re: #336 freetoken

Australian politicians worry about the Americanization of their politics - i.e., the move towards violence:

Windsor calls for calm after death threats

Recommend reading the whole article.

Australia has very poor energy policy. Which is terrible, given that it’s a nation that has a very delicate climate and cannot sustain profligate energy use or stupid farming practices.

But politically, the country works. Mandatory and preferential voting marginalises kooks, and allows the government to actually do things in the public interest. Religion and politics barely intersect, robbing the fundie nutjobs of a power base. And while Australians are human, and thus just as susceptible to demagoguery and FOX-style lies, there’s no all-pervasive media to create the fake worlds that exist here in the states.

The last conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, led the country for over a decade, and his government’s policies are essentially responsible for Australia surviving the recessions of the last decade almost entirely intact. It is worth noting that ‘conservatives’ in Australian politics are nothing like American conservatives - their policies would be considered so far left that nobody would ever accept them, because the sacred cows of the American right are nothing more than tasty hamburger for the barbie. For instance, abortion does not figure in the national conversation, and the benefits of universal health care are so obvious that nobody would consider seriously denting it. Similarly, even our most conservative governments have aggressively curtailed gun ownership, with full support of the populace, who know that they are safer for it. Most importantly, Australian conservative governments are actually fiscally responsible, unlike the American right, and their fiscal policy is so clearly good that even the Labor governments say ‘we won’t change fiscal policy’ when they run.

The Howard government was voted out after a decade of excellent money management not because of scandal - they had survived scandal. A large reason they were voted out was because John Howard kept trying to introduce American-style wedge politics into the national conversation, and people were put off. Issues such as national pledges of allegiance, flying a lot of flags, and making gay marriage an issue. I remember when gay marriage suddenly hit the front pages - nobody had even considered it an issue till that moment, and suddenly our prime minister was talking about it like it was of critical importance. Even the most hardcore conservatives I knew were all ‘WTF?’

Australia has many issues, such as immigration and the aforementioned energy policy. It is far from perfect on these and other things. But because its political system works, and marginalises extremism, I have confidence that it will find a way to navigate them.