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Voting in Australia's federal election.
What We’re Watching: Aussies vote, Turkey threatens Nordic states, elections loom in Israel
What will voters decide Down Under?
Aussie voters head to the polls on Saturday to decide whether to keep Prime Minister Scott Morrison (ScoMo) of the right-leaning Liberal-National Coalition in power, or to pass the baton to the Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese. Speak to any Aussie, and they’ll tell you that neither bespeckled, middle-aged candidate inspires much excitement. Still, someone has to win! After nearly two years under some of the tightest COVID lockdown restrictions in the world, Aussies appear ready for change: Albanese, a left-leaning centrist, is leading in national polls by 2%. That’s encouraging for ScoMo, who just two weeks ago was trailing by 8 percentage points. The election cycle has been dominated by the cost-of-living crisis currently plaguing many advanced economies. Though unemployment in Australia has hit record lows, inflation is outpacing wage growth. Albanese, a long-time politician with little cabinet experience, has made a series of gaffes recently about the economy that likely contributed to the narrowing margin. According to ABC, some 5-8% of Aussie voters are still undecided. That could be the difference between whether Labor comes out on top after nearly a decade in opposition government. As Signal’s resident Aussie (Gabrielle), I am off to vote!
Turkey plays hardball with Nordic NATO bids
Finland and Sweden thought joining NATO would be a cakewalk, but they’ve run into some serious Turkish veto power. Ankara wants the Swedes to extradite 33 members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party — considered a terrorist group by the EU — and to end their arms embargo against Turkey over its military intervention in northern Syria. Turkey has less of a beef with Finland, but just in case, the Finns clarified that they won't host NATO bases or nukes (Sweden's ruling party concurs). But perhaps what the Turks really want is something the Nordics can't offer: for the US Congress to lift its ban on selling Turkey F-35 fighter jets — payback for Ankara purchasing Russian S-400 missiles against Washington's wishes. It turns out the Biden administration wanted to offer F-16s before Turkey upended NATO’s expansion plans, so let’s see how this all plays out. Turkey’s tough-talking President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan knows how to keep allies on edge, and he’s doing so when he can’t really afford to pick fights: his economy is in shambles, so he needs friends to invest in Turkey.
Correction: This brief originally referred mistakenly to a ban F-16s, not F-35s.
New elections loom in Israel … again
Israel’s fragile coalition government experienced a big blow on Thursday after Rinawie Zoabi, an Arab lawmaker from the far-left Meretz Party, quit the coalition. Zoabi criticized the government, led by PM Naftali Bennett, for pandering to the far-right flank of the bloc. She also said that recent violence around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and the killing of a prominent Palestinian journalist in the West Bank forced her to make the “moral decision.” This comes just weeks after another coalition legislator bolted, and Bennett now has the unenviable task of leading a minority government (there are 59 coalition members in the 120-seat chamber), which will make it very hard to pass legislation. Meanwhile, former PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who now heads the opposition, is pushing hard for a no-confidence vote in the Knesset next Wednesday that would force another election, the country’s fifth in two and a half years. It is unclear, however, whether he has the votes. Bibi has to tread carefully: according to Knesset rules, if the motion fails, he has to wait six months before he can try again. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, the architect behind the unwieldy coalition, now has less than a week to try and stave off more defections that could sound the death knell for the Bennett government.
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A guide to Australia’s lackluster election
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that Australians will head to the polls on May 21 to decide whether to keep his Liberal Party in power. (Time was ticking on his first term and he had to call a vote.) He’s facing off against Anthony Albanese, the low-profile leader of the Labor Party, which has served in opposition for a decade. Labor is currently leading by around 14 points, according to the Roy Morgan poll.
Australians have gained a reputation abroad for being amiable and easygoing, reflecting the country’s fair dinkum spirit. But Australian politics are notoriously cut-throat, long defined by back-stabbing, ad-hominem attacks and accusations of bullying – on both sides of the aisle. (Morrison is the first PM to complete his full term in 15 years because most leaders have been ousted by their own parties.)
What agenda items will be at the heart of the election campaign over the next six weeks, and what – if any – are the foreign policy implications?
What do Aussies care about?
For the average Australian, the election is all about the economy. Australians experienced some of the most grueling rolling lockdowns in recent years because of the pandemic. Things got intense: for the better part of the past two years, Western Australians were banned from traveling to other states without a 14-day quarantine. This has put a massive strain on Australian businesses, including the expansive tourism industry.
While the unemployment rate remains relatively low compared to other developed states, the country continues to experience inflation, and the cost of living is surging.
Morrison and Albanese (dubbed ScoMo and Albo, respectively, because Aussies love nicknames) are gunning to show voters they can best deal with inflation, cost of living pressures and the tightest labour market in many years. Meanwhile, the nation’s biggest banks have warned that interest rates could rise several times over the next few months. Even a small(ish) increase will feel significant for Aussie borrowers who haven’t faced such rate hikes since 2010.
However, neither the incumbent nor the leader of the opposition want to spend much time talking about policy issues.
Morrison, for his part, is trying to focus on Albanese’s lack of leadership experience (he’s been in politics for 26 years, though served in cabinet for only six of them) to position himself as an old timer and a steady hand. And Albanese, uncharismatic and bespeckled, makes that sort of easy to do, especially when he makes cringeworthy gaffes, like in recent days not remembering the national unemployment and interest rates.
