# George Megalogenis on immigration, instability and the 'three shocks' shifting modern society

An episode of [Good Weekend Talks](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1501054889), 14 Aug 2026, 41 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/88b564ea-a9a6-4751-910a-a5d800019396/938e5ca5-7771-4bc2-852a-ab8300272ea4/561bf60a-8721-4484-b781-b4a500e288f1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=5249b1b2-6224-4d5a-b1d1-ab8300272f0a

George Megalogenis is known as a big thinker about Australian politics and culture, searching beyond the noise for what’s really going on in our country. He has four decades' experience in the media, including time in the parliamentary press gallery. In his new book, Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century, he looks at the seismic changes underway that will influence all of us in the coming decades. He joins Good Weekend Talks today for a chat about immigration – long an interest of his, as the son of Greek migrants – along with the feminisation of the workforce, and the unreliability of both our great ally in the United States, and our great trading partner in China. Hosting this conversation is Good Weekend senior writer Gay Alcorn. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:14] S1: George Megalogenis is known as a big thinker about Australian
[0:17] S1: politics and culture. Searching beyond the noise for what's really
[0:21] S1: going on in our country. He has four decades experience
[0:24] S1: in the media, including time in the parliamentary press gallery.
[0:28] S1: In his new book, Three Shocks Who We Are Becoming
[0:31] S1: in the 21st century, he looks at the seismic changes
[0:34] S1: underway that will influence us all in the coming decades.
[0:38] S1: I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and
[0:41] S1: The age. Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, featuring weekly, in-depth
[0:45] S1: conversations with fascinating people. Megalogenis joins us today to talk
[0:50] S1: about immigration long and interest of his as the son
[0:53] S1: of Greek migrants, along with the feminisation of the workforce
[0:57] S1: and the unreliability of both our great ally in the
[1:00] S1: United States and our great trading partner in China. As always,
[1:05] S1: he brings fresh insights that shift perspectives, as they do
[1:08] S1: in this conversation with Good Weekend senior writer Gay Alcorn.
[1:13] S2: Welcome, George, very much to Good Weekend Talks.
[1:16] S3: Thank you Kate. It's a privilege to be here with you.
[1:19] S2: Oh, lovely to have you. Um, look, you're known rightly
[1:22] S2: as a big thinker in Australian politics and culture, trying
[1:27] S2: to sort of look beyond the noise and what are
[1:29] S2: the actual trends. And your new book follows that pattern
[1:32] S2: and it's called Three Shocks Who We Are Becoming in
[1:37] S2: the 21st century. So briefly, what are the three shocks
[1:41] S2: that you've identified in this book?
[1:43] S3: Yeah. I was looking for a framework, uh, to explain
[1:46] S3: a lot of the chaos that we're living through today.
[1:50] S3: And you could almost have a checklist of about 20
[1:51] S3: or 30 things that are changing right before our eyes.
[1:55] S3: But I wanted to focus on the three things that
[1:58] S3: fundamentally alter our conception of Australia. So our sort of
[2:02] S3: colonial and first century federation. Australia is a very, very
[2:06] S3: male centred, whiter than the norm, certainly diverse compared to
[2:11] S3: other countries, but white male. And the third part of
[2:15] S3: that equation was always that someone had our back, Great
[2:19] S3: Britain up until the loss of Singapore and the Second
[2:22] S3: World War, and then straight afterwards, the United States. So
[2:25] S3: the three shocks doing them in order. The first shock
[2:28] S3: and it's an identity shock. It's not necessarily a negative shock.
[2:32] S3: It can be a. You can view these things as
[2:34] S3: positive shocks. And the first two are certainly positive shocks.
[2:37] S3: The first shock is we are again a majority migrant nation.
[2:43] S3: So more than half the population was either born overseas
[2:46] S3: or has at least one migrant parent. And we're the
[2:49] S3: first English speaking country to return to majority migrant status.
[2:53] S3: We were majority migrant up until the 1890s and at
[2:56] S3: the turn of the 20th century, when the six colonies
[3:01] S3: federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia. We'd sort of
[3:04] S3: crossed that threshold to what I would call majority old Australian. Now,
[3:08] S3: old Australia, I define not by age, but by time
[3:11] S3: on country. Both your parents were born here, so essentially
[3:14] S3: three generations or longer on, uh, on Australian soil. So
[3:20] S3: we've moved from a majority old Australia to majority New Australia.
