A curious aspect of living in America during the country’s mass shooting epidemic was to observe the liberal lionisation of an Australian arch-conservative, John Howard. The aftermath of massacres followed a looping pattern. From Democrats, there would be calls for tighter gun controls. From Republicans, there would be thoughts and prayers. Next, a progressive-minded columnist would often point to how Australia, another “frontier nation”, had admirably enacted firearms restrictions following the Port Arthur massacre.
Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:
More recently, it is Australian compulsory voting that has caught the American eye. One of Washington’s foremost liberal thinkers, E.J. Dionne, and Miles Rapoport from the Harvard Kennedy School have co-authored the book 100% Democracy. As a possible antidote to the polarisation that has turned the words “United States” into an oxymoron, it argues for an American version of the Australian model, albeit with a more US-friendly name, “universal voting”.
Nor is it just the Americans. Before Christmas, I wrote an essay for Britain’s Prospect magazine entitled “Made in Australia”, which showed that in the cross-flow of ideas between Westminster and Canberra the stronger current right now emanates from these shores. From the immigration points system to offshore processing, from foreign interference laws to reforms aimed at boosting night-time economies and Team GB’s medal haul at the Olympics, the Poms have been pilfering Aussie ideas for decades. Mandarins in Whitehall, its modern-day Sir Humphreys, talk of how the easiest way to get a minister’s attention for any new initiative is to tell them it came from Australia.
The point is amply made. The evidence of a new and unprecedented degree of international influence is overwhelming. But sometimes the hardest sell when it comes to making the case for Australian relevance involves convincing Australians themselves.
For sure, as the world has pivoted from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, there has been a growing realisation of national self-importance. Certainly within foreign policy circles there has been an acknowledgment for years that Australia is central to the great geopolitical struggle of the time, the rivalry between the US and China. The sharing of nuclear submarine technology, which lies at the heart of the AUKUS defence pact, offers incontrovertible proof of that.
Still, though, there is a tendency to underestimate how the Lucky Country has become the Consequential Country: politically, culturally, economically, diplomatically, strategically and environmentally. The old joke, that it requires good peripheral vision to notice Canberra from Washington, has not yet been pensioned off.
National debates have often been framed in ways that emphasise the country’s inconsequentiality, the most notable example being climate change. Sceptics argue that Australian emissions are too small to make a global difference, which obviously ignores this country’s disproportionately high per capita rates and the fact that it is the world’s second-biggest coal exporter. It also disregards the simple reality, brought home by the bushfires of 2019-2020, that Australia is on the frontlines of the climate emergency. The discrepancy between the seriousness of the crisis here and the environmental foot-dragging since the turn of the century goes a long way towards explaining why Australia has been regarded as a pariah at international conferences, such as COP26 in Glasgow.
The presumption of insignificance is insidious. Prime ministers with international ambitions and agendas have come to be viewed with suspicion, as was the case with “Kevin 747” Rudd. It seemed almost to count against him that Barack Obama regarded the then Labor PM as his most trusted international sounding board (much to the annoyance of the then British prime minister Gordon Brown), and that Rudd persuaded George W. Bush to elevate the G20 group of nations at the start of the 2008 global financial crisis.
When, after Rudd’s ouster, Julia Gillard told the ABC’s 7.30 Report that she preferred to talk to children in classrooms than international leaders at summits, she seemed to be signalling her willingness to operate well within the national comfort zone: of prime ministers who do not seek the global limelight.
Malcolm Turnbull, another assertive internationalist, suffered from the same wariness as Rudd. Within the Liberal Party, there was always the suspicion he felt more at home in the West Wing than the western suburbs.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears to have attained a level of influence that more closely aligns with Australian thinking: to be respected and liked by his fellow international leaders, but not to become a hot ticket at Davos. If ever it had a prime minister with the global star power of a Jacinda Ardern, I’m not sure how Australia would cope.
The national vocabulary still emphasises remoteness, with its subtext of unimportance, even though the point of reference is the geography of a bygone age. The “antipodes” made sense when Britannia ruled both the waves and its distant colonies. The “land down under” implies that the country is defined still by another outdated phrase, “the tyranny of distance”. Given the closeness of China, proximity should truly be the watchword.
That beloved national mantra – “punching above its weight” – is also self-belittling because it implies the status of a bantam rather than a middleweight. Surely it is better to think in terms of Australia delivering a punch that is commensurate with its weight, as one of the world’s most influential middle powers.
As for the anthropomorphic language of national adolescence? Please. The risible idea that this country is still in the throes of its teenage years diminishes its standing as one of the world’s most grown-up democracies and discounts how First Nations people have occupied this continent for about 60,000 years.
What explains this self-deprecation? Why do Australians revel in their success in international sport, the preferred arena of global validation, but underplay their impact in other spheres of influence? The stock answer, I suppose, is parochialism, but I don’t entirely buy that. This is a land of wanderlust travellers, and a country where almost 50 per cent of the population has a parent who was born overseas. Internationalism is imprinted in modern Australia’s multi-ethnic DNA.
Maybe there are spasms of cringe-thinking, a cultural disposition towards thinking the Australian product is inferior. But again, don’t most people here now have a sense of the superiority of their living standards and an appreciation of the nation’s global cultural clout, whether delivered by Cate Blanchett, Hannah Gadsby, the Australian Chamber Orchestra or Bluey?
Certainly, the national penchant for piss-taking kicks in, along with an aversion to the grandiose. It is almost as if the tall-poppy syndrome has come to be applied at the national level, where Australians scythe their own country down to size. The question of consequentiality is where so many outdated national cliches intersect.
My hunch is that many Australians reside in a state of happy detachment, a form of contented isolationism buttressed by all those decades of recession-free prosperity. It helps explain why Australia was able to shut its borders during COVID – barring its citizens from leaving and blocking its expats from returning – without provoking a major public outcry. Unquestionably, the Australian compliant streak was a factor, but so, too, was the succour of being cocooned from a threatening world outside.
However, what happens in Australia matters internationally, and at this particular moment in history it is especially worth hammering home that point. On climate change, this resources powerhouse really does have the chance to become a renewable energy superpower. The Voice referendum, as I have written in these pages before, needs also to be placed in an international context, since a No vote would be catastrophic for the country’s reputation and soft power.
During a phase of democratic declinism, when the US and UK are in the doldrums but the health of the Australian body politic has unquestionably improved following the departure of Scott Morrison, there is also an opportunity to become something of a global paragon. This is worth bearing in mind as the Albanese government’s Strengthening Democracy Taskforce begins its work.
The taskforce can tap into a rich tradition of democratic innovation, which often tends to get overlooked. The secret ballot, pioneered here in the mid-19th century, became known as “the Australian ballot” when it was adopted in America and Europe. Australian women gained the vote almost 20 years before American women. Proof again that what happens in Australia rarely stays in Australia.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
Most Viewed in National
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article
