One of the biggest issues civil society has in fighting back against growing authoritarianism, centrism and corporate politics is that no one wants to be impolite.

Respectability politics has led us to a point where tone is more important than action. Ketan Joshi shows some of the problem here, in this post.

This is doing the rounds on sustainability linkedin, generally with people praising being in the blue section, and I think the entire thing exemplifies how tone and politeness are the core indicators of worth rather than, you know, evidence base or material, empirical measurements of success

— Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) 2025-07-21T02:31:43.081Z

There are still a lot of groups and people in the civil society space who are warning that the Labor government can’t be pushed too hard, or the result will be a Coalition government. There is no evidence of that – in fact, history, evidence and the numbers tell us we actually have six years of Labor, with no guarantee the Liberal party will even survive. Centre-right politics will, of course, but not necessarily this incarnation of it.

So if Labor doesn’t actually do anything with its power now, then when will it is the question people should be asking themselves.