Speaker 1: In America, New York City mayors Or and Mendani has
Speaker 1: turned anger over rent, grocery prices and childcare into a
Speaker 1: powerful movement of the left, one with real momentum.
Speaker 2: Today, I am proud to announce a collection of essential
Speaker 2: steeples that will be predictably thirty percent cheaper at all
Speaker 2: five of our city run grocery stores. We need to
Speaker 2: deliver universal childcare for each and every family across the city, because,
Speaker 2: after housing, childcare is the most expensive thing. For too long,
Speaker 2: bad landlords have been allowed to mistreat their tenants with impunity.
Speaker 2: That ends today.
Speaker 1: In Australia, that same anger is increasingly being captured by
Speaker 1: Pauline Hansen and the Popular Stride, while labor retreats towards
Speaker 1: the center. So attention is turning to who in Australia
Speaker 1: could make a Mendani style case for economic change, and
Speaker 1: to whether the Australian left has the organization, discipline and
Speaker 1: ambition to build a movement around them. I'm Daniel James,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to seven AM Today. Freelance writer, political
Speaker 1: commentator and host of Triple Ar spin Cycle Rachel Withers
Speaker 1: on the political figure the left is searching for and
Speaker 1: whether the conditions exist to produce an Australian Memdani. It's
Speaker 1: Saturday August one, Rachel, good to see you this week.
Speaker 1: You asked the question where is Australia's zorn and Mendani?
Speaker 1: So you looked at some of his signature policies and
Speaker 1: their equivalents here in Australia. Where did you find similar offerings?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, mum Danny has so many policies, but
Speaker 3: I chose to focus on the core, like cost of
Speaker 3: living policies, which was the rent freezers, universal childcare, free buses,
Speaker 3: city run supermarkets and taxing the ridge. Unsurprisingly, I found
Speaker 3: that the Greens and the socialist parties were the most aligned,
Speaker 3: especially when it came to freezing rents, universal childcare and
Speaker 3: taxing the ridge. You have former Greens and PMAX Jailabeker
Speaker 3: who made rent freezers like a huge part of his
Speaker 3: agenda and a huge part of the Greens agenda.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't call it socialism or communism. I'd call it
Speaker 4: what's being done around the world and worked. In fact,
Speaker 4: Victoria froze rents for six months during the pandemic. And
Speaker 4: what we're saying is that right now, we're in a
Speaker 4: worse housing crisis than we were during the pandemic, and
Speaker 4: so we need an equally urgent national response to rent.
Speaker 3: And the Greens are still actually calling for them. They
Speaker 3: most recently called to one in response to the fuel crisis.
Speaker 5: We should be implementing rent caps and real rights for renters,
Speaker 5: longer leases, actual minimum standards so that people aren't living
Speaker 5: in fear of their next rent increase.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 3: With universal childcare, Greens and socialists both say it should
Speaker 3: be free, universally accessible. Anthony Abernezia said he wants childcare
Speaker 3: to be part of his legacy, so we gave Labor
Speaker 3: some half points on the scorecard for that, But it
Speaker 3: won't actually be universal childcare if Labor continues to subsidize
Speaker 3: costly private providers, which is actually a point that I
Speaker 3: heard Amymikers make really compellingly on this show at the
Speaker 3: end of last year.
Speaker 6: It's not universal if it's private but subsidized.
Speaker 1: So was Australia actually lacking these Mendani style policies, or
Speaker 1: we're lacking a politician capable of turning these ideas into
Speaker 1: a national platform, someone with a compelling argument and with charisma.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that might be what we're missing.
Speaker 3: I think the ideas are there, but we don't have
Speaker 3: that compelling Mumdani leadership figure. I think Australian politics is
Speaker 3: traditionally elevated parties, not people. You know, we've had a
Speaker 3: pretty strict two party system. It's a parliamentary system. The
Speaker 3: Prime Minister is the leader of the party, so parties
Speaker 3: decide who leads, not the public in the same way.
