Last week, Australian senator Pauline Hanson stood up in President Trump’s gold-encrusted palace in Florida and said it was wonderful to be in America with a ‘re-energised, strong and patriotic leader who has the best interests of his people at heart’, before attacking her own country’s immigration, climate and native title policies.
This was a sitting week in the Australian Senate, but Senator Hanson decided it was more important to speak to Americans (and to Australians using an American megaphone) than to do her job in Australia.
She was speaking at the latest meeting of the far-right Conservative Political Action Conference, and was joined in Florida by Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, which has surged to become the opposition there by blaming immigrants for all of Britain’s woes.
Pauline Hanson is clearly trying to repeat the same trick in Australia, but on the same day she spoke at Mar-a-Lago, a series of elections across the United States saw a stunning repudiation of Donald Trump and everything he stands for, with Democratic representatives winning up and down the ballot, despite historically low support for the party nationally.
A 34 year old Muslim, Zohran Mamdani, was elected mayor of New York City. Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race, and another woman, Mikie Sherrill, won in New Jersey.
Californians voted overwhelmingly to support Proposition 50, which will counter the Republicans’ gerrymandering attempts elsewhere, while deeper analysis of voters by Heather Cox Richardson and others show many Republicans – even of the MAGA variety – switching sides, as the actions of Trump’s government hurt more and more ordinary Americans.
Social justice
Anyone who has seen the films of Mira Nair (including Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and Queen of Katwe) will not be surprised that her son Zohran Mamdani is a crusader for social justice.
His 100,000 strong volunteer-powered campaign succeeded in the face of naked, unprincipled hostility from big money and the political machines of both major parties, including his own.
Mandani’s victory speech echoed those of Bernie Sanders, Franklin D. Roosevelt and pioneering American socialist Eugene V. Debs. ‘We will fight for you, because we are you,’ he said.
His words had resonance beyond New York, and beyond the United States. As he put it: ‘There are many who thought this day would never come, who feared that we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same. And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn. New York, we have answered those fears.
‘Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive,’ said Zohran Mamdani.
‘And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.
‘Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru: “A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”’
Whatever it takes
Meanwhile back in Australia, we have an opposition struggling to decide how irrelevant it should be over the theoretical matter of net zero, and a government pretending to care about the destruction of our extraordinary natural environment as it makes everything worse.
The vision thing seems entirely absent, which made it a fitting time to remember the veteran Labor powerbroker Graham ‘Richo’ Richardson, who has enjoyed his last long lunch, dying on the weekend at 76.
He was once Australia’s youngest senator, and was instrumental in the rise of Bob Hawke, destroying the aspirations of Bill Hayden in the process. He was also a mate of Kerry Packer’s, and later worked for Sky News alongside Alan Jones, having survived a series of dodgy deals and scandals throughout his political career.
In spite of his many failings, Richo also had a couple of moments of greatness. While in government, he negotiated with the Greens instead of treating them as enemies. As environment minister, he put himself on the line to protect the now World Heritage-listed Daintree region in Queensland, and helped push Bob Hawke to stop the Wesley Vale pulp mill in Tasmania.
As the sainted Bob Brown put it, ‘Richo had a rare insight into Australians’ love for wildlife and nature and an even rarer ability to harness that devotion into winning political strategy…
‘Richardson’s political savvy in repeatedly garnering green votes in the environmentally-charged Australian electorate should be studied by the Albanese Labor government, which has lost its way on the environment in 2025.’
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
You can find more of his writing at Patreon and Gumroad.
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