Poetry may fill a room at the Carriageworks, but when you get a panel of pundits talking politics, you have to go big. The Sydney Town Hall was packed for both these sessions, one looking at the state of Australia, the other the USA and therefore the planet.
3.15: Barrie Cassidy and Friends: State of the Nation
This session, a kind of spin-off from the TV show The Insiders, is now a regular at the SWF. It may not be as pleasurable as the now defunct Big Read, where a string of writers entertained the audience by reading to us. But there is pleasure in hearing well-informed, thoughtful people talk to each other about the state of politics.
The host was veteran journalist and panel discussion host, Barrie Cassidy. His fans are clearly legion. In the past his panels have been criticised for the absence of people of colour. This year Waleed Aly (who has also garnered a fan base through TV’s The Project and radio show/podcast The Minefield), broke that barrier. Amy Remeikis, who has also built a following from her TV appearances on the now defunct The Drum, improved the visuals of the occasion by sporting a brilliantly coloured flowing garment. Nikki Savva, acerbic chronicler of the conservative side of Australian politics, added a modest touch of colour with a red jacket, while the men were thoroughly drab. Sean Kelly, known to me from his regular writing for The Monthly and most recently a Quarterly Essay (my blog post here), completed the line-up.
The conversation ranged intelligently over the current political landscape.
The apparent collapse of the Liberal Party and virtual extinction of the National Party loomed large. Amy Remeikis preened just a little, saying that she had predicted it, then explained that as a’geriatric millennial’ she understood all too clearly the deep unpoopularity of their policies, especially but not only on housing. Waleed Aly said that for a long time the Nationals had coasted along because they ‘had no natural predators’. But now One Nation has turned up as a party of grievance and put an end to their easy ride. Sean Kelly said the issue isn’t just the rise fo One Nation, but a general volatility in the Australian electorate: One Nation rose from 6 percent to 40 percent of the vote in 20 months; the independent teals took votes from the major parties on the right in the other direction. Someone listed all the functions of the president of the Liberal Party and observed that incoming president Tony Abbott ticks none of the boxes.
Waleed Aly spoke eloquently in defence of the recent budget. Someone said it was bad news for Labor that the Coalition broadly approved of their increase in the capital gains tax – Labor needed a fight to define themselves, but the Coalition have chosen a different tack. The panellists generally agreed that the Murdoch empire’s response to the budget amounted to asking us to pity the poor billionaires.
I enjoyed the discussion, liked all the participants, and came away none the wiser really, but that says more about me than about the panel.
5.30 The World According to Trump
As someone pointed out, this was a panel of non-USers talking about US politics. They were: Canadian David Moscrop, author of Too Dumb for Democracy, who says that Trump has turned him into a reluctant nationalist; Jon Sopel, British journalist who lived in the USA for eight years; Nick Bryant, also British, who hosts a weekly program on the ABC and has written books with titles like When America Stopped Being Great; and facilitator Amelia Lester, deputy editor of the US journal Foreign Policy, who I believe lives in Sydney. (No people of colour – a rarity at this festival.)
Starting from the question, ‘What is it that makes us so interested in Trump, when there are many other erratic, dangerous autocrats in the world?’ the conversation ranged widely and interestingly, from David Moscrop’ rejection of a can of gravy (a can of gravy) because it was made in the US, to John Sopel letting himself off the leash in a diatribe about Trump’s gangsterism and corruption.
Nick Bryant said that when you ‘excavate’ US history you realise that Trump isn’t an aberration, but the product of a strand that has been there from the start. Jon Sopel spoke of Trump’s brilliance at reading the mood of the country and appealing to its demons. (Obama appealed to its better angels.)
I learned just how entwined with the US Canada is – industrially, politically, culturally and militarily. The US defence plan in case of missile attack from over the Arctic is to knock any missiles out of the sky – above their obliging northern neighbour. Trump’s imposition of tariffs and rhetoric about a takeover creates for Canadians in general a visceral sense of having been punched in the face by a neighbour.
It got very gloomy, especially on the subject of allies’ failure to deal with Trump and Trumpism. But the session finished with a call from David Moscrop for a revitalisation of democracy with things that have been shown to work, of which the only one I noted down was citizen’s assemblies.
Oh, and then a little note, right at the end from either the Canadian or one of the Britishers, about how Australian electoral system has got so much right: compulsory voting, the independent electoral commission, and (to a burst of applause) the democracy sausage. Nick Bryant ended the panel by quoting David Malouf’s phrase, ‘citizenship lightly but seriously assumed’.
The Sydney Writers’ Festival took place on the beautiful land of Gadigal of teh Eora Nation. I have written this blog post on Gadigal and Wangal land, a coiuple of kilometres down the hill. I acknowledge their Elders past and present, and welcome First Nations readers of this blog.
Me fail? I fly! 