Three Shocks

In the spirit of A&U's motto, first to know the nature of things, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and waterways which were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and extend our respect to Aboriginal and toouristrate islander peoples listening today. >> Oh, can I tell you, democracy sausages are my favorite [music] meal. They are dulu with no salu. >> Forget about what you've been told by the hate media. >> I'm optimistic. They [music] have the right idea. >> Google it, mate. You're >> such a sick fan. >> This is democracy manifest. >> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome [music] to this very special live recording which is a hybrid A&U meet the author event and democracy sausage. [applause] I'm Mark Kenny, director of the Australian Studies Institute, and it's my great pleasure to introduce George Megalogenus. He's the author of many books and particularly this brilliant book that we're talking about now, three shocks, who we are becoming in the 21st century. George, welcome to A&U. >> Thank you, Mark. And uh thank you to the audience. That was uh that was a uh thank yourself. Now sounds like canned applause but there are humans in this room. >> It's not canned applause. It's it's it's the real thing. >> Uh George whenever I've mentioned that I'm doing this event and u I guess you will have had a few interviews by now now that you're sort of talking about the book but when I've mentioned to a few people that I'm talking to you the first thing they say to me is what are the three shocks? Um so um I'll just go through them uh briefly and you can correct me if you feel I'm misrepresenting them but we're again being the first one being we're again being becoming a majority migrant nation. Um I think you say we're the first country to do so that is to >> first English- speakaking country to become majority migrant again. So there's obviously for the settler nations, US, Canada, New Zealand, and ourselves, there were periods in the sort of 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Well, not the 16th, certainly the 17s for the US, um, where they were majority migrant. So, uh, majority of the population has at least one migrant parent. We're the first English speaking nation to return to that position. and we're heading towards I think 55% is the the >> I think that the we obviously just filled out our census forms the other week and uh I think it would basically on based on the people flows after the reopening the economy for um after after lockdown after co the way those numbers are tracking it could be pushing towards 55% but that means in a Sydney a Melbourne and a Perth it's closer to 70%. Yes, we'll come to that because it is a sort of it's the tale of two Australas to some extent on that index. The the second one that you talk about and and I think it's important to say that these shocks aren't necessarily negative shocks, are they? >> No, no, they're identity shocks. So, they force you to think uh think a new about who we are. Um yeah, they're not negative shocks. The first two are you know the reality of Australia today. >> Yeah, that's right. And so that second one is the feminization of of the economy. uh women in business attire are more typical than men in overalls I think would be a good way of saying it. >> It's a that's brilliant way. I wish I'd thought of it myself. [laughter] >> Um and the third one is a transformed global picture in which Australia is I I guess finds itself in a new place in the world. Not quite as protected um subject to the whims of the of the superpowers. uh the one who is an ally treating us with perhaps sometimes as much capriciousness as the one who is potentially a foe. Yes. Yes. And the point about the third one uh without getting too deep into the thesis you know on your introductory remarks the previous 200 and something years of our settler history uh someone is watching our back and even if they're not thinking about us they do go to work on a day-to-day basis you know in the international sphere uh positioned in a way that protects us obviously were part of the British Emperor for a good for for a good period and then after the second world war we lked to the United States as our guar guarantor of our security the last 15 or so years and it certainly accelerates with the election of Trump and also a more assertive Xi Ping uh from Beijing uh there's no guarantee that Australia can look at the world in the way it did in the previous couple of hundred years a security guarantor always looking out for us but even if they're not thinking about us but also thinking about the trading partner uh even through Vietnam into stagflow in the 70s, Japan was still lining our pocket and the US whether they were or weren't a reliable actor globally uh certainly didn't have it in for us and Trump and she between them uh on any given day they may decide to hit a country that annoys them you know with 20 billion worth of economic coercion and you know if you just use that phrase you think we're talking about China but of course the tariff shock that came from Trump in the middle of the 2025 private election had an even bigger price tag on it. >> That's right. And even the recent call that the prime minister had with Trump only a few days ago, uh the subject of of of punitive tariffs was discussed. Trump didn't give any undertaking that he was going to give tariff relief. So at some level there it it can be hard to determine which one's the friend and which one isn't. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact there is um without without sort of getting too far ahead of ourselves the the attitudes to of Australians to towards both China and the United States were pretty consistent through the first decade of the 21st century and then those lines started to turn down. Uh it there's a a step down for Trump one in 2016. There isn't really a recovery with Biden in 2020. And then there's a an even deeper step, if you could call it, a more precipitous step down for Trump, too. Shui Ping was always tracking about 10 or 20 points behind. So the Americans would have had a favorability rating of about 60 or 70 and the Chinese are around 40 or 50. And those lines sort of, as I said, they they they stayed pretty constant for that first decade. And then China comes falls off the cliff as well during their economic coercion sort of 20 and 21 now because Trump has dragged the Americans even further down. The Chinese have almost caught him on the way down. They've bottom they've bottomed him out. No other country on this on this survey. This is a low institute survey goes all the way back. No other country has had a 20 point essentially a 20 point drop in their favorability rating over the over the over the past generation. And that's the tell for me that the third shock is actually registered uh in well not even voter land just public opinion generally in Australia. >> Yeah, I agree. I I mean that's what struck me about it too. Even when as I was watching those Loi reports come out, the extent to which um what is a kind of a mainstream narrative that is a narrative in mainstream media is probably a better way of putting it was having quite a significant reach into the community and we hear a lot about you know the media companies for which you and I have worked uh you know being being in sort of decline their relevance is is is meant to be going and so forth. But that suggested to me that there was quite a strong absorption of