Speaker 3: But I do think there's you know, a few people
Speaker 3: who sort of tried to occupy that space. Max Choann
Speaker 3: la Mayfair, as I mentioned, had a bit of a
Speaker 3: crack and I think he did speak really compellingly to Renters,
Speaker 3: but he got a pretty tough run in Parliament, being
Speaker 3: quite a minority voice there, and also I think the
Speaker 3: media was pretty tough on him as well. A few
Speaker 3: of the commenters on my piece pointed to David Pocock,
Speaker 3: but he is just one guy. He is just a
Speaker 3: senator and unless he runs a David Pocock to get
Speaker 3: across the country, it's hard to see how he can
Speaker 3: really build a national platform.
Speaker 6: Although I have had.
Speaker 3: Like a beautician I see asked me how she can
Speaker 3: vote for David Pocock, So I do think he's got
Speaker 3: the common touch.
Speaker 1: A lot of people ask care they could vote for
Speaker 1: David Pocock. I don't know what it is about him,
Speaker 1: but he does seem to have an appeal on Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, I think I think it's hard to go past
Speaker 3: the fact I'm Doney and Pocock are both very good looking.
Speaker 6: I think that's part of it. That's part of it.
Speaker 3: For Mum Danny, You've got purple pingers Jordan Vandalam who
Speaker 3: is now running with.
Speaker 6: The Vics Socialists. I think he does really well on TikTok.
Speaker 1: Hello, welcome back to share Randall's with your host.
Speaker 3: Pingers today are in Kangaro Flat, which is in like
Speaker 3: the greater Bendigo area.
Speaker 6: It's four hundred and fifty dollars a week and this
Speaker 6: was sent to me.
Speaker 3: But I can't see that translating nationally. His sort of
Speaker 3: dead pan tone. Yeah, and I think within labor the
Speaker 3: only person currently speaking boldly and authentically is at Husick,
Speaker 3: who spoke out quite a lot at the party conference
Speaker 3: last week.
Speaker 4: When we signed up for this membership card, we didn't
Speaker 4: sign up for the status quo.
Speaker 6: I can put me in the Phraezer Angel.
Speaker 3: And I think it's interesting demographically he's the most similar
Speaker 3: to mum Danny as a Muslim man, but he would
Speaker 3: be there only person in labor that's even trying to
Speaker 3: fill that mold.
Speaker 1: So there's some people around the country speaking to some
Speaker 1: of these policies. But how much of an appetite do
Speaker 1: you think there are for these more? I guess socialist
Speaker 1: type policy amongst Australian voters because New York City is
Speaker 1: one thing, it's a progressive stronghold. Australia obviously has a
Speaker 1: much border range of political leanings, and right now there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people moving to the right as
Speaker 1: one nation arises. Do you think there's an appetite for
Speaker 1: a counter movement on the left?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, I often refer back to this really great
Speaker 3: sub stack from my friend Alex Fine, who runs the
Speaker 3: focus groups for Redbridge and really really spends a lot
Speaker 3: of time talking to voters twice a week.
Speaker 6: Back in March, she wrote a piece called.
Speaker 3: Polarization is a Myth, where she basically argued that Australians
Speaker 3: seem to broadly want the same things, whether they define
Speaker 3: themselves as.
Speaker 6: Left right centrist, don't.
Speaker 3: Care you know, they want healthcare, education, and they believe
Speaker 3: in fairness, kindness. As she wrote in this piece, that
Speaker 3: those with the greatest interest in keeping us divided need
Speaker 3: us to forget how much we agree. The first Progressive
Speaker 3: party to harness this properly will be unstoppable. And I've
Speaker 3: really thought a lot about that and the fact that
Speaker 3: even though the Greens did quite terribly at the last election,
Speaker 3: the things they stand for, like taxing our resources and
Speaker 3: putting it into healthcare, adding dental to medicare, these are
Speaker 3: things that Australians seem to kind of want.
Speaker 6: They currently don't.
Speaker 3: They think of the Greens as radical, and you know,
Speaker 3: Alex has an argument for this as well, is that
Speaker 3: Australians do like to think of themselves as kind of centrist,
Speaker 3: not particularly radical people, but the policies they express a
Speaker 3: desire for are actually quite left wing. As you mentioned,
Speaker 3: you know, Pauline Hanson seems to be picking up a
Speaker 3: lot of the disenfranchised vote. A lot of people who
Speaker 3: are angry with the system are turning to one nation.