[3:23] S3: Now that threshold was crossed quite a while ago. Now,
[3:26] S3: if you think about the politics of the previous decade,
[3:28] S3: when we had that revolving door of prime ministers, we've
[3:30] S3: crossed that threshold in 2018. The second threshold we've crossed
[3:36] S3: identity threshold. Identity shock is the feminisation of our economy.
[3:40] S3: So so the the largest group of workers now, and
[3:43] S3: this has been this has been the case for the
[3:45] S3: last ten years for more than ten years now, actually.
[3:48] S3: I'll give you the date in a sec. It's quite
[3:50] S3: an unintended political joke. I think the culture played on
[3:53] S3: the system, but I'll sort of bury my lead and
[3:55] S3: wait for the end for give you the date. Um,
[3:58] S3: the largest group of workers by occupation are professional women.
[4:02] S3: So they got tertiary degree and they're working across the profession.
[4:05] S3: So doctors, lawyers, uh, media executives like yourself. Now, when
[4:11] S3: did that threshold. When was that threshold crossed? So 2015.
[4:16] S3: It's quite interesting. The very core of the Tony Abbott
[4:18] S3: was about to lose his job as prime minister, our
[4:21] S3: most macho prime minister, by all accounts, even probably by
[4:24] S3: his own account. Uh, that was that was the quarter
[4:28] S3: in the in the, in the charts where professional women
[4:31] S3: overtopped men working as technical or trade workers. So essentially
[4:35] S3: the tradie was replaced by the professional woman in 2015.
[4:40] S3: Now think about what that means for the conception of Australia.
[4:43] S3: So Australia has always conceived of itself as as a
[4:46] S3: male centred. So all our prosperity is bound up in
[4:50] S3: men working with their hands, sort of shepherds, gold miners, shearers, uh,
[4:56] S3: manufacturing workers. You know, they built the snow, they built automobiles.
[5:00] S3: And of course, in the early part, at the turn
[5:02] S3: of the 21st century, when the great mining boom comes,
[5:05] S3: that's sort of sourced in China. Um, they're doing two
[5:08] S3: things at the same time. They're digging up the quarry again.
[5:11] S3: And they're also because the construction workforce is a big
[5:14] S3: part of the technical and trades workforce. Now replacing the
[5:18] S3: manufacturing jobs are the builders, the physical builders of our
[5:23] S3: apartment towers, of our sort of gleaming corporate towers and
[5:27] S3: the capital cities and also the big expanse of suburban frontiers.
[5:32] S3: So those two things, to my mind, really force us
[5:36] S3: to rethink who we are. Majority migrant with an economy
[5:39] S3: centered on the labor of women. But the third shock
[5:41] S3: and this is the negative shock. So the first two
[5:43] S3: shocks force you to reconceive Australia actually broaden your definition
[5:47] S3: of Australia. The third shock is really the thing that
[5:50] S3: that unsettles us. And I think this thing unsettles us
[5:52] S3: even more than AI and climate, which are really confronting challenges.
[5:59] S3: The third shock is the fact that no one's got
[6:01] S3: our back anymore. We are now operating in a world
[6:03] S3: of capricious allies and trading partners. So both China, our
[6:08] S3: largest trading partner, beat up on us during that Covid
[6:11] S3: period under Morrison's government. And Donald Trump, we know in
[6:14] S3: both his first and his Second presidency, has tried to
[6:17] S3: poke Australia in the eye, try to gouge us with tariffs.
[6:20] S3: He had a prickly, uh, you know, almost first introduction
[6:23] S3: to the Australian prime minister in after he became president
[6:26] S3: Malcolm Turnbull. Remember that telephone call was leaked for the
[6:29] S3: world to hear?
[6:30] S2: It was Malcolm Turnbull's been talking about it ever since.
[6:33] S3: I interviewed all the all the Prime ministers in this
[6:36] S3: period for the book. Uh, obviously Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and
[6:41] S3: Anthony Albanese. And Malcolm's got his own. He's got his
[6:44] S3: own transcript of that conversation and we went through them.
[6:49] S3: There's not that much difference. But there are a couple
[6:51] S3: of things that sort of finesse to make Trump sound
[6:53] S3: a bit stronger and make Turnbull sound a bit weaker, right?
[6:57] S3: That's the third shock. The third shock.
[6:58] S2: Is also about identity in a way too, isn't it?
[7:01] S2: They're all about identity. The three. Absolutely yes.