of of that information both cases really. >> Yeah, I think the community is actually picking up and it's a very sophisticated analysis too when you think about it because every other country as I say pretty much static. So the Kiwis at the top, the Brits, uh most of the European countries then well the US are in were in there and no longer are. Then you get a step down to, you know, sort of an Indonesia and then a precipitous step down and it's always been thus for Russia, Iran and North Korea way down the bottom. the fact that both China and America are now heading into that sort of bottom third of the um our attitudes to them basically and the question is essentially even if you took the leader out of the question a general question about do you trust this country to behave responsibly responsibly on the international stage. So, it's um yeah, look them up and then do another thing. Do a drop down on some of this polling and have a look at the attitudes by political party. And uh the outlier are the One Nation voter. The One Nation voter are the only ones that still rate Trump. >> Yes. As does their leader quite famously, which uh >> what does that but by the way, what does that tell you? Where are they getting their information from? They're almost on a MAGA drip. So they're not they're not consuming media in the way Labor, Liberal, National Party, Green, and Teal voters are consuming it. They're actually consuming completely different um uh uh uh well, it's more than just information. It's it's an it's an identity and an idea. And it's quite >> It is. It is. And and and anyone who writes, as I do about Trump from time to time, you you you pick it up from social media straight away because there's you you're instantly a clue accused of TDS which is Trump derangement >> arrangement syndrome >> um irrespective of how rigorous the argument is and as you'd imagine mine are very rigorous [laughter] >> as a mine >> so you know it doesn't seem fair but but look let's just stick with this first one for a moment the the we'll go back to this first one the migrant change um Malcolm Turnull often said we're the most multicultural successful multicultural country in the world um is that a fair statement I think it is a fair statement given the numbers. Um and even now with the support for multiculturalism uh sort of dipping uh it's still much higher and the scandal institute do check across all countries support for for the our ideal of multicultural is much higher than any equivalent poll you could measure in Europe, the US or the UK about support for migration. So we've still got notwithstanding the the debates the last couple of years it is it's a mainstream it's almost a mainstream value >> seems to be there are two elements right there's support for it which is which is the one you're talking about now the other one is the the actual extent of multiculturalism which is number >> that's the other point you're making yeah >> so the two countries you just mentioned the US and the UK for example have lower levels of on you know we talked about that 55% they're lower right >> well they're much lower >> it's significantly lower there's two ways to think about it. Um, if you were if you were to look at the Brexit vote and and then think about London and Greater Manchester, the two largest cities in the UK that voted to remain, they're less than 20% of their population. You look at uh London, it's not a New York and an LA in the US system, you know, they're less than 5% of the population. Melbourne and Sydney which had sort of their headquarters of multicultural Australia between the two of them are 40% of the national population. They also have more than half of all the new Australians. Twothirds of all the migrants born in India and 3/4 of all the migrants born in China. So multicultural but concentrated a particular a particular version of Australia the Eurasian version of Australia is concentrated in the southeast. there is a more commonwealth tilt to the migration uh overseas migration to a Brisbane and especially to Perth. So the largest overseas born community in both Brisbane and the G Coast are from New Zealand. Largest overseas born community in Sydney uh from China in Melbourne and in CRA they're from India and then Adelaide and Perth and Hobart again from England. So that multiplicity of identities by the way that is one of the big shifts uh that's that sort of personifi the the personification of the first shock is everywhere is different for the first time in our history. >> Yeah. A couple of things arise there. One of them is how do you sort of control for when you're kind of analyzing this control for um an another index another way of looking at it which is that we often hear Australia talked about as one of the most urbanized countries in the world as having this you know largely unpopulated interior of being basically most vast numbers of us in the cities. You compare that with the US or the UK that you were just describing there are so many people living outside the cities. So does that urbanization factor change the way we perceive of um of migration? >> Yeah, I think and this is almost an argument I'm developing because it's one thing that it's it's one thing to sort of sense um that there is an urban explanation, an urbanized explanation for why we are probably more socially cohesive in terms of our migration. You know, everyone has migration debates, but we're not having the version of the debate. you know, people aren't running around, you know, wound up by farright agitators to to sort of pull asylum seekers out of their houses as they're doing in the UK. Uh you're not getting uh permission, as Trump had at an election uh to militarize immigration enforcement. I mean, he may they may have overreached, but that's thing is still going on. You couldn't imagine either of those things happening in Australia. a a you know a sort of um a sort of mob tearing tearing down asylum seeker um accommodation or a major party leader saying not only am I going to militarize this thing you know Mexicans are rapists uh you know people from Haiti are eating their um are eating their dogs and cats and or eating other people's dogs and cats. It wasn't their own from memory when he was riffing on that thing. >> Yeah. So there is clearly there is clearly something else happening in Australia. And I think part of the explanation thinking it through because I you know sort of deep in the weeds writing the book and then try to come out um with a sort of simple version of the story sort of an accessible version of the story so you didn't have to drown on the data. It's just that there are just more of us living in the capital city than there are anywhere else. And not only that, I look back to the especially the 19th century and the role of Melbourne and especially in the through the gold rush all the way up until marvelous Melbourne in the 1880s. It's it's essentially the first middle-ass settlement on earth. Um that begins almost with a cold start. If you think about there weren't that many convicts to begin with, uh the place is almost born into affluence as a European settlement and for a good 30 or 40 years the rest of the world is measuring not so much measuring itself against Melbourne, but Melbourne's per capita income is a good 10 15 percentage points above equivalents in New York and in London. And they've got slums and they've got ethnic tensions and we didn't have quite that story in the 19th century. Even the sectarian um