition, he certainly put his finger on some of the key societal malaises endemic in the contemporary social order in Australia.

[Nigel Pinkus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flanagan argued that many Australians have become smug, complacent and apathetic. We, as a nation, more often than not, but only agree with power and those that make decisions on our behalf. He goes on and says that the problem with this is that often (but not always) political decisions can often be devoid of goodness, compassion and any sort of love. After all, it is all about power and who yields it, isn't it? Indeed, in some circles politics is seen as the opposite of love, the antithesis of it. Yet, isn't love, goodness, sensitivity and the ability to actually love someone, with your whole heart, the essence of who we are as human beings?

He raises several issues as examples of our as shallow, inept and even callous view of the 'boat people' that have been stranded on Manus Island for up to seven years. He asks why we aren't outraged by their treatment? What has happened to their human rights? Where is our empathy for them? What has happened to helping out the 'Aussie Battler' especially to those who are weak, defenceless and poor? If thirty people drowned in Sydney Harbour, we would be outraged, but we weren't outraged when that did happen off the coast of Australia, didn't it?

He goes on and asks what has happened to our independent thought, our courage to speak out and our belief in something that is 'longer than its own future'? This person thinks that all is not lost, though. Many people in Mr. Flanagan's own island of Tasmania are currently speaking out against the state government's plan to build a cable car on Mt. Wellington. They argue, where is the due process? Where is the EIS (Environmental Impact Study)? Where is the cost-benefit analysis? According to their own website the project will 'only' cost 50 million dollars to build? Where, indeed, is the management plan? If the project will be so profitable (not), why hasn't the MWCC (Mt. Wellington Cable Car Company) released a predicted forecast for the price of tickets?

Also, there have been grave concerns raised by members of the public about the conditions of the fish farms in some the estuaries in Tasmania. People have noted that many fish farms are over-stocked; Terrible toxic pollution occurs from fish dying and the remaining fish have to then endure the haunting effluent around them; A toxic build up occurs, (and from first hand experience) a terrible stink permeates even through your wetsuit and you need to then, thoroughly wash it off afterwards and shower yourself to remove the smell. It must be a truly terrible experience for for the fish.

Yes, we need more independent thought because we shouldn't just blindly follow our leaders. What happens if they lead us off a cliff? Are we suppose to jump? Our freedom is to have an open mind and decide for ourselves what we should or shouldn't do? It isn't just mass conformity, but decisions should be made upon love, compassion and fundamentally about truth. We need to remain in the essence of oneself. Because without love for yourself and for your fellow persons, what are we?

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scathing review of the state of the world, Flanagan blamed much of our woes on political policies that further 'non-freedom', making comparisons to the Soviet Union. I found the arguments compelling, however he loses a star for the unnecessary comment on the way Gillard looks and sounds. He managed to criticize Howard, Keating, and Abbott without any such comment, so it's hard to overlook.

[Barbara Phi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Richard Flanagan's address at a writers festival in 2011.

Read it once, then spoke it. It's perceptive, funny and insightful.
I think it should be required reading from our politicians. And it wouldn't hurt a few policy makers as well.

Ideas and informed social critique. Loved it.

[Gay Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very quick read but resonates deeply with me. A lot went over my head but the message is a basic one. Be true to ourselves and don’t slavishly follow other politics doctrines etc without questioning.

[Ms Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I read this while watching a 4yo do Gymnastics. My head hurts! Thought-provoking but way too intellectual for me to be reading at 11am on a Wednesday morning.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teetering on the brink of too highbrow for my feeble Sunday mind, the sentiment around Australia's collapse of empathy was one that struck a chord.

[Maha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reassuring to read a writer as sane as Richard Flanagan. It’s so easy to be swept up by #auspol bullshit on a regular basis. What a gem he is.

[alexia ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was good!! an interesting read for sure and i loved it’s allusions to literature at the beginning !

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too intellectual and verbose, with too much assumed knowledge, and too specific to the early 2000s (but I guess that’s intentional, in terms of social commentary?)

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*
Despite its size, this was a lofty tome reflecting on the national consciousness of Australia during the Howard-Gillard-Abbott leaderships.

[Kaplan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good arguments made on democracy and sensationalism but relies heavily on referencing other books without providing enough context for them.

[J.D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scathing in the author's usual style. Succinctly written and despairing of what was once a robust and wholehearted democracy that was the envy of much of the rest of the world. The call out for great Statespersons is out. Australia sorely needs leaders with empathy and drive for the nation, not sycophants to Corporateland spruiking slogans. Well done Flanno!

[Mx Józef Dírêctøùr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everybody should take the (minimal) time needed to read this book. It is an illuminating critique of the « Australian » tradition of conformity to power, ideology, and the conscious exclusion of empathy to others. It is likewise a pertinent exploration of the drivers of democratic governments in contemporary society which extends beyond our shores. (while difficult to track down in local brick-and-mortars, however, it ships free nationwide direct from the publisher: Black Inc. ($7 in 2020).

[Lushr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuck me. This essay pins australia 2011, while also pinning it in 2023. While also pining it’s last 4 years…. Sometimes it feels like australia is a vast and vacuous place with a dearth of intellectual richness and creativity. This essay is proof it is not. I now have a shit tonne of reading to do of vassily grossman and Rilke, and a few others. Thank you Mr flanagan. I even had to get out my thesaurus.

[Sue Lyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful polemic on our times from an Australian perspective that can speak to all who care about freedom and truth. Flanagan despairs of what is happening to our democracies and I have to agree with him. He asks what has happened to empathy, and I want to know as well. If The road to tyranny is paved with fear of others we are in serious trouble.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

On this short essay Flanagan explores democracy and freedom in Australia and essentially how it is broken.
The examples and points of vontrast are well laid out and explored in detail.
As you read this essay you muse on what has happened and question whether we have made any progress.
A good thought provoking read, no matter what political side you take.

[Michael Kerjman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wisdom this work accumulates was emphasized during last two and a half years of pandemic scam which compromised Australians' rights and freedoms vividly.
Perhaps, it is off autor-mentined conformity pleasing those luring the naive professionals' in Australia.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Savage but so on point.

[Lee Belbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief but inciteful trip into Australian politics, Flannagan style: No holds barred. Highly recommended, specially if you want stirring up.