The Labor Party, on the other hand, could probably cruise through the next six weeks simply by playing up infighting within the Liberal Party and disdain for the PM from within his own ranks. In recent weeks, an outgoing Liberal senator called Morrison a “bully with no moral compass,” accusing him of appointing buddies to run for safe seats in the state of New South Wales rather than letting rank-and-file Liberal members decide. This came just weeks after a bombshell revelation by a former Morrison rival of Lebanese descent, who said that the PM used a racist smear campaign against him in the 2007 election.
The foreign policy of it all. Canberra’s foreign policy is centered almost entirely on Beijing, its largest trade partner. In recent years, the two have been at loggerheads over a range of issues, including trade, telecomms, human rights, and surveillance.
There’s little daylight between the Liberal and the Labor parties on China policy. Both reject Beijing’s retaliatory trade sanctions, which have hurt Australian producers, and agree on the need to work with allies to push back against Beijing’s bellicose activities in the South China Sea. Indeed, whatever happens on May 21, both Albanese and Morrison will show the Quad alliance and AUKUS – the US-UK-Australia Asia-Pacific security partnership – lots of love.
One point of departure, however, is on climate change. While the Morrison government peeved allies at last year's COP26 climate forum by refusing to commit to an overhaul of the country's lucrative fossil fuel sector, and making a less-than-ambitious carbon reduction pledge, Albanese has pledged a more ambitious reduction target of 43% by 2030. Still, there are many doubts about whether Labor’s backing of a hydropower plant north of Sydney – key to its climate plan – is economically viable and will significantly reduce emissions.
Aussies have had a very rough few years with deadly bushfires, flooding, and a pandemic that gutted morale – and livelihoods. They are now emerging from a post-pandemic malaise with a protest spirit.
“I get it, people are tired of politics,” Morrison said at a press conference Sunday. But are they tired of politics, or tired of you, ScoMo?
Can gender quotas counter sexism in Australian politics?
In recent months, Australians have grown accustomed to stories of sexual impropriety by their politicians dominating the news headlines. Instances of groping, rape, and even a man masturbating on a female colleague's desk at Parliament House have become so ubiquitous that Prime Minister Scott Morrison called this week for a "shake-up" to address systemic sexism in Australian politics.
But what are the proposals currently dominating the political conversation, and where might they lead?
Backstory. For years, Australian women working in politics have described Canberra as an "Old Boys' Club" that prevents women from progressing up the leadership ladder. Over the past few years, several high-profile female politicians across the political aisle resigned from their posts, citing pervasive gender-based bullying in Canberra.
Now, that conversation is in overdrive. Last month, a former female staffer, Brittany Higgins, alleged that she had been raped by a colleague in the office of their former boss Linda Reynolds, a senior government minister. (It's been reported that Reynolds referred to the alleged-victim as a "lying cow" when she came forward.) Moreover, details of a historic rape allegation against now-former Attorney General Christian Porter were also recently revealed.
Baby steps. Morrison has been widely criticized for his tone-deaf and callous response: He initially refused to back a formal investigation into the allegations, arguing that if we are to do so, "we are eroding the very principles of the rule of law."
The PM has changed his tune in recent days as the political crisis facing his conservative Liberal Party deepens. Morrison reshuffled his cabinet this week, demoting both Reynolds and Porter. But the PM provoked more protest when he referred to Marise Payne, the foreign minister and minister for women, as "effectively the prime minister for women," further stoking the flames of female grievance: "Aren't you the women's prime minister? Aren't you not fit to do the job of prime minister?" one journalist asked.
Growing call for quotas. The political maelstrom has given rise to mounting calls for the Liberal Party to adopt a quota system to boost female representation in parliament. Morrison, for his part, has remained tentative.
In fact, the issue of gender quotas in politics resonates far beyond Australia. So, what are the best arguments for quotas?
Quotas work. Proponents argue that women make up more than half of the Australian population, and that changing the Liberal Party's rules is needed to ensure gender-equality legislation is passed. In Finland, for example, national legislation includes a quota provision that requires 40 percent male and female representation in national and municipal decision-making bodies. As a result, Finland leads the world in family-friendly workplace policies (consider that 90 percent of Finnish companies offer flexible-working options).
A solution for cultural change. The Australian Labor Party, the main opposition, introduced various quotas for women starting in the mid-1990s. As a result, its federal caucus is represented by almost 50 percent women, compared to just 23 percent for the ruling Liberal Party. It's no wonder, proponents of quotas argue, that most (if not all) of the lewd behavior in Canberra has been linked to the Liberal government. Uprooting structural and attitudinal biases that subjugate women in politics can only happen, they say, if more women are in positions of power.
But many people aren't sold on quotas.
Tokenism isn't empowering. Some women's rights activists say that a quota system is infantilizing, and has the unintended effect of demeaning rather than empowering women. (Opponents argue, however, that a "whatever-it-takes approach" is crucial to sowing the seeds for long-term change.)
What about the meritocracy? Quota critics also say that people should be elected to serve in parliament based on expertise and merit, not because of their gender. Equality of opportunity means that everyone should be on a level playing field.
Grassroots party structure should prioritize the best candidates. Critics argue that as part of Australia's preselection process — where candidates are chosen by party members to run for specific electoral seats — the best candidate for each district should be chosen without a gender condition attached. (However, advocates for electoral quotas argue that's precisely the way to address the problem, pointing to the progress made by the UK's Conservative Party, which has almost quadrupled its female representation since 2005, when it revised its preselection process and started taking proactive steps to boost female involvement.)
Contemplating her time in Canberra over two decades, Australia's former foreign minister Julie Bishop concluded: "It is evident that there is an acceptance of a level of behavior in Canberra that would not be tolerated in any other workplace in Australia."
But are quotas the way to solve the problem? Are there better ideas?