issue, which is obviously a bigger issue once the doors closed under white Australia in the 20th century, it's not that big of an issue in um in colonial Australia and especially in that sort of urbanizing Australia. By urbanizing, I mean you're talking about middle class values becoming almost the political norm. Uh you get universal um suffrage for men 21 and older. You get an 8-hour day very early. And for the Victorians here in the room, I know this is a third third audience, I imagine. You also invent your own footy game. Um, all within 18 months of um them getting the ballot, right? >> And a good one, too. >> Yes. Not a bad not a bad game. So, I think I think that is uh these are positive path dependencies by the way if you think about it because I think you can on top of an established cohesive formula, a middle class political formula. And also people have been voting and they want to vote and they've been doing it for a good 150 years before the turn of the 21st century when you have a big step up and then a because of the dispersement um between the cities of different groups of migrants. Uh I'm not surprised that we've handled it better because we we've tended to do this stuff better than anyone else anyway >> simply because of I think a more urbanized settlement. even the comparison between Melbourne and Sydney because there's a good 60 or 70 years between the two capitals when they sort of reach a years to get there. Um, and you um that's 100,000 each is the number I'm thinking of off the top of my head. But both of them sort of come out at the end of the 19th century pretty much, you know, equal size about half a million people each. >> And their values are not dissimilar, notwithstanding the political and the cultural rivalry. You know, they both got the ballot. They're both um you know they've sort of got a politics centered around the working man. Uh when you go into federation the two liberal parties, the protectionist and the free traders and the Labour party are all competing for that same guy, the man who works with his hands. I don't want to jump too quickly to the second shock just yet. But yeah, I think there's I think we underestimate how much of what's preceded us has taught us to do this stuff better than other countries. >> Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I I I suppose what I was thinking also though is that if we look at Australia now um we can and we made reference to this already. Um think about support for one nation particularly in the regions essentially you could make it's a generalization but you could make a a plausible case that urban urban electorates urban polities to the extent that you can classify them are more moderate than regional ones. uh you then look at more decentralized countries and perhaps you therefore have a different middle point. >> Yeah. And I think you're right. >> Politics >> and in fact we may well be observing because we're a sort of 2/3 one/3 you know 2/3 of the people in Australia live in the eight capital cities and as I mentioned earlier 40% of them live in just two and you add Brisbane which is 10% of the population half the Australian people live in just three cities. Uh but looking outside the capitals into the regions uh and the further out you get not just from the not just from the capital but also the major provincial cities like a Newcastle or a Jalong which are gentrifying uh you're getting value a values set and also demography that looks a lot more like middle America. >> Yeah. And uh so whilst a lot of these ideas are globalized but I think they're also very very localized. I think the relationship between city and country in Australia it's a bit of an inversion of what the traditional relationship between you know the elites of the east and the west coast and the hinterland in the in the um in the US and obviously in the UK sort of everywhere else versus London maybe with a bit of Manchester and a bit of Birmingham for a bit of diversity. um you know I think I think when you just count the people up and also how they've they've they've how the how the settlements have functioned uh over a couple of hundred years now there is a there is a certain Australian way of doing things now look I remember um towards the end of his period as prime minister when he thought he'd go for another 10 years John Howard I sat down with him and interviewed him uh and it's interesting when you interview a prime minister and you found this too in your work when you interview him at the peak of their powers, but you're interviewing for a book, so they're not thinking about the next day's headlines, so they're not as defensive. They they'll still share. Um, I gave him a bit of a a nudge on on the relationship with the US, which was really really good, obviously, with him and George Bush. And then I asked him about a couple of things that George Bush would think are crazy that Australia does that he did in particular. Gun law reform. Oh, yeah. Well, they wouldn't do that. Budgets, surplus budgeting. Oh, no, no, no, they wouldn't do that. >> [laughter] >> And it very became clear also Medicare notwithstanding the fact that Howard was an opponent of it in the 80s just on those three things. Uh these are unfathomable things for a government to do in the US. Take the guns off you by the way and a conservative prime minister taking guns off his people. Um >> I've always argued that was actually easier for a conservative to do. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Because he was never going to get any push back from from Kim Beasley. Absolutely. and also from you know he's taking on his own constituency there's a certain at least they trust his motives if they don't >> and they got Tim Fischer as well as a as a 2IC on it >> but yeah but remember they were running especially early phase of the mining boom they're running big surpluses and uh George Bush Junior has already gone the big unfunded tax cut and of course some of the um some of the seeds are already planted in the early part of the uh 2000s for the for the GFC over Yeah. >> Um, >> you know, it's that we are different to them. We feel different. We feel different to them. And >> yeah, I'm just wondering where this urbanization thing I'll drop it now. Wondering whether it sort of sits it explains to some extent because I think it said somewhere that we sit to the left of the of the um American political establishment and to and that Labor sits to the right of its its compatriots in the UK. >> Yeah. And I think that's that is an interesting framing if you think about it. Uh the Liberal and National parties when they were governing coalition certainly to the right of the Republican party, but the Labor Party could never win in an election uh with a sort of Democrat style, you know, woke a sort of relatively new term, but that sort of that sort of um class warfare always hurt Labor >> at election time. uh and also misreading some of the signals coming out of the Obama presidency. Some of them were, you know, Americans would come to tell the Labour party how to um how to make mistakes. Um they were obviously giving good advice. They thought it would be winning advice, but it help Labor continue to lose. Yeah. And I think I think we're different in both those respects. So more polarized US system uh with an Australian system up until recently before the two-party system disintegrated before our very eyes. You had the coalition closer to the center than the Republicans and Labour closer