Hamish Macdonald

I think we're starting to see people in our own community and society as fundamentally different to us.

And I think that's generating disharmony and discontent.

I think it's harder today for people, you know, that share the same city.

They might love Melbourne or Brisbane or Sydney or Adelaide.

you know and and share a love of the place but genuinely see people in that same environment and think i have nothing i can't i can't come together with them i feel so strongly uh and profoundly different to them on the issue of and you can name it you know it could be australia day could be israel gaza it could be um you know climate change there could be any any one of these issues

And that polarization, I think, is becoming so deep because we don't have the capacity to sort of see shared sets of facts.

We don't all sit down and watch the same news program at night.

We don't all read the same newspapers.

We have this kind of fractured media environment.

There's lots of good reasons for that.

You know, mainstream media has not been a perfect operator, has not always been a fair player.

And it's probably a good thing that there are more voices, there are more podcasts, there are more people that, you know, there's been a democratization of the information space.

But I think that has come at a cost of our ability to see the common things about us.

You know, look at people in the same city that maybe go to different protests, that have very strongly held different views, but still at the end of the day, be able to sit down together and talk about some of these things.

I ask people on my radio program all the time, you know, have you changed your mind about something recently?

Have you, okay, yeah, you've called me a few times about this over recent months.

Is there anything about what's happened recently that's made you question your position on this?

You heard anything this morning that someone said that's made you come at this again?

I don't think we're doing that enough.

I don't think.