A year of change

Charles Dickens’ observations on chaos and uncertainty in A Tale of Two Cities are timeless: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

2025 will be a very interesting year.

Elections are a time when the country can and does change: a new government, new agendas, new politics to be played out inside and outside of parliament. And that’s just in Australia.

I doubt the poor will lead an uprising in 2025 as they did in A Tale of Two Cities, even though the increasingly public unveiling of the power of the ultra-rich has exposed a new level of obscenity. (Oxfam released a report this week showing Australia’s billionaires are making on average $67,000 an hour or $1.6 million a day.)

And our talk about changing seasons is now more likely to be about “unprecedented” climate change than revolution.

Rapid change and powerful vested interests are undermining certainty and so much of what holds us together, which is why charities will have such a critical role in 2025.

At CCA we are about to release findings of a sector leaders survey showing a level of disappointment in the way the Albanese government has gone about implementing its agenda for our sector.

We are also working on a new version of the Australia We Want report, which highlights our shared values and the progress we are making at seeing those values enacted.

And in the lead up to the next election we’ll be releasing a marginal electorate survey looking at how voters perceive the value of our sector and the contribution it makes to governments and to communities.

I’d like to think that most charities in Australia are developing or already have in place their own plans to take advantage of this important stage of the electoral cycle.

The critical thing we can all do is to play an active role in our democracy by engaging polititicians and local communities with our vision, cause, contribution and values. This means different things for different groups, but it usually involves making local candidates aware of who you are and the value you bring to your communities.

Looking back on 2024, one of the lowlights for me was the fact that 36% of US voters did not vote. President Trump was elected with just 31% of the total US vote, while Kamala Harris attracted a vote of 30%. Apathy was the clear winner in the US election.

A similar result is impossible under Australia’s compulsory voting electoral system, but we should never underestimate the role of apathy in our own democracy. How many would choose not to vote in Australia, if they could?

It’s also easy to take for granted what we have in Australia: our relative wealth and prosperity, well-run elections, a measure of democratic accountability, workable education, health, aged care and disability systems, and an environment and climate that are mostly conducive to a full lifestyle.

But every day there are challenges to our values, to our communities, to our environment, and these challenges will continue. None of what we currently enjoy should be taken for granted, which is why election years are special.

In 2025 we will all have the chance to stand up for what we believe in and try and improve the lives of those we care about and those we serve.

CCA intends to do all we can to make a difference in 2025. We will try to seize every opportunity to do more than “business as usual”, because just pushing on and hoping things will improve not only is a recipe for ensuring our own irrelevance, it also enables apathy to win.

We hope you will join us, Our Community, and all the other groups who intend to use the opportunities we will have in 2025 to work towards the kind of Australia we all want to live in. Together we can change what happens in Australia in 2025, and beyond.

David Crosbie has been CEO of the Community Council for Australia for the past decade and has spent more than a quarter of a century leading significant not-for-profit organisations, including the Mental Health Council of Australia, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, and Odyssey House Victoria.