to the Sen uh center than the Democrats. And I think that is a function of think about think about just to tease your urbanization point out. the Democrats would be a little more um a little more polarizing to a to a hinterland electorate because they do identify a lot more with the big cities and maybe because we've got more of them and because Labor is also competing in the suburbs until recently with the coalition and the coalition also have their base in used to have their base in the middle class cities. The Republicans had lost that 20 30 years ago. >> Yeah. Let's go to the second shock. the the feminization of uh of the Australian workforce uh which is you know has we had Paul Kelly sitting in these chairs recently and he's talking about the Liberal Party having kind of missed significant cultural changes in Australia uh but this process as well um it's quite recent isn't it it's been coming for a long time but it's quite recent in terms >> yeah there's about there's about there's about 50 years worth of um buildup to this story so you think the sort of the beginning firstly women entering the workforce in relatively large numbers in the 70s. Uh you get the fertility rate falling off the clip below replacement rate. Obviously the pills come in to it in the 60s. You've got um that period which really has about a 10 or 15 year demographic effect uh in the sort of composition of our universities with women entering universities because of free tertiary education under Goff Whittam. By the early 80s, there are more women than well more girls and boys entering university campuses for the first time. And so that that thing that starts in the early 80s and then you think about what's been happening to blue collar labor through the um through deregulation and then especially the recession of the early 90s. Sooner or later those lines are going to cross. Uh you know that you got a better educated workforce with more women than men in it. So tertiary degree holders, professionals. So women, female professionals over top male professionals a long time ago, but but female professionals over topping uh uh male trade and technical workers. So the so the bachelor, but this is a blue collar worker with a with a TA or better. And so they're tertiary educated as well. They they they've gone on after this this is a skilled workforce. I'm not this not talking about laborers and I'm not talking about carers on the female side of the economy. uh those lines should have crossed uh early into the 2000s, but the mining boom, the construction phase of the mining boom gave gave the skilled male worker one last leg up. And by the way, it gave it to him at the same time that the Americans are going to lose 2 million manufacturing jobs to to China's entry in the WTO. And so this is another reason when a when a John Howard and um and a George Bush Jr. are comparing notes on not just budgeting and gun law reform and universal health care. The other thing is we did not have the problem the Americans had um with that phase of globalization. So we didn't have we didn't have rust belt cities. We didn't have um you know in a way we sort of got a fair bit of that out of our system in a restructured sense in the '9s. But that meant that those lines didn't cross until the second decade. And this is a decade where a lot of these changes uh uh are manifested. So we become majority migrant at a national level around 2018. But the line between professional female workers and and male tradesmen blue collar males crosses in 2015. Actually ironically or comically comically maybe it's probably comically crosses in the same quarter that Tony Abbott's about to lose his job to Malcolm Turbo. The culture has played probably the best data gag on a political system that ever could, which is suddenly we've turned the co we sort of we've crossed the threshold or rubicon even to a female centered economy and the bloke in Speedos has just lost his job. But that didn't by the way that didn't mean that Labor and Liberal uh continued to look at the electorate uh you know with fresh eyes. They were still looking to the past for the next couple of elections. >> Yeah, it's interesting though when you think about it. I mean, as you say, the most macho prime minister that we've had really um sort of um presentationally quite proud of that and and to think that he had I still find this uh staggering to think about given where we are now. But he had a cabinet with one woman in it. One woman. So [snorts] when they when Labour loses in 2013 uh and I did have a good look at the at the representation House of Representatives for the major parties and the minor parties and I went all the way back to the '9s. So I started before the quota for Labor and just track those lines and if you track those lines you see a very very weird story happening on the coalition side. They win a landslide in 96 and they got something like 15 women. Gabby Chan and the audience wrote this terrific article for the Australian with a quote that a lot of Liberals probably regret. They had an idiot line going, what they called an idiot line going into the 96 campaign. This the seats that they weren't going to target with 10% or more requiring 10% more swing. So they just pre-selected women into those seats and a lot of them won >> and and a number of them held their seats all the way through the Howard era. >> In fact, they were ironically they became these great supporters of Howard, didn't they? They felt like there was often talk about this, you know, Howard's battlers, MPs, you know, the ones who were really kind of owed their their political careers to him and they stuck with him and it's one of the reasons arguably why Howard never faced a challenge because it was just this plinth of support within the >> and by the way increases his numbers both through 2001 and 2004. So that those most recent intakes are never going to cast a ballot for Peter Costello in a in a leadership contest. But anyway, when you look when you look at the representation and the quota plays a really big part in the story, it's a bit of a time bomb uh under the coalition because the coalition didn't didn't think that it meant anything to them. When Labour loses in 96, they've only got four women in the lower house and 45 guys. And that meant through the rest of the '9s and in the first decade of the 21st century, the quota, which target was 35% of winnable seats, to have a a a woman running in those seats. um the quota couldn't really work in the way Labour designed it because those seats where you would where you would um where you would um >> yeah prioritize a woman it would have to be a seat that you've lost >> or a seat where the bloke is retiring and so the guys that was sort of the survivors of 96 none of them are going to give their seats up. a laborer below quotota for quite a while and Howard would look across the dispatch box and I remember in the press gallery he would taunt them about his numbers versus labors. Now, by the way, the representation that the female representation that Howard had in his government is 96. The subsequent governments of Abbott, Turble, and Morrison never matched them. >> Never matched them. >> Never matched them. And Labour in its landslide defeat in 2013 and it and it has a it sort of saved a couple Kevin Rod saved a couple more seats relative to to Keading in 96, but it's basically the same defeat. Um, and it's a and it's a structural blow to them, but the quota has finally kicked in in that in