As an Australian I can relate to the "general lack of wanting things to be better".

I feel like 80% of what I've done in my work life (still living and working in Australia) has been trying to convince people to care about doing things better!

I feel like may be a bit of a generational thing around here? Seemed to be a lot of older managers and engineers who were very set in their ways, but it does seem a bit less so for younger people. Of course there are exceptions, happily I now finally work with more people who want to improve things and do things really well than I have for years and a couple of them are in that older generation.