I want to believe this country is special, as special as I thought it was when I arrived from America 33 years ago and found myself astounded at the egalitarian nature of Australian politics.
Rather than the perpetual onslaught of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, with their brutal union-busting and trickle-down theories of economics, Australia’s Labor governments were negotiating accords with unions that guaranteed living standards while reducing inflation and making ground-breaking admissions to Indigenous peoples about the horrendously negative impact of white settlement.
But we all know how that story ended: with John Howard in the Lodge for more than a decade and me — by then a naturalised Australian — realising I’d been mistaken. My adopted country hadn’t bucked the neo-conservative trend sweeping the globe at that time. It was simply late to the party.
I wonder if history is repeating. While our democratic prospects look good as those of our democratic allies and counterparts are plummeting, are we simply behind the global turn towards autocratic forms of governance, or are we wise and forward-thinking enough to avoid it?
Will Australian democracy keep defying gravity, or is the autocratic trend sweeping the globe written in our future?
By and large, I think we’re looking good. Nationally, we’re moving towards the long-overdue independent national commission against corruption required to maintain public trust in our laws and leaders. Trust in the impartial and independent electoral system we are blessed to have remains high, and justifiably so, as it polices the sort of foreign and domestic interference in the voting process seen in the UK and US, either debunking it or handing it to the AFP to prosecute.
On the down side, the decision of the national Liberals to ignore the message from teal voters in their former blue-ribbon seats by electing Peter Dutton as leader may be an early sign of the same trend that set Republicans on their path towards extremist ideology and violence: a refusal to moderate their policies to keep small-l liberals in the tent.
The misinformation funfest online continues to confound us and the rest of the free world despite our collective realisation that without shared facts, the civilised dispute mechanisms characteristic of democracies cease to function. The crazies we’ve always had persist but, in the shade of the US example and COVID, have become more violent and irrational.
Who can forget the nooses arrayed in Melbourne’s CBD by those who disagreed with the federal and states’ COVID stance? Or the Trumpian claims of voter fraud made before and after the 2022 election by Clive Palmer’s UAP?
The price we pay for freedom has always been eternal vigilance. Given the crises of democracy across the globe, and our nation’s history of following pernicious political trends, Australians should remain alert.
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