that in that election. And then as they move through, uh, they've got more women than the coalition have, even though a long they appear to be a long way uh, away from government. Now that you you alluded to poor old Tony Abbott's first cabinet, he would have had a second woman in there, but um, Sophie Mirabella lost Indai to Kathy McGawan. So instead of because she was she was the shadow minister. She she would have been in the cabinet. But um I always look back now on that particular election and that particular seat that that was the first warning sign to the coalition that their base um sooner or later for demographic reasons, for cultural reasons, education reasons, you know, that turn in the economy that sooner or later women there will be enough of them going h you still don't see us, do you? Okay. Out. And it ends obviously it ends for Abbott a term before it ends for the coalition because he loses Winger in 2019. >> Yeah, precisely. But Zali Stegel becomes the first of what then becomes that teal wave. Yeah. Uh yeah, it's really significant. But it's it's even more significant when you think that here we sit now in 2026 and that >> that issue has not been confronted by the Liberal Party. It's a party which I'll put it in pretty blunt terms appears like it would rather die than actually uh put in a quot to get >> so the worst the worst thing well I'll stay on the fence. I won't I won't applaud that sentiment necessarily. It's technically correct but I won't revel in it if that makes sense. >> I'm not reing at all. >> I know you're not either. But there there's been a couple of uh in the public in the published documents that those um postmortems that the that the Liberal Party did for both 22 and 25. I also got my hands on 2019s. And there's a warning in the 2019 one, you can't expect to win another election just relying on Queenslanders. So even coming out of the 2009 election, they were warned that if we can't get our vote up again in Melbourne and Sydney, we're gone. So there was the structural problem. But in in the the most recent one, the one that um Anthony Al Benezy TD in parliament because the Liberal Party decided not to release it, it leaked. Yeah. >> Both the 25 and the 22 uh documents state they state boldly that the coalition coalition support amongst women had been in trend decline since the second term of the Howard government. Like that line had been had been it's a it obviously it became a cliff face by 22. But so this when when we ask why haven't they worked this out, they've been told this, but they haven't managed to and I've got a suspicion that part of it is cohort effect. The guys are still in that in the building and they're not able to they're not able to sacrifice for the greater good of their party um their seats for women and the Teals have ended up sorting it out for them anyway. They they've created the realignment for themselves. But the other thing is until the Labour defeat in 2019, Labour were actually validating the coalition's assumption, notwithstanding the quote of feminizing their caucus, Labour continued to validate the coalition assumption that the blue collar male was the swing voter. That's why they're all wearing high viz and helmets >> with a lot of high viz. A lot of >> a lot of high viz. But even even more recently in Victoria with Justinder Allen, she as soon as she became premier, the first thing she did was pop the high viz on. Gladice Berricklin was wearing the high viz a bit even when she's you know uh doing the most Melbourne thing of all she did as a New South Wales premier opening tram lines [laughter] anyway sorry but yeah know it's it should be obvious to them it kind of is but there there were I think two reasons why they couldn't do it one is cohort effect so the people in the party room would have had to give up power and people don't like giving up power the other thing is they won two more elections than they probably should have which is and 19. Malcolm Turble in the interviews thinks they should have lost 19, but I actually think they should have lost 16. And for them losing 16 would have forced them to confront. >> Well, from their point of view, from their point of view, I I think that's probably right. Although, when you look back and think about the chaos that was happening in Labor and that led to the wine boss, the idea of them being back after one term was >> Yeah, it's pretty heroic kind of thinking. I mean it cleans up >> turned out they got I mean Turbo took what Abbott had uh I think um what do he have 94 seats I think >> yeah Timber lost 14 seats and took and was winner seat of losing his majority he actually they it's well known that both he and Lucy wrote checks for the Liberal party because they fell short of do during that 2016 campaign which meant that they didn't energize the elector if no one's contributing but >> under our brilliant electoral laws we didn't find out about that for about 14 months after the election. >> Absolutely. And of course that's a double dissolution. So Hansen gets back in with half the vote that she had in 98 because she didn't need she would have probably would have got in in a half election in that election anyway. But but one thing Malcolm did tell me in in the interview, Abbott was already in trouble in 2016 in Waringo and some of that kitty that both he and Lucy kicked in to sort of underwrite the Liberal campaign went to Oringa to save Abbott. >> Yes, I've heard that too. >> So I then asked him straightfaced, oh do you reckon you made a mistake there? And he said, he said, "On reflection, I probably almost went into Malcolm Speed. On reflection, I probably should have let him go." Um, and I think the independent would have given us um confidence and supply. And he's probably right. That's his big his big sliding door moment possibly is minority government. >> Yes. Well, he had another big sliding door moment, which is he should have gone to the election in 2015 when he absolutely straight up. the one it's the one thing I've got him to concede in in an interview was was that perhaps he should have. But his answer was Tony Abbott had done no fundraising. The party wasn't in any shape to fight an election. To which my response I think at the time was, "Yeah, but you ended up funding it yourself anyway." >> You would have won anyway. Well, you would have had to do it anyway. You would have won. Yeah. No, he launched he launched the previous book in this um trilogy in uh in late 2015. In fact, if he had his time over again, he wouldn't be worried about book launches. He would have been on the trail. >> Yeah, that's right. because of that Fouian pact that he'd eventually we we we gradually saw the deal that he had done in order to take over the leadership but in those early months in 2015 that wasn't so so obvious. Um let's just go quickly to a couple of other issues because this has been such an absorbing conversation that we're fast running out of time. Um just to the to the the final shock, you know, the the the international one, just deal with that briefly. Um how how do you think this is going to play out? What's the significance of it? I mean, we've already seen an electoral effect of it in the last >> Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So, in a way, there are many more shocks than just these three shocks are identity shocks. It's our place in the world. Our sense of self and our place in the world are affected [laughter] affected fundamentally by these three shocks. >> And I've got