Strewth!
Amid a tsunami of craziness, Australia reminds us sanity can prevail.
I can’t pretend to be an expert in Australian politics. No matter how carefully you follow what’s going on Down Under—or no matter how much your mum tells you on every phone call—nearly 25 years away from my homeland means I’m just not across the nuances of how the electorate has shifted or why certain things are as they are.
I mean, how the hell is that half-wit laughing-stock Pauline Hanson still anywhere near any lever of power? What the heck are the “teals”? Who’s Clive Palmer? And did he single-handedly inhale every single snag at the sausage sizzles that now seem ubiquitous at polling booths?
I digress. Because for casual observers of Aussie politics, there’s only one conclusion from the weekend’s events: no one wants anything or anyone resembling Donald Trump.
Just a few months ago, Trump’s bloviating put wind the sails of right-wing politicians the world over. In Canada, the shamelessly Trump-adjacent conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had a 25-point lead in the polls, with lame-duck Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party on the ropes. Down Under, Trump-curious Opposition leader Peter Dutton was similarly cruising.
Yet theory has a strange way of colliding with reality. If some of Trump’s policies were and remain understandably popular—a harder line on illegal immigration, support for the little guy, walking back some excesses on social issues—the scale of his incompetence, incoherence, and gleeful cruelty shocked voters worldwide back to their senses.
Canada jettisoned Trudeau for the almost unfairly well-qualified Mark Carney, who cruised to victory (even before Carney took the helm, Poilievre’s lead had all but disappeared). In Australia, the Labor Party led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recorded the biggest electoral landslide in decades. And, under the radar, Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party—which has been in power since 1959 and admittedly was always going to win—still markedly improved its vote share in the country’s weekend election as voters backed stability.
Even if the extent of the actual Trump factor differed—he’s not universally toxic: Romania still seems to be on track to adopt his brand of politics—the general take among these developed nations seems to be that voters, having seen a glimpse of life in the United States in Trump’s first 100 days, decided enough was enough.
“We do not need to beg or borrow or copy from anywhere else,” Albanese said in his victory speech. “We do not seek out our inspiration overseas. We find it right here in our values and in our people. Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values. For fairness. Aspiration. And opportunity for all.
“No matter who you voted for, no matter where you live, no matter how you worship or who you love, whether you belong to a culture that has known and cared for this great continent for 65,000 years or you have chosen our nation as your home and enriched our society with your contribution, we are all Australians.”
It’s a sign of how far America has fallen that the fact a country’s leader would suggest everyone is actually entitled to equity and inclusion—including immigrants!—seems utterly astonishing. Yet it was two other election moments that made all the difference for this dual citizen—and gave me hope that the civilized world may not only survive, but has a chance of re-emerging.
The first was when Albanese started wishing Dutton and his family the best and members of the audience began to boo, in true “with us or against us” fashion. Albanese shut them down immediately. “What we do in Australia is we treat people with respect,” he said forcefully.1
The second came from an unexpected source. America’s president still refuses to accept his clock-cleaning 2020 loss to Joe Biden. The Republican party continues to pursue electoral “reforms” amid spurious claims of voter fraud (measures which—shock!—will disproportionately affect likely Democratic voters). Yet here was Dutton in his concession speech, just minutes after enduring the humiliation of the party he led being shellacked as well as having lost his own seat of Dickson to opponent Ali France, who won at her third attempt:
“I called the Prime Minister to congratulate him on his success tonight,” he said. “It’s an historic occasion for the Labor Party, and we recognize that. I congratulated the Prime Minister and wished he and [parter] Jodie and [son] Nathan all the very best, and I said to the Prime Minister that his mum would be incredibly proud of his achievement tonight. And he should be very proud of what he’s achieved.
“I also had the pleasure of speaking to Ali France. Ali and I have been combatants for a number of elections now but she was successful in Dickson tonight and she will do a good job as the local member. She lost her son Henry, which was a tragic circumstance no parent should ever go through. And, equally, I said to Ali her son Henry would be incredibly proud of her tonight. I wish her all the very best.”
I ran toward the United States when I got the chance to come here, and I’m the first to admit I spent more than a few years feeling grateful to have escaped what I perceived to be Australia’s provincialism and general irrelevance. Yes, I’m an idiot. That was nothing more than a projection of my own insecurities—thinking that making it in America would somehow, in some way, make me both relevant and worldly. Yet I’ve ended up in a country where money has become the only yardstick of success; where might is right and everyone else can screw themselves.
The actions and behavior of the people we elect—people who work for us—should reflect the very best of a nation’s values. With graciousness, empathy, humility, and kindness, Australia’s political leaders did all of us proud over the weekend. And in rejecting the politics of division and cruelty, the Australian people reminded the world—and this Australian who’s been away from home since 2001—why there’s still hope.
Note: The image accompanying this post is from Bloomberg.
I write this for fun, not money. But if you want to shout me to a (probably terrible no-doubt-inferior-to-anything-in-Australia) flat white or magic, it’d make my day!
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
It was a moment that seemed to emerge from the time capsule of the 2008 US Presidential election, when a woman at a Republican town hall for candidate John McCain said: “I can’t trust [Democratic candidate Barack] Obama. I have read about him and he’s not … he’s an Arab. He’s not …” McCain immediately took her microphone: “No ma’am, no ma’m. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not [an Arab]. Thank you.” Can you even imagine such decency in the US today?
Bravo Luke. You hit the nail on the head ! 😊