[7:04] S3: But in our region now, a region that, you know
[7:07] S3: both major parties has definitional issue here about whether they
[7:11] S3: are major parties or not. Um, there's been a consensus, uh,
[7:16] S3: it was contested early on in the Keating period, but
[7:18] S3: certainly Howard followed it up that, um, we want to
[7:21] S3: get along with all the countries in Asia. And in fact,
[7:23] S3: the way we build alliances, whether in a group sense
[7:26] S3: or a one on one sense, it's with an eye
[7:29] S3: to the future in case there's a threat coming from
[7:32] S3: the region and the Americans don't have our back. Um,
[7:35] S3: there are a whole lot of other countries, like minded countries,
[7:38] S3: not necessarily democracies in the same way that we view ourselves.
[7:41] S3: But you look at the relationship with PNG now has
[7:44] S3: an NRL chapter to it, defence relationships and our defence
[7:48] S3: cooperation relationship with Indonesia all along the Pacific Rim. Now
[7:53] S3: a lot of Pacific nations are sort of revisiting Australia's
[7:56] S3: soft power. They want football stadiums built, but they also want, um,
[8:00] S3: favoured status for their um migrants. And they also want
[8:04] S3: climate change taken seriously. All these things have pretty much
[8:07] S3: been uncontested the last 20 or 30 years. But the
[8:10] S3: big shift in our region, which is part of this
[8:14] S3: identity shock of other the US not being reliable and
[8:18] S3: maybe the Chinese, depending on what mood we find them
[8:21] S3: in Beijing is. I'm talking about not Chinese Australians. Um,
[8:25] S3: they can be capricious. You know, the big guys are
[8:27] S3: now throwing their weight around. And in that world, because
[8:30] S3: we haven't had to live in this world before. We
[8:32] S3: have been majority migrant before. We certainly don't have a
[8:35] S3: society centred on the labor of of women before. We've
[8:38] S3: had ten years to get used to that. Um, it's
[8:40] S3: been coming for 30 years, but we've had ten years to, to,
[8:44] S3: to see the, um, the absolute numerical manifestation of that.
[8:47] S3: But the third part of it is, you know, from
[8:50] S3: the first fleet all the way through, you would think
[8:54] S3: to the APEC that Howard hosted in 2007, when everybody
[8:59] S3: was competing for the affection of the then Chinese president,
[9:02] S3: Hu Jintao. And George Bush is coming in on a.
[9:04] S3: On another night, and Howard doesn't want to meet him
[9:06] S3: because he wants to be at the Dally M Awards. Um,
[9:09] S3: that world no longer exists for us. That world of
[9:12] S3: sort of benign superpowers, even if they're competing. They both
[9:16] S3: used to wake up every morning and unconsciously go to
[9:20] S3: work each day, trying to trying to shape the world
[9:22] S3: in their image on Australia's behalf. They're certainly not doing
[9:26] S3: it now because, yeah, it's a long way of it's
[9:28] S3: a long way of explaining the thesis, but it.
[9:31] S2: Seems to me now they're all identity.
[9:32] S3: Yeah, they're all.
[9:33] S2: Identity because.
[9:34] S3: They are. And but they're all unsettling in the sense
[9:37] S3: that we've had, we've had close to two centuries of
[9:39] S3: thinking something else about ourselves.
[9:42] S2: One thing I didn't know, actually, I mean that you say,
[9:45] S2: let's talk about the immigration one first. Uh, you say
[9:48] S2: Australia's kind of we're a bit unusual. And you mentioned
[9:51] S2: that we're now approaching 55% of the national population being
[9:55] S2: new Australians, as you call them, like at least born overseas.
[9:58] S2: Or you've got a parent who's a migrant. And in 2026,
[10:02] S2: the equivalent figures for first and second generation migrants in
[10:05] S2: the US and the UK was less than 30%. So
[10:08] S2: we're a bit unusual in our majority migrant population. So
[10:13] S2: I'm an I'm an old Australian. You're a new Australian? Yeah.
[10:16] S2: What's the difference? Why? Why does it matter?