obviously there's a bit of an original research in it to be able to to be able to um point to the where they're most acutely felt. >> Mhm. especially in the in the sort of diversity of the capital cities which obviously affects started to affect the Liberal party. There was a murmur in 2019 and then the trap door opens in 22 and then in 25 the eviction of the Liberals from the capital cities is completed. Now the first and the second shock are both affecting the Liberal party's position uh visly the mainstream Australian voter. So, this in a way is a two-party system story. >> Yeah. >> For the first two shocks. The third shock, and now I wish I'd sort of thought of this when I wrote the book, but after I finished writing the book, I realized there are two trains running through this book. Two ideas running through this book. Um, the first train, the first couple of carriages, uh, New Australia and and a feminized economy. So, these are these are the two real Australas and all the passengers in the first two carriages, you can see them, uh, who we are today. But the third carriage, there are a couple of jokers have actually turned up in the third carriage and they're causing Maria Hill. It's Donald Trump and Xi Ping and they're almost threatening to throw the entire operation off the rails. >> You're going to pull the emergency handbrake and [laughter] >> um and then you know there'll be some superhero probably, you know, Mark Carney will come in in between them and then just and just and just separate that carriage and let it go back down the hill [laughter] and then that two of them maybe try to push it up. But the second carriage is politics. It's the party system and it's this train that is so far behind the train that's carrying real Australia. You know, there are people waiting on the platform that have already bought their tickets and one party and then the other party doesn't want to let them on and it's still it misses stops and it accelerates past thinking it's finally found it's finally found the um uh you know the map and then it's lost again another dead end and then you all got to get off. A bit like that old story Mark Twain used to tell about at the interchange at Aubry between Melbourne and Sydney because the rail gauges were obviously different for a good part of the settlement. The most moronic thing that he'd ever seen a bureaucrat conceive that you had to get off the train to get on another one. Um, the third shock for us, I actually think both Turble and uh, more recently Anthony Albanesei probably did as well as you could with Donald Trump giving given who you were dealing with. >> And I don't know whether that's Greg Norman or, you know, >> Joe Hockey or >> or Joe Hawk or, you know, Critical Minerals or Hang on a minute, mate. Seriously, if you do tariff us the first time around, you realize you're tariffing yourself because especially if you're tariffing steel, you're ind military industrial complex, which we're [laughter] which we're a buyer of and intimately involved in. You know, you maybe you don't want to be doing that. By the way, can we just talk quickly about the tariff shock that completely threw Dutton's campaign off uh in 2025? So, Liberation Day, remember he tariffs Diego Garcia, which is their military base. It probably just came up on their spreadsheet. It had a foreign looking name, you know, hit them. >> And then there was the uh that penguin colony. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. >> No human footed trot on it for 10 years and they tariffed that as well. Um but notwithstanding that I think Albanese has done a pretty good job and of course Turble in the first term actually got us an exemption and also got to uh Trump weirdly in that telephone call that was licked for the world to hear he still honored the refugee swap. He still honored it. >> Yeah that was the main argument on the telephone call was the refugee swap. That's why, you know, the worst call. And uh >> you guys are worse than us, I think he said at one point, which made a lot of us feel pretty uncomfortable. >> And by the way, do you think do you think the Pacific solution has kind of randomly turned up in both the public language in the UK and especially in the enforcement um philosophy of the US with ICE? I think absolutely we've done a bit of a we talk about we talk about cohesive multicultural Australia but in terms of the militarization of the immigration system at the border um you know we're we're 20 years ahead of the rest of the world um >> yeah I think it's a good point look one of the things I want to ask you about which is a little bit of a a sort of a jump cut right but it's you you mentioned before talking about Melbourne I love the the the description of Melbourne in the early part of the book and and I almost felt like I was reading a novel at times, you know, we because you there's some personal anecdotal stuff there about growing up. >> Which one dropped off the page for you? Because there was a fair bit. >> I mean, there's the thing about the diving off the swimming. No, but but but also just I I think you paint this really interesting picture of it. And of course, I grew up in Adelaide, so I I'm I'm kind of juxtaposing some of those. >> So, some of the same some of that would be familiar. So, you know, I grew up on a thing called Deacon Street. So, I sort of had to let the reader know that before I talked about Alfred Deacon. Uh, uh, my first visit to a swimming pool was to the Howard uh, the Harold Halt Memorial Swimming Center in Melbourne Glenn Iris >> and and nearly drowned. No, >> nearly drowned. Yes. >> Was it there? I can't remember. Was it? >> Oh, it was definitely the Harold Halt. >> First time I'd ever been. It hadn't been in anything deeper than the than a bathtub. And uh, we're in the paddling pool and stuff at the front. I'm only five or six and mom says, "You must stay here." No, no, no. I'm bored. board out. I went, she said, "As long as you don't go to the deep bed and she just could not follow my crazy train of thought, then you know what boys are like at that age." I saw everyone jump in and then come out like performing seals. I thought, "I'll try that." Then before she could stop me, I did a running jump off the side of the pool into the deep end and panic gulped and then sank like a stone. and a kid at twice my size and probably only a few years old and me came in fished me out and then you know thank you in broken English and I told you so in Greek vaka [laughter] and you also talk about the the the way you you describe Melbourne I think for kind of allegorical or wider purposes in terms of describing something about Australia. You talk about the way it's settled. You talk about uh where the ethnic groups are. Um I I find all that I found all that really fascinating. Some of it as I say kind of carries across. >> You then you then can jack opposed to Adelaide and you could certainly do it to Sydney and Brisbane. Um and the thing about >> it it is the foundation of our multiculturalism, isn't it? But but one of the things it's always struck me about our multiculturalism that is that makes it strong and it's probably some of those things we've already talked about. But it's also the multi the multi is important, right? the the number the diversity of different groups. >> Yeah. And I think the big the big argument sort of for me there's a couple of things for the previous book Australia second chance but as I was sort of revisiting the white Australia period