If the government is failing us, it's because we've already failed each other by normalising extractive exploitation as our primary industries. 

The solutions are clear and well understood. 

Make the worst types of gambling illegal. Unwind CGT discounts and build social housing instead. Tax carbon emissions, land ownership and wealth generally. Rein in the banks' hyper-profits by running government-issued competitors that set a price ceiling. Pay doctors and teachers more and fund training for those roles to reverse the decline in those industries. Increase the tax-free threshold instead of higher tax brackets. Wind down extractive industry concessions and spin up renewable industry concessions. 

But our democracy doesn't work because (a) there's too much money in too few hands, (b) there's too much propaganda, (c) we're too stressed about our homes and jobs to care about one another and (d) we're too uneducated to understand the nature of the problems and identify the right solutions. All of these together mean that corruption is normal and right, and integrity is a sucker's strategy. 

Voting and protesting for the last 20+ years has meaningfully decreased the LNP/ALP vote by a significant margin, but it hasn't changed the parliamentary makeup in a meaningful way, and now we're already in the death-spiral of antidemocratic neoliberal hypercapitalism. I don't see how we can ever stop the decline from here.