Melbourne is a fabulous city, small enough that it's easy to bike around, big enough that it doesn't feel boring, small or crowded. And it has lots of big city things like fantastic restaurants and theatre (Les and I went to see a fun cabaret show on Thursday night), but lots of outdoors things to do, like canoeing.
After the park we went met up with Leslie to watch the election. The Liberal party (who despite their name are arch-conservatives) had been in power for 11 years, and it was time for prime minister John Howard to go. John Howard, for overseas friends not familiar with the Australian PM, looks a bit like a cross between Dick Cheney and a toad:
He had been in power way too long and had instituted inane and reactionary policies. His main priority seemed to be giving tax cuts to people who don't need them, and he committed troops unnecessarily to Iraq, did nothing about climate change, eroded civil liberties and tried to scaremonger his way into keeping power. Hmm, sounds like another politician I know who is long overdue to get the boot.The Labor Party (and it is the Australian Labor Party, no U, even though the word is labour) is much more progressive. They promise to actually adhere to Kyoto, do something about education, withdraw troops from Iraq and help working people. The ALP has strong union links, which the Liberals tried to use against them. Though I didn't quite understand the "but aren't you afraid of the unions??!" campaign - aren't unions a good thing? Don't they protect the rights of workers? You just do a simple glance as to who's on what side - management against the unions, workers with. I'll stand with the unions, thanks.
Some polls put Kevin Rudd (leader of the ALP) way ahead, but Howard seemed to gain some ground in the last days. Most people thought it was going to be close ("knife edge" seemed to be the TV stations' phrase of choice). But in the end, the ALP gained more than 20 seats and swept to victory in what the Age cleverly called a "Ruddslide." The best part, I thought, is that Howard lost his own seat (we're almost certain, it was really close and they're still counting postal votes). It was fantastic to watch his seat slide into the Labor column. We cheered and threw our arms in the air.
We watched wonderfully partisan coverage. Whenever Labor picked up a seat, the station played a "ding-ding" noise, like at the beginning of a boxing match. If they called the seat too early (which was often - they were calling seats with 0.5 per cent of the vote counted) and it had to go back into the undecided column, they played a "eehhhnnn" noise, like when someone gets a question wrong on a game show.
The best was the shredder. When they'd called a handful of Labor pick-ups, they "shredded" the Liberals who currently held the seats. A picture of the sitting member came up on the screen, an X was stamped over his or her face, and the picture went through a computer-generated animated shredder. It was exhilarating to watch John Howard go through the shredder. They did the graphic at least four or five times throughout the night. I hope an American station will follow that lead during the American election - I would love to watch George Bush go through the shredder.
So it is a proud day for Australia. We have new leadership, and I hope this marks a turning point. After the last two heartbreaking American elections, it was fantastic to win one, to feel good when the votes were counted.
Now all I can say is, go Hillary!
2 comments:
Showed your piece to the only enfranchised Ozzie I know round here, who thought it was a great piece of writing.
Interested to hear that you think America has something to learn from Australia in graphic partisanship in broadcasting. Over here, one had the impression that you were fairly well advanced in that, with leading Democrat Senators petitioning for the "reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine," to protect themselves from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and newsreel footage of John Edwards said to be being run to the accompaniment of "I Feel Pretty."
The evening you report so vividly sounds great fun but there is another American tradition of journalism which it is probably worth keeping in the mix.
The vigour of Union-supported politics was said by a friend of the parents of John and Louise, when they visited here, to be the reason for voting being compulsory in Australia, as, when female suffrage came in, all the good working women, - particularly, they said, those of Irish descent -, were queuing round the block to cast their vote, whereas the Liberal Ladies thought this was a bit beneath them and their Party had to legislate to prevent themselves suffering a significant disadvantage.
The reading I am doing at present about the Wobblies (IWW) seems to suggest that Australia was one of the main places outside America where the movement caught on. I don't know if you have seen any signs of a continuing presence.
You're not so bad at graphics yourself -- love the Cheney-toad-Howard sequence.
Australia seems so liberal that it was odd that Howard would hang onto power for so long. Glad you could taste victory, even vicariously.
So go Clinton. Or Edwards. Or Obama. Or anybody but you-know-who.
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