where essentially what the founders of federation and white Australia obviously there are iterations of it from the 1850s onwards in terms of the treatment of um the Chinese miners on the gold fields. the idea that if you could uh if you could get to a version of an Angloeltic culture and you know Deacon used to refer to the unclean thing and to the lower Latin types you know Pacific Islanders, Asians, Greeks, Italians, Spanish. Um and of course by the time Billy Hughes comes around in the first world war he's even deporting white folk. You know he's interning the Germans and then after the war he's deported 6,000 of them around 6,000 of them. uh that that that whiteish pretty white Australia, Angloeltic Australia through the 10, 20s, 30s and 40s, especially in the first world war and then into the 20s and the 30s is more divided than Australia today. And I think the door closing and that's your point about growing as fast as you would otherwise would because of migration but also the door is closed which means that the rest of the world suddenly becomes unknowable and you get this thing that happens in the Australian psych which no one knows we're here and then you know some rando visits you even see it through the 60s and the 70s all the sorts of people that just turn up out of nowhere that people have been watching on TV and they'd get mobbed and then they get receptions at town halls and stuff not just the Beatles right this happened to a lot of people that happened they all be jade too. It's a crazy it's a crazy insight when you remember this stuff into what that is per period of isolation 30 40 years especially economic and cultural did and I do think we're more divided and part of that issue is religion Protestant v Catholic and I think multiculturalism certainly the postwar migration program of the 50s and 60s takes pretty much takes the steam out of the old sectarian divide and then the 70s when you do switch to multiculturalism it's almost Yeah, sure. This works fine. Um, I'm not looking at >> even in Melbourne when I'm looking in the 70s with those working-class suburbs at all intents and purposes of slums. There's a different group. There's a different group in each of those in each of those suburbs. The Greeks in and around the Yara, the Italians to the north, uh, migrants from Yugoslavia to the west, and then the English everywhere else, English and Irish everywhere else. And that that thing that happens in Melbourne predicts pretty much what goes on in every other capital city after that. And uh I've got sorry without going too deep into the weeds on this. I was always fascinated by the the decision the Gillards made because I came to Australia under the£10 palm scheme. They were heading for Melbourne. They met a Welsh family on on the boat and got off in Adelaide. Um some of the some of the migrant uh by ship journeys in the 50s uh a lot of the palms would hit free mantle and couldn't couldn't couldn't go any further especially if they were on traveling second or you know what the hell was that um a lot so when you when you look at the distribution of of postwar migration and then especially the 21st century you do see some of these patterns uh uh are both transport, logistics and then the establishment of a community. Um 80% of all migrants will land subsequently to where there's an established community. So it something happened first here. Something happened first here and sorry we're not in Melbourne, am I? Sorry. Something happened first in Melbourne in the certainly in the 1850s, but very quickly you could see it in other parts of in colonial Australia and then something happens again after the second world war first in Melbourne and then all you really needed to do if you you know you took the culture out of it and you just just basically plotted the demography you would you would you would see a point in the not too distant future certainly the 80s and 90s for Sydney where you get different ethnic face in all the suburbs. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's really quite fascinating. Now, I'm going to ask you a question about a different phase in the parliament. The reason I'm flagging that is so that I can remember that I'm doing it. Uh but also because I want to invite uh anyone to come to the microphone who's got a question. We don't have very long because we've been going on a bit long, but um it' be terrific if uh one or two people could make their way to the microphone uh while we um consider this this question. Now, I'm going to go to the parliament. We were talking before about the influx of women in in in the economy but also >> the timeline in the parliament. Yeah. >> You it seems to me you kind of foreshadow I don't know whether predict is too strong that um it took some time for the influx of women for the for the change in the workforce and in politics to really show up in the way it has shown up in the parliament. You seem to think uh that the same thing will happen with ethnicity. But it's interesting. I mean that's that that's an interesting challenge I think because um we now have multiculturalism being kind of openly challenged in you know this idea of a monoculture and it's an explicit sort of fault line now in our politics. Yeah. So obviously thinking about what's happened this year with the surge uh one nation uh one nation surge and picking up Farah and picking up four seats in the lower house in South Australia. Uh the story of Farah is interesting because the the the tealight candidate still won Aubry and in South Australia Labour won 32 of the 33 seats in Adelaide and only two outside Adelaide. uh it held the two that it won. So the the other 12 seats outside Adelaide that are not held the two held by Labour went four independent for Liberal and for One Nation. So there's clearly a fracturing in a polarization. >> And this is a very this is a very moderate polity as well. South Australia. Yeah. >> Yeah. But it but you could start forget the opinion polls. You could look at how people actually voted in both those elections and you could start to see a cannibalization of the coalition vote in the regions which makes one nation and in fact what ends up happening if you do get to that point is that the is that regional Australia where onethird of the people live give or take some you know fairly progressive provincial centers uh is identifying itself almost in contradiction to in opposition to the urban centers. So whilst the political center has now moved from north back to south, so Melbourne and Sydney decided the last two federal elections, Queensland pretty much decide, you know, it's the swing state in the in the elections from 1996 through to 2009. The Howard era is basically defined by supermajorities that the coalition had, the LMP had subsequently in Queensland. It is entirely plausible in the next cycle, next election or maybe the election after that the Labour party gets trapped into that sort of pre22 thinking where it thinks that suddenly the Howard era has reemerged and if Anson's back that it means that you know it never this this calculation of ours that we had to pate the Paul Keating used to call them blue collars with rednecks which how he described how he described that voter, that battler that Labour lost in the recession uh and then sort of came out the other end uh uh in the second half of the '90s as liberal and then some of them obviously went to Hansen for a little while there. So the Labour party looks there looks to the regions