It is 4pm on 5 November 2008 and Barack Obama has just secured the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the first black President of the United States. The scenes of jubilation on the streets of Harlem, the quoting of Martin Luther King by CNN anchors trying to mask their elation, and a moving and characteristically articulate acceptance speech from the president-elect, all leave me quite emotional despite living on the other side of the planet. The
Dallas Morning News called it an ‘historic moment’ and clearly it was just that.
However, as my initial euphoria subsides and the crowd slowly shuffles out of Grant Park on Chicago’s lakefront, my tears of joy are replaced with tears of melancholy as my mind inevitably turns to our own head of government and election victor, Kevin Rudd. Rudd was elected in 2007 in seemingly similar circumstances to Obama. Both elections signal the return of the centre-left parties after years in absentia. Both saw the rejection of deregulation policies and the War in Iraq. And both also highlighted the future of political campaigning with the Internet playing a significant role in the Rudd and Obama victories. However in September 2007, I do not remember feeling inspired or euphoric. I certainly don’t recall my cheeks becoming wet and salty with tears. In fact I don’t remember any emotions beyond relief that I would no longer be subjected to John Howard’s head while eating my dinner.
Largely I think this can be attributed to the fact that Kevin Rudd is just not a very inspirational bloke. Now clearly Obama is something special and not all American politicians have his charisma or ability to draw flocks of formerly apathetic voters to the booths. The question that interests (and somewhat frightens) me is whether an Obama could ever be elected in Australia. Here I’m not referring to Obama’s race — if the yanks can put their bigoted past in the past, then we can too — but to the vehement hostility to change that seems to permeate Australia’s electoral patterns, especially in recent years.
According to ABC election guru, Antony Green, the dominant issues in the 2004 federal election were the War in Iraq and health care for the elderly. Now despite the fact that Mark Latham’s ALP were on the ‘right side’ of these issues, John Howard’s coalition not only won but claimed five formerly Labor seats. In 1998, despite introducing the unpopular goods and services tax (GST), and in 2001, despite the embarrassing Tampa crisis, John Howard defeated Kim Beazley convincingly in both elections. It seems to me the one thing holding back both Beazley and Latham is that they were both just a bit too different from John Howard. Had either of them been successful in their campaigns it would have marked far too much change for Australians. Instead we wait eleven years only to replace one white-haired, bespectacled ‘fiscal conservative’ with another. Not exactly ‘change you can believe in’.
But perhaps these patterns are not merely reflective of a cultural hostility to change within the Australian psyche. Perhaps instead they reflect a more fundamental difference between the Australian and American political systems. Clearly Obama’s win exemplifies a significant swing of the pendulum in America. It seems to me however that this type of drastic change is only possible where the political spectrum of the nation is inherently more extreme, and this only occurs in nations where voting is voluntary. When voting is enforced and the apolitical are the focus of every election, the prospects for change and a healthily swinging pendulum are dramatically decreased. It also deters leftfield and potentially inspirational people from running for parliament. The time has come for Australia to head Nick Minchin’s call and revisit the mandatory voting debate. Obama has proved that a different and inspirational candidate can energize a nation’s politics and improve the state of its democracy.
How do I know this?
Dallas Morning News. ‘Editorial’. Tuesday November 4 2008
Green, A. ‘Federal Election Historical Archive’.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/archive/
CNN television channel. Wednesday November 5 2008
Fox News television channel. Wednesday November 5 2008
Louth, J. ‘Compulsory Voting in Australia’.
Australian Review of Public Affairs Vol. 6 No. 1 November 2005
Kirk, A. ‘Minchin renews voluntary vote call’ (radio transcript).
ABC’s PM. Monday September 19 2005
