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The west can see its future on planet Australia

By John McTernan
Published: August 18 2010 22:18 | Last updated: August 18 2010 22:18

Australians woke this on Thursday morning to a strange silence. With only two days to go before
Saturday’s election, a media blackout began last night. This meant an end to weeks of political
television adverts as Labor and the coalition – made up of the conservative Liberal party and
traditionally rural National party – fought the closest contest in decades. Yet while Australians admit the
contest has been inward-looking, it is also one whose central conflicts foretell future political campaigns
elsewhere in the western world.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. Labor’s Kevin Rudd won handsomely just three years ago. With his
country growing strongly, Mr Rudd looked set easily to win re-election. Australia’s governments almost
always get two terms; indeed, there has not been a single-term administration since the 1930s.

But this has been an odd campaign. Julia Gillard became prime minister only three weeks before
calling the election. The ruthless Labor machine – having reflected on the drubbing received by their
British counterparts under an unpopular leader – deposed Mr Rudd in June, only to find the usually
smooth Ms Gillard stumbling early on. Tony Abbott, the unfancied Liberal leader, was mocked as a
triathlete too keen to show off his toned body and “budgie-smugglers” swimming trunks, but
nonetheless made the early running. The polls are more even now, but even for plain-speaking
Australia it has been a bad-tempered affair.

The fractious campaign has been exceeded only by the cussedness of a materially comfortable
electorate. Working in Australia earlier this year I was struck by the sheer consumption – from cars to
houses and fine food. One pollster says he has never come across voters who feel such “a sense of
entitlement”. Yet this is the second election in a row in which Australia’s voters have looked unkindly on
an incumbent in spite of healthy growth. In Australia it doesn’t seem to be the economy, stupid.

So what is it? First, climate change. After his 2007 victory Mr Rudd signed the Kyoto protocol. With
floods in Queensland, droughts and bushfires in Victoria, Barack Obama in the White House and
Copenhagen in the offing, Australia seemed set for a new leading role on the environment. But Mr
Abbott’s election – the Liberal party’s fourth leader in under three years – changed that. A climate
change sceptic, he has mined middle Australia’s often conflicted feelings on the subject. His intuitive
connection with swing voters – particularly men – has allowed him to channel a questioning of scientific
authority into a questioning of the legitimacy of the incumbent government.

Next comes underlying anxiety about threats to Australia’s living standards, expressed most
prominently through concerns about migration. Refugees in boats are the symbol, even though the
numbers are tiny. The harder question is population growth. Following waves of migration from the UK,
southern Europe and south-east Asia, Australia’s population doubled every 40 years during the 20th
century. The result is the most urbanised country in the Group of 20, if one in which a mere 20m share
a vast continent. Yet a new consensus is forming against further avoidable population growth.

Third, while it has surfaced less directly, there is underlying unease about Australia’s place in the world.
This stems from its economic boom, driven by exporting minerals to Asia, and China. China’s growth is
obviously an economic boon, but is also seen as a long-term threat to Australian industry, and a deeper
psychological challenge to ordinary Australians’ sense of themselves. Re-orienting their country as an
Asia-Pacific nation was hard enough, but seeing themselves as providing the feedstock for Indian and
Chinese growth is profoundly discomfiting.

Whoever wins on Saturday, these issues at first seem very Australian pre-occupations. But they
represent a toxic and introspective political mix. The desire to enjoy growth while defending our
lifestyles against outsiders, accepting climate change intellectually while rejecting its implications for our
behaviour, and a nagging concern about the rise of China – all are issues which will quickly move up
the agenda in Europe and North America. Eventually what’s going on down under could turn our world
upside down too.

The writer was political secretary to Tony Blair and was a thinker-in-residence for the Australian state
of Victoria

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