Australia: Our Sister Country

Australia and America are sisters. Their histories chart parallel courses. Seafaring Europeans "discovered" both continents (after each had been inhabited, for many centuries). Settlers, primarily from the British Isles, colonized both lands—and in the process exterminated or isolated native populations that had been settled there since the Stone Age. Abundantly blessed with natural resources, both Australia and America saw their populations surge with land grabs and gold rushes, and both have cities that came of age, architecturally, in the nineteenth century. 

(Victorian and Edwardian buildings remain, for Jan and me, the crowning glory of what was in many ways an ignominious historical period.)

At the dawn of the 21^st century both Oz and US are democratic, multicultural societies, with lots of open spaces, burgeoning local foods movements, and citizens who both value the outdoors and insist on good roads for getting there—and pretty good communications systems for reaching folks who choose to travel or live out there.

Australians like their sports, just as Americans do. Cricket, rugby, and soccer are on TV a lot here—but the big sport (at least in Melbourne, where it was founded in 1859) is Aussie rules football. Athletically, this brand of “footy” is the biggest show on earth! Eighteen players on a side compete inside a giant oval as large, in area, as several soccer fields. The object is to kick the ball through goal posts (there are four of them on each end of the pitch) that tower twice as high as their America counterparts. Kicking, running, passing (by punching the ball), jumping, catching, marking, and teamwork skills are equally emphasized.

No pads are allowed, but tackling is permitted, and solid hits are applauded. (Aussies routinely bemoan the fact that today’s “rules” permit much less roughhousing.) It takes nine refs to manage a professional contest—a game as big and tough as the country itself. At halftime kids take the pitch.

Travelers to Australia quickly learn that this country-continent is a big place, almost as big as the continental US (though its economy is somewhat smaller than California’s).

Australian people look and dress quite like their American sisters and brothers. Not many people of African descent live in Hobart and Melbourne; one sees shades of white and brown rather than of black and white. Australia has its controversial immigration issues, as the US does, but on the whole Australia has been much more welcoming to immigrants than the US has tended to be. Entire television and radio stations are devoted to foreign language programming. The call to prayer can be heard in every city, if you know where to tune in. The current prime minister speaks Chinese, and the previous one was a woman. Not only are Australians more kind and considerate than Americans tend to be, Aussies are also more honest than Americans are about facing their past.

The Australian government has formally apologized to its Aboriginal population for many centuries of brutal policies. Transportation of prisoners (which also happened in the US, but who knows about it?) is openly recognized, as are the sad stories of stolen children and of war orphans shipped across the seas to increase Australia’s population.

Today Australia has a good educational system, an excellent transportation system, and a much better public health system than America’s, by far. Australians can’t believe that Jan and I (two healthy though aging Americans) pay $1250 a month for health insurance. Health care is still, basically, free for Australian citizens. It’s the government’s job! Some people add supplemental, private health insurance (for nicer glasses, better dental care, or shorter waits for a hip replacement), but that only costs a couple hundred bucks a month.

Midwives deliver most babies for a routine cost of, wait for it!...zero dollars per family! But publicly financed benefits don’t stop there. There are national, 24/7 breastfeeding, nursing, men’s, drugs, and counseling hotlines. The better features of civilized life are accepted as natural rights here, and as a result the Australian social safety net is sturdier and, these days, stretches wider than ours.

My working hypothesis is that everyday life so often seems saner and better in Australia primarily because the role of government is conceived differently here. I think the crux of the matter is that in Australia voting is a civic duty; it is compulsory (has been since 1924), as it is in countries as different as Brazil and Singapore (and twenty others).

Elections are held on Saturdays, and if you don’t vote, you’re fined. Four days prior to Election Day a "media blackout" is in effect to prevent unanswered, fraudulent ads. There's no "Swift Boating" here! Australians may complain about the quality of the candidates and the platforms that major parties put forward, but Australian elections are a far cry from the shenanigans I’m hearing about in North Carolina! Aussies can’t believe us. They used to admire us.

A fully enfranchised citizenry doesn’t put up with the games that American politicians (and the wealthy who would sway American elections) play. Perhaps that is why Australia is often at the top of the list of countries whose population is satisfied with their quality of life. Melbourne and Hobart consistently top the list of “most livable” cities in the world. How come?

Political campaigns are short and to the point in Australia. Public health, transportation and education are sufficiently funded, while military expenses are low. Teachers are paid more, and doctors less. Vacation time, parental leave, and reasonable working hours are valued and protected by law. All taxes and fees are included in the price of goods sold. Rupert Murdoch has been taxed offshore. You can’t live here if you’re that greedy! Gun ownership is low, and so is the murder rate. Melbourne’s best baseball player had to go to Oklahoma to get shot in a drive-by homicide.

Australia is an ancient, wide-open, friendly, cultivated, diverse, welcoming place. It’s been a pleasure to be a guest here, and Jan and I regularly pause to wonder why more things of public consequence can’t be done in America the way they are in Australia. Maybe we ought to start by making voting the duty of all, rather than the prerogative of the privileged few, greedy power-grabbers who mistakenly think the rest of us admire them, or should do.