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Lessons from Australia’s election

By Wei Seng

A concern for Australia's voters

I tend to follow elections in major Western countries closely, if not because of my usual interest in the politics of these countries, then because the publications that I read such as The Economist and (to a lesser extent) The Straits Times have rather heavy coverage of the election, before, during and after. My platoon mate gets very excited about such elections and will often keep reminding me about the election day. But there are several factors that make the Australian election (that took place yesterday) so special this time round and also worth covering here on Erpz.net.

Firstly, the nature of which the current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attained power was rather unique. According to John McTernan in the Financial Times, the current ruling party Labour decided to "depose" ex-PM Kevin Rudd because of dips in popularity that were perceived as threatening to the party's cling onto power, a lesson learnt from Britain's Labour Party which held on to Gordon Brown despite his record-low popularity and ended up suffering in defeat during the elections. Gillard wanted a mandate for herself to rule, in view of the seemingly undemocractic circumstances in which she came to power, as well as her popularity just after she was selected as the new PM.

Her popularity dipped with time, however, as she stumbled and flip-flopped over the initiatives she wanted to push forward and her stand on various issues plaguing the country. Now that the election results are partially out, the initial lead over her rival Liberal party has whittled to the extent that the two parties have split the vote, with Liberal having one more seat than Labour but none with any majority significant enough to form a government. So ironically, the lesson that they learnt from Britain's Labour party appeared to be a wrong lesson. Maybe it was not time to depose Kevin Rudd yet.

The main harbinger of this Australian election for future Western elections is the hot topics that were thrown up during the election. Presiding over economic growth in a period where the world experienced a bad recession did not seem to benefit Labour at all. What was on the voters' radars, as McTernan suggested, were the environment, immigration and Australia's position on the global arena, topics which could highly likely be of significant influence in future elections in the West.

The most important topic was on the environment, and the importance of this will undeniably increase with time as the effects of climate change are unleashed upon the world. Rudd's popularity was supposedly a result of his green stance, from the signing of the Kyoto Protocol to his proposal for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for Australia. His popularity was thought to have declined when he climbed down on climate change initiatives such as the ETS. When Rudd was deposed, he was the probably the first leader in the West to be unseated because of environmental issues, which seemed to indicate the growing importance of environmental issues amongst the populace.

What strikes me as weird, however, is how Tony Abbott, the climate change skeptic and leader of the Liberal coalition, actually fared better in the election despite his stand on the environment. This would seem to contradict the lesson learnt that the environment is becoming an issue politicians cannot neglect. This would very much be perhaps a failure on Gillard's part, as she has also been waffling with regard to environmental issues. McKernan claims that Abbott "mined middle Australia’s often conflicted feelings" about the environment, which resulted in his better showing at the polls. This certainly would be quite a terrible lesson to take home though, if politicians were to see being climate change skeptics as vote-grabbing.

Then there's migration and the concept of Big Australia. Voters were uncomfortable with Rudd's plans to expand Australia's population, as much as migration generally has been beneficial for Australia and Australia is very much a country made up of migrants. Australians are generally satisfied with their standard of living and they worry about whether Australia can cope with an increased population, especially one that is a result of immigration. This could also be seen as environment-related, since after all sustainable development needs to be built upon sustainable population growth and certainly an expanding population would place greater stress on the environment. The issue regarding migration that many Australians are most unhappy about, however, is the inflow of refugees to the country. Migration and refugees are issues that would become more significant with time as globalisation opens up access for more and more countries in the developing world to developed countries, and as climate change unleashes its wrath on impoverished populations that would flock to other countries for shelter and a living.

Lastly, the concern about what Australia is to the world. Australians seemed uncomfortable about taking the lead in the region or in the world. Rudd championed several initiatives Pacific-wide that would put Australia at or near the heart of policy and decision making, which made some countries and organisations in the Asia-Pacific uncomfortable at attempts to take away its influence (mainly ASEAN and countries in the region). The country's realignment closer to Asia and further away from its friends in the West (especially America and Britain) seemed to make some Australians uncomfortable as well, especially as rising power China taps into Australia's mineral wealth and has attempted takeover attempts of several Australian mining giants in the process.

So what lessons are there to learn, really? I quote this huge chunk which captures nicely how this election could be a harbinger for future Western elections: "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".