• Frank Bongiorno

22 August 2011On the anniversary of the 2010 Australian election, Frank Bongiorno – just back from London – contrasts the challenges facing Britain and Australia in Inside Story

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ALMOST four years of living in Britain probably doesn’t quite qualify me for the title “returning expat.” In any case, I visited Australia fairly often during those years and as someone teaching Australian studies in London – I think the historian Tom Griffiths once referred to the role as “professional Australian” – I couldn’t really afford to cut myself off from the Antipodean scene even if I had wanted to.

Still, in terms of Australian politics, my departure from Antipodean shores in September 2007 seems more like forty years ago than four. The big story just before I left was the Liberal Party’s leadership crisis, rivalled only by the Chaser gang’s Osama bin Laden stunt at the Sydney APEC meeting. Kevin Rudd’s rise and rise seemed inexorable, and the opinion polls had Labor winning the forthcoming election in a landslide. If the idea of a political cycle has any meaning at all, the spring of 2007 was surely a turning point – the end of a long period of conservative dominance in federal politics, the arrival of a new political agenda, perhaps even a moment of generational change. The myth of John Howard’s invincibility was shattered…

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Above: Anti–carbon tax rally, Melbourne, 19 June 2011. Photo: mugfaker/ Flickr