It was Donald Horne who in 1964 coined the term “The Lucky Country” in his book of the same name. When used out of context, the expression is used repeatedly as an affectionate nickname that suggests Australia is a land of luck and prosperity that anybody can foster from. When you read the entire quote, however – “Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck” – you realise that the patriotism many find in the phrase is as miss-placed as when American presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, a staunch conservative, thought Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” was a patriotic ditty about old-fashioned American values rather than a liberal protest song about the ramifications of the Vietnam War. The more you know.
I’m not going to go into a big political spiel. Dear local readers back home have certainly been through enough these last few months. And as fun and oft-repeated as it is to say “if so-and-so wins the election I’m moving overseas,” I had no intentions of leaving my comfortably shambolic and unglamorous twenty-something life in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs as a protest of my homeland’s equally shambolic slipping political standards. Turns out I did get a head start on many of my friends and have had a marked increase in inquiries about the spare couch in my bedroom. I don’t see how the LNP wouldn’t approve of renting my spare floor-space to deserting Aussies. Capitalism!
When I moved here some five and a bit months ago the election definitely wasn’t the first thing on my mind. I had plenty of my own personal reasons to leave home without considering Mr and Mrs Working Family for whom politics had pandered to for as long as I have been able to vote (and surely much longer before that, too). However, in the face of events back home, I can honestly say I’m glad I’m not there. Not being bombarded by election coverage has been one of the bonus upsides of my move. And even then, anybody who follows me on Twitter (@glenndunks if you don’t already – I’m entertaining, I swear) or is friends with me on Facebook can tell you that I was still getting quite into the whole ordeal.
I cast my vote a couple of weeks early at the Australian consulate on 42nd Street. It was a typically Australian affair with a few rickety cardboard polling booths, some pencils on a string, a town hall style table and chair set up for electoral roll tickers, and a line that snaked throughout the 38th floor of this glass skyscraper. I luckily didn’t have to wait too long, but just as I was leaving the number of people had grown rapidly. I was suddenly surrounded on all sides by Aussie accents and it was rather pleasant until I saw all 93 below-the-line boxes I was apparently being asked to number. And there wasn’t even a sausage sizzle or cake stall at the end for our effort. We were jipped!
On the night of the election I had gone to bed fairly certain of the outcome. Waking up by chance at 6am I thought I’d check Twitter for confirmation and lo and behold there it was. Those beers I’d had the night before suddenly felt stuck in my throat. I now know the shame that many Americans felt during the infamous George W Bush years. Pride be gone. And I tell you what, if the Aussie dollar rapidly goes down the toilet then I’ll be sending my bill to Canberra.
Still, after all of that, I wasn’t completely able to avoid election coverage. New York has been in the thick of a very noisy mayoral election. It’s been a shining example of just how America does everything bigger, which is funny considering voting isn’t even compulsory here. I can only imagine what Australia would be like with such lax voting rules. It’d be a whole new world.
Image credit: Kathryn Sprigg