Speaker 3: You know, we're kind of eight years behind the US
Speaker 3: with what happened with Donald Trump there. Alex also had
Speaker 3: a self stack in June, where she wrote about raw
Speaker 3: power and the fact that people who feel robbed of
Speaker 3: agency right now really feel like Pauline Hanson is the
Speaker 3: one projecting that kind of anti establishment power, so win away.
Speaker 3: Maybe Pauline Hanson is the one coming closest to a
Speaker 3: mum Dani right now.
Speaker 1: Still to come. While Labor is moving away from the
Speaker 1: Mendani model, Rachel, the happenings of this week actually showed that,
Speaker 1: if anything, our major party is actually moving further away
Speaker 1: from the Mandani model. This week, Victorian Labor replaced Cinna
Speaker 1: Allen from the left with Ben Carroll from the party's.
Speaker 6: Right, the blandest man I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: There's these elevation signal that Victorian Labor believes the answer
Speaker 1: to its political crisis is have moved back towards the center. Look.
Speaker 3: I think in this case, part of Vic Labour's thinking
Speaker 3: was anyone but just center, and Ben Carroll was there,
Speaker 3: but he is from Labor right. A lot of the
Speaker 3: more conservative media outlets seem quite thrilled.
Speaker 6: With his elevation.
Speaker 3: He essentially came out and said that he would immediately
Speaker 3: call a Royal commission into union corruption on the Big Build,
Speaker 3: which is really what brought just into Alan down. But
Speaker 3: he's also said that he will pause and review the
Speaker 3: suburban rail Loop, which is, you know, a big infrastructure
Speaker 3: project that was very strongly pushed by Disinta Allen and
Speaker 3: Daniel Andrews.
Speaker 6: Before her, both of the left.
Speaker 3: He said he will reopen closed police stations, he might
Speaker 3: pause the Daniel Andrews statue that we're getting here in Victoria.
Speaker 3: Essentially he's co opted a lot of the Liberal platform
Speaker 3: ahead of the November state election here, so sort of
Speaker 3: like by moving to the center, kind of cutting off
Speaker 3: a lot of what Jess Wilson, the Liberal leader who
Speaker 3: was finally getting a bit of traction, is actually running
Speaker 3: on and ventually.
Speaker 1: Anthony Alberinezi built his career in the labor left when
Speaker 1: it used to really have a proper left, I guess.
Speaker 1: But as Prime Minister his instincts have increasingly become cautious
Speaker 1: type part of discipline and reaisus shoring business is his
Speaker 1: way of doing things. Why has he moved so far
Speaker 1: from the politics that formed him?
Speaker 6: This is a question that obsesses me.
Speaker 3: If somebody would like to give me a book deal
Speaker 3: so I can just spend all my time figuring out
Speaker 3: why Anthony alb and Easy has moved to the center.
Speaker 3: The twenty sixteen and twenty nineteen elections really spooked the party.
Speaker 3: Anthony Aben Easy has sort of argued that you can't
Speaker 3: make change too quickly, like it's more important to be
Speaker 3: in there making progressive as in slow change than to
Speaker 3: do too much too quickly and get turfed out. I
Speaker 3: also think he just I think he got more conservative
Speaker 3: as he aged and at this stage, like factions don't
Speaker 3: necessarily mean you're like left or right. It's kind of
Speaker 3: just power bases in the Labor Party, and he has
Speaker 3: just such an expert control of all of those actions
Speaker 3: and how they work and where the power is. That essentially,
Speaker 3: I think he's just as a strategist deciding what he
Speaker 3: thinks is best for the party.
Speaker 6: It's not so much ideological anymore.
Speaker 1: We just had the ALP national Conference, and you know
Speaker 1: that's a place where you know, a lot of disagreements
Speaker 1: and Rgi Bargi's played out on the floor. This year
Speaker 1: was a much more sort of senitized version of itself,
Speaker 1: Ed Hughes, except the party had become allergic to dissent.
