What you said: is Australia a better place now?

Full survey results are published in each Saturday's newspaper. This week we look at responses our Insiders gave about change in the nation.

Do you think Australia is changing for the better?
Yes 17 % No 63% Unsure 20%

Australia had been changing for the better for many years, however we are now seeing our hospitals, infrastructure, housing supply and quality of life declining, due to excessive immigration, poor governments, corrupt institutions and greed.

I am greatly worried by growing inequality and also divisive and personality politics playing to lowest common denominator which tends to encourage extreme positions.

Canberra is changing for the better, but the country isn’t doing so well.

Australia is becoming more selfish when it comes to helping our neighbours - for example, our treatment of asylum seekers and our continuing cuts to foreign aid.

I don't think Australia is changing for the better. Let's start with the behavior of our federal politicians. Please, let us see a positive vision from the next government with Australia's residents and their welfare top of the agenda. Please put the interests of Australia first not your political party.

Australia is suffering from too much political correctness and 'nanny-ism' and not enough common sense. Australians are being treated as though they don't have a reasonable amount of intelligence and aren't able to think and reason for themselves.

Today's Australia is only a shadow of its former being. The political class is obsessed by trivia: so-called climate change, the chimera of universal equality and conformist neo-speak, while flooding the driest of inhabited continents with unsustainable population growth is stupid. Our descendants will think we were mad.

Australia will only change for the better when politicians take a bi-partisan approach to fundamental issues that will improve our security, education, health and well-being and when more of corporate Australia begins to act as a citizen. While we have some areas of mutual recognition across State/Territory horizons, what we need are laws that equally apply to all of us.

As a nation we've lost our moral compass. Keeping genuine asylum seekers in off-shore detention indefinitely is akin to torture. Visa overstayers who initially arrive in the country legally are a much bigger problem and they usually are not genuine refugees. And we hear nothing about that on the news.

The place is a mess because of identity politics and too many minority groups wagging the dog.

I'll be 70 this year and in my experience Australians in general are becoming more self absorbed, less socially educated, shallower and far to quick to use social media to dump their shallow, self centered and ill educated opinions in the public domain.

The level of violence that occurs on a daily basis is frightening.It is so pervasive through society, that I fear we are going to end up like America. 

Australia is becoming more racist, is governed by ignorant fools who don't believe in climate change, and is increasingly run by people completely out of touch with what most people want and believe.

Australia is changing, but not for the better. Not too long ago, politicians acted mostly for the common good. Been a while since that's been the norm and we're all poorer it.

Is Australia changing for the better? Yes and No - In many ways No from the over 60s, as it's a young person's country now. In too many ways the dollar  rules our everyday lives and the majority remain stoically silent while the minority groups bleat endlessly pursuing their 'rights and issues'.

I don't like how Australia is developing. My wife and I were lucky to have careers in our working life. I'm unsure that our daughter will have the same experience, although well schooled and university educated. I abhor the casualisation of the workforce and lack of job security - how are people supposed to plan and build a secure life?

Australians are preoccupied with first-world problems that are of little consequence in the developing world. We are increasingly less tolerant of the views of others and tend to demonise those with whom they disagree. It is becoming hostile environment for any dissent, no matter how mild.

Australia's future has not been well planned, sadly. It has become an unplanned experiment whose outlook is bleak, not at all unlike the twin issues of Global Warming & Climate Change. Successive governments and prime ministers since 1983 have a lot for which they ought to answer. However, apportioning blame will not really help at this juncture. We really need to fix the problems now!