The American in Australia
For the first time in its history, Australia's most populous state has a female premier, a photogenic 40-year-old called Kristina Keneally, who is trying to become the acceptable face of what many voters in New South Wales look upon as an ugly and repellent political machine.
More so than her gender, it is the criticism that she merely is a puppet of the two backroom powerbrokers who installed her as Labor leader that has been attracting the most comment. That, and the fact that she was born in Las Vegas, raised in Ohio and speaks still with a distinctive American accent, even though she is married to an Australian, has an Aussie mother, and became a naturalised Australian citizen in 2000, the year that she joined the Australian Labor Party.
By strange coincidence, last week was a good one for foreign-born political leaders in Australia. Tony Abbott, who could declare himself a Londoner if ever he so desired, became the Liberal leader. In Kevin Rudd's absence, Julia Gillard, a product of Barry in South Wales, filled in as acting prime minister. In the immediate aftermath of the rejection of the emissions trading scheme, it was the Senate leader, the British-born Chris Evans, who led the attack on the opposition. And he was quickly joined by the climate change minister, Penny Wong, who was born in Malaysia.
But while Australians have long been used to European-born politicians, and are getting increasingly used to Asian-born leaders - the Hong Kong-born John So served for over seven years as the Mayor of Melbourne - will they countenance an American-born leader?
To pre-empt some of your comments, Kristina Keneally is perhaps a special case because she speaks in the accent of her homeland. To many, . But could there also be an anti-Americanism at work in much of the US-focussed commentary?
Like virtually every country in the world, Australia has fallen prey to America's rampant post-war cultural imperialism. And, often, willingly and happily so. The Australian box office is dominated by Hollywood movies. Cormac McCarthy is perhaps as popular these days as Thomas Keneally, Kristina's Booker prize-winning uncle. Channel Nine claims in its on-air promotions to be "Proudly Australian", but its schedules are packed with US imports, while its flagship news programme, Sixty Minutes, is a replica of the US original, right down to the tick, tock, tick of its iconic stopwatch. Likewise, Channel Seven's successful Sunrise programme breakfast show is modelled on NBC's Today show, with Martin Place in Sydney substituting for New York's Rockefeller plaza for the out-of-studio walkabouts. The thumping theme music of its evening news was composed by the American film composer John Williams, and is heard in America each night at the start of NBC's primetime bulletin.
The two most headline-making visitors to Australia this year were both Americans, Britney Spears and Tiger Woods, while the country has recently said farewell to one of its most-loved entertainers, the New Yorker Don Lane.
Yet for all that, the American influence is by no means overwhelming. Not even close. My ears tend to prick up whenever I hear an American accent in Australia, because it happens so infrequently. If you look at the 20 most popular television programmes this year in Australia, no American show even makes the list (nor does a UK programme, for that matter). On the ABC, the national broadcaster, the preference is for the UK- rather than US-made. Even its finest US import, the mesmerising detective series The Wire, is buried away on ABC 2, while lesser British-made programmes, like say Spooks, are given better primetime slots on ABC 1.
Listening to talk-back radio, so many of the comedic references are British rather than American, whether they come from Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Goons, The Goodies, The Office or Yes Minister. Last week, Malcolm Turnbull's attempts to cling on to the Liberal leadership were commonly compared to the decapitated Black Knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail.
In sport, despite Frank Packer's confident post-war assertion that baseball was the coming thing, cricket remains dominant. And while Kerry Packer might have borrowed some US-style razzmatazz when he launched World Series cricket, it was still an emphatically Australian product - popularised by the ringing anthem, "Come on Aussie, Come on". Basketball has failed to take off in Australia's most populous cities, and American Football does not have much of a following. Sporting colloquialisms also have an Aussie and British ring. Occasionally, you will hear a "that's out of left field", but rarely a "go the whole nine yards" or a "full court press". More commonly in Australia you will find yourself on "a sticky wicket" or suffering the humiliation of being "bowled a googly".
In politics, Australia has a Senate and a House of Representatives, but that's pretty much the extent of the "Wash" contribution to the "Washminster model" of government. That said, Labor politics in New South Wales does a pretty good imitation of Tammany Hall. We've noted before that Australians do not tend to warm to the grand and flashy trappings of US presidential politics - a point driven home on Friday afternoon when I bumped into Kevin Rudd on a pedestrian crossing in central Sydney, while he was out doing what looked like some Christmas shopping. Happily, the roads were not shut, sharp-shooters did not peer down on him from roof-top vantage points and he, like the rest of us, had to wait for the light to turn green.
And just look what happened to Starbucks, which was forced to lighten its Australian footprint, largely because the local competition was way too hot and Australians rejected this American transplant. Now the American coffee giant has largely been reduced to operating in Australian tourist traps, where it plays on its familiarity with overseas visitors.
Starbucks has never managed to build up a really big, loyal, local clientele, partly because it was seen as an unwelcome intrusion from the US. Will Kristina Keneally give it a better shot?
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