Speaker 1: So what did the conference actually reveal about where power
Speaker 1: sits inside Albanese's Labor Party.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think it's sits where it's always
Speaker 3: sat with the factions. It's just that Anthony Abernezi has them.
Speaker 3: He's put them into line for many conferences. Now dissent
Speaker 3: has been discouraged. I think there might be some pretty
Speaker 3: intense conversations going on within the factions, between the factions,
Speaker 3: but not on the conference floor. I actually went to
Speaker 3: the conference, not the one last week, but the one
Speaker 3: three years ago, and there was just like no point
Speaker 3: being there unless you were like in there with the
Speaker 3: factions going to the factional dinners.
Speaker 6: Like it's so stage managed at this.
Speaker 3: Point, So that's how things get decided in the Labor Party.
Speaker 3: I think it's really interesting that at Husik is actually
Speaker 3: of Labor Right. He's the one pushing for more left
Speaker 3: wing policies, but he's a member of Labor Right. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's kind of like out pushing his own agenda now,
Speaker 3: which is really what I think Labor needs more of,
Speaker 3: more individuals who are not willing to just do what
Speaker 3: their faction says to do based on what Albanize says
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: What do you think is actually doing to the party
Speaker 1: the fact that it's so heavily managed now, I think.
Speaker 6: It's it's hurting it very much.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are policies that are really popular in
Speaker 3: the branches, you know, like things like the gas tax,
Speaker 3: things like acting against Israel and calling out Israel's genocide
Speaker 3: and Gaza.
Speaker 6: The labor branches, the rank and file actually put forward
Speaker 6: a lot of motions on these issues, but none of
Speaker 6: it seems to filter up.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a recipe for disaster sort of long term
Speaker 1: for any sort of party that starts to lose touch
Speaker 1: or not listen to its rank and file.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And I think I think you'll seeing that
Speaker 3: with Labor, with the fact that they have less and
Speaker 3: less rank and file. Like the very few members they
Speaker 3: have left, it's not a particularly representative party at this stage.
Speaker 6: Obviously it still wins like a third of the vote, but.
Speaker 3: In terms of actual members who were able to influence
Speaker 3: the direction of the party less unless people are bothering
Speaker 3: because they don't feel like they actually can have a say.
Speaker 1: I guess it's worth reminding finally, Rachel, that from here
Speaker 1: in Australia, Mendani did seem to come out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: But he actually didn't come out of nowhere. He came
Speaker 1: out of a growing Democratic Socialist of American movement that's
Speaker 1: recruiting candidates and mobilizing volunteers. DSA candilates to secure major
Speaker 1: party victories ahead of the midterm elections. It's a movement
Speaker 1: that has real momentum. So does Australia actually lack a
Speaker 1: mandani or does it lack the organized movement to produce one.
Speaker 3: I think American politics works so differently to Australian politics.
Speaker 6: Better have professional voting.
Speaker 3: They kind of locked into the two party system, which
Speaker 3: sucks for them, but it has meant that it's forced
Speaker 3: progressives to really channel all their energies into one place,
Speaker 3: which is trying to win democratic crimeraies because essentially it's
Speaker 3: going to be the Democrat or the Republican that gets
Speaker 3: up in most races. And so the DSA has been
Speaker 3: incredibly powerful at trying to steer the Democrats back to
Speaker 3: the left by putting up left wing candidates. We just
Speaker 3: don't seem to have that going on in Australia. It's
Speaker 3: hard to see how we would replicate that. I mean,
Speaker 3: if everybody of the left, the socialists, the greens all
Speaker 3: got involved in labor and wanted to force all of
Speaker 3: their branches to put up.
Speaker 6: Left wing candidates.
Speaker 3: Potentially that would look like the same kind of organized movement,
Speaker 3: but at this point the left is fractured. It's scattered
Speaker 3: across many different branches, and so we don't have a
Speaker 3: unified left in the same way.
Speaker 1: Well, right, Jil, thank you for coming on. I'm not
Speaker 1: being scattered yourself. It's been a delight. Thanks again, Thanks Daniel.
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