A message to the major parties: Embrace reform, or end up like the Romans

The Age

22-04-2025

With both parties having now announced their flagship policies, it appears that Australia today is following the path of the late Roman Empire: tired, overextended, and ruled by an elite political class more interested in voter appeasement than real reform.
The ancient Roman poet Juvenal called it panem et circenses, or 'bread and circuses' – a strategy of appeasing the public with necessities and entertainment to distract them from the real issues and maintain social order while selling future generations up the river.
My home state of Victoria now resembles the Roman province of Britannia in its final years— overburdened with debt, mismanaged by its rulers. But the parallels with ancient Rome are not just rhetorical.
As Professor Frederik Vervaet of the University of Melbourne explains, 'The fall of the Roman Republic could easily have been avoided if the senatorial aristocracy had supported moderate reformers instead of brutally repressing them.'
Vervaet calls it 'reform aversion', the conscious refusal on the part of powerful segments of the senate to embrace undesirable reforms, however pressing the need or justified the cause.
'The aristocracy's reform aversion put the Roman Republic on the road to authoritarianism,' he writes in his recent essay How Republics Die.
If our politicians think tinkering around the edges instead of engaging in meaningful reform is enough, well – et tu, delulu.
'Roman politics became marked by escalating polarisation and a rise in factionalism, with the ensuing political deadlocks causing interest groups to divide and lose faith in the traditional political process.'
We see this occurring today, with voters abandoning major parties in favour of more extreme minor parties.