you know to try and save a Hunter and try to save a couple of other seats and then worries about some of Metropolitan because of its demography is getable for one nation. What happens to multicultural Australia which are at the moment all pretty much Labor seats, a couple of teal seats that have got sort of large Chinese Australian populations especially. What happens to multicultural Australia then when the political system has already signaled to you that you get more attention and you feel better about yourselves if you elect an independent. So you would not wish this on your parliament where you actually get an acceleration cuz I as I say I have sort of you know mechanical explanation for why you get time lags in institutions >> and uh but you may actually get a speeding up of the diversity of the parliament uh through Labour's fault for for an own goal from the Labour party that they're not they're not thinking more strategically about building bridges between city and country to ward off Hansen. if they're thinking to appease Hansen and what was Tony Burke thinking of going to the press club and then he had the rug pulled under him. It to me it looks like that he probably wanted to go a bit harder. >> Um and maybe they did bring Paul Eric in the room. I'm not sure. I've got no idea. But they should have cuz he would have said to them, "Whoa, hang on. We suddenly competing for the one/3. Have a look at what just happened in South Australia. We've only got two of the 14 seats in the regions and they've only got four." Or do you want to give them all in the regions and then suddenly the capital cities? >> Yeah, it seems crazy for both sides to capitulate to one nation. I mean, >> well, especially if the elections are decided in the capital cities. But by the way, crossbench central in our federal parliament is New South Wales. Um there are only just a handful of Liberal seats left in in um in the widest parts of Sydney. They've only got three left in sort of metropolitan Sydney. The Teals have got more than the Liberals in in Sydney. Labour at the moment got a super majority but most of it's in western Sydney and you could see two three four five six >> Dles turning up at the next >> yeah couple of parliaments and I think >> absolutely >> you know as a new Australian I'd say hooray but I don't think that that country can function >> I don't think that parliament functions especially if you accept the polarization between Hansen's Australia and multicultural Australia >> yeah it's going to be interesting we're going to go >> question because we have the Latin American film festival. >> Oh yeah, and they're going to they're going to start playing. We >> we're about to be overrun by the Latin American film festival, which is probably a pleasant experience in some ways, but Gabby Chan. >> Okay, just a quick one, George. Can you look at your three shocks through a slicing electorate slightly different? And that is with the millennials 40 and under. um people like Hannah Ferguson, challenging elbow, uh Chanel Contos, uh a ro as a role model. These people are really making gains. >> This is Gabby, thanks for that question because the other thing and I don't want to do any predicting in the book, but once you you hit the two, you can start making predictions. What was the Liberal Party problem ultimately? Professional women. What is Labour's vulnerability in the end? I think electorally is not to the Greens. it is to younger professional educa, you know, tertiary educated, but also, you know, they play Labor off a break um in terms of social media. And Hannah Ferguson's not going to win Grindler, but Hannah Ferguson might take a chunk out of the Labour vote. And if you were if you were then thinking the next couple of elections, uh, a tear-like thing from younger Australia, uh, could easily happen to the Labour Party as well as the fracturing of their multicultural base as well. It absolutely it it could and would be on um, if you continue to do podcasts uh, the way the PM did the other day. Um, you know, with those long tales on them, people finally get around to listening to them and they think, "Oh, okay. >> Not all podcasts are equal, it turns out." Um, would you please thank George Megalenus. And now it's my pleasure to invite Professor Jill Shepard to move the vote of thanks. >> Thank you everyone. Thank you, George. Thank you, Mark. I'm going to be a little bit self-indulgent, which I wouldn't normally. I'd normally just get up and speak off the cuff, but I'm quite intimidated being in George Megalogenus's presence. So, I've written some notes, which is very unlike me. Um, I grew up in a household where the only intellectual voice that we recognized was Andrew Boltz. And as a very dorky teenager in a very monocultural part of out of Melbourne, I was allowed to read the Australian, but no other broad sheet. And even that was a little bit sus. And I found this guy who would use numbers and we'd use graphs and he'd talk about stats and I was completely enamored. And now looking back 20 bit more than 20 years later, I am really stunned to notice how well you have chronicled both my the changes in my thinking about Australian politics, but I think how I feel about Australia more generally and that you have gone from, you know, quite an optimistic voice um about the ability of our electoral system to withstand both domestic and international shocks to increasing ly as I have done be becoming noticeably more pessimistic about the ability of our system to address new realities both domestically and abroad and you know I think it's it's true simultaneously that the stability of our democratic system is is a great blessing and it's also an incredible albatross. uh it's a little bit trite to talk about the fourth estate and I don't want to in front of two journalists you know pump you up too much but I think the uh circulation of of a sort of ground truth has never been so important I hope that the role of the academy has never been so important because when we look to the parliament both in Canberra and in any of the state capitals I don't necessarily see people and I should probably specify that I'm talking about the major parties here I see people who are fairly complacent uh despite in the case of the 2025 election having their respective major party vote shares dwindle to about a third of the electorate each. In any other country, this would send alarm bells uh you know off inside major party headquarters in Australia because of that system of of stability that we've we've crafted so carefully. Judith Brett calls it benthamite. I think you're probably maybe more correct, George, to call it middle class. You know, a sense of complacency um in in our stability is becoming increasingly worrying as someone looking from the outside. There's no pressure, I think, internally to do better. And so increasingly that pressure has to come from from without. More selfishly, your engagement, George, with academia and with political science more specifically is something that we cherish, particularly as we face increasing headwinds in our sector. So, thank you on behalf of the audience here tonight. Thank you on behalf of Democracy Sausage listeners and thank you very personally from this dorky net playing Essenden football club watching journalismloving kid who didn't have that many good role models in the outer suburb of Beric uh but who got out in the end and now gets to meet you on a lovely Wednesday night in Canra. So, thank you [music]