[10:19] S3: Why would that matter to us? It really shouldn't matter
[10:22] S3: to us because certainly since the post-war migration boom, which
[10:25] S3: is the programs of assisted passage that both my parents
[10:29] S3: came from, separately from Greece in the 50s and 60s, uh,
[10:33] S3: there's no problem, in a sense, when you think globally
[10:37] S3: in terms of how Australia manages a large migration intakes
[10:41] S3: and the cohesion equation on the ground, like you still
[10:45] S3: to this day, there have been some terrible, terrible incidents. Obviously,
[10:50] S3: Bondi being the being the most Or where you wonder
[10:54] S3: whether our cohesion is what it was. But even adding
[10:58] S3: that into the equation, I still see Australia as a
[11:00] S3: cohesive society relative to to the countries we compare ourselves
[11:06] S3: to UK, US, especially Canada and New Zealand, which are
[11:09] S3: a lot closer, a lot closer in in sort of
[11:12] S3: democratic conception to us than maybe the poms or the Yanks. Um,
[11:18] S3: so in a way you wouldn't worry about it, but
[11:20] S3: where it becomes problematic for our national identity is once
[11:25] S3: you move to majority migrant, think about where most of
[11:29] S3: those migrants live and most of those migrants live in
[11:32] S3: Melbourne and Sydney. So Melbourne and Sydney between them are 40%
[11:36] S3: of the national population. Now, that unto itself is actually
[11:39] S3: quite unusual because you look at um, Greater Manchester and
[11:43] S3: Greater London respectively, the second and the and and the
[11:46] S3: most populous cities of United Kingdom, less than 20% of
[11:50] S3: their population. Uh, Toronto and Montreal a bit closer to 30, 35% odd.
[11:56] S3: You don't get the equivalent in in New Zealand because
[11:59] S3: Auckland is such a big city in the second city is,
[12:03] S3: you know, it's essentially Melbourne to Geelong. Um, so that 40%
[12:08] S3: has political implications, especially now that the last couple of
[12:11] S3: federal elections have been decided in Melbourne and Sydney. But
[12:15] S3: more than half of all the migrants in Australia and
[12:18] S3: their children and their local born children live in just
[12:21] S3: Melbourne and Sydney. So if you were to draw up,
[12:24] S3: if you were to if you were to draw up
[12:26] S3: the ethnic face of Australia, but you drew up two
[12:28] S3: ethnic faces, so you had your Melbourne and Sydney ethnic face,
[12:31] S3: and then you had everywhere else you actually find for
[12:34] S3: the rest of the country it's still majority old Australian.
[12:37] S3: And that's because most of the migrants are concentrated in
[12:40] S3: Melbourne and Sydney, and it's where the population growth is,
[12:43] S3: where the jobs are. But the other part to it is,
[12:46] S3: and I use this analogy of the family tree, the
[12:48] S3: family tree is the is sort of the Visualization of
[12:52] S3: this data so you don't have to. You don't have to,
[12:54] S3: you know, have a have a math degree to be
[12:56] S3: able to understand it. I visualize the Australian people as
[13:01] S3: being represented in a family tree. We're first Australian roots.
[13:05] S3: Indigenous are Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, an
[13:10] S3: old Australian trunk. So time on country. At least three generations.
[13:13] S3: Both your parents were born here. And the branches of
[13:16] S3: the family tree are migrants and their local born children. Now,
[13:20] S3: as I say, majority migrant nationally, that the branches now
[13:24] S3: contain up to 50 to heading towards 55% of the population.
[13:29] S3: The family trees of Melbourne and Sydney combined are about
[13:32] S3: two thirds. Okay in the branches, but the family tree
[13:35] S3: for the rest of the country is still over 50%
[13:37] S3: in the trunk. So if you've got two thirds of
[13:40] S3: your family tree in Melbourne and Sydney and the branches,
[13:43] S3: it means you've got less than a third, less than
[13:46] S3: a third, because you've also got to account for the
[13:47] S3: roots less than a third as Old Australia. But old
[13:49] S3: Australia is the majority of everywhere else. So this isn't
[13:53] S3: a two Australia's thesis where it gets interesting and complicated
[13:58] S3: and challenging. And, you know, for some people bemusing for me,
[14:03] S3: it's I'm inspired by it because suddenly everywhere is different
[14:07] S3: in Australia and everywhere is different. Australia, uh, has some challenges,
[14:13] S3: but what you would build if you learn how to
[14:16] S3: connect these different parts of Australia is something could be
[14:19] S3: quite magnificent if you, if you can pull it off. Yes,
[14:22] S3: but the tops of the family trees, the largest overseas
[14:25] S3: born group, is now pretty much different everywhere you look.
[14:29] S2: Okay, so Melbourne, India.
[14:32] S3: Migrants from India and migrants from China are the second largest.
[14:36] S3: Sydney migrants from China are the largest. And migrants from
[14:39] S3: India the second largest. Where are the poms in this?
[14:41] S3: They're the third branch of both family trees in Perth.
[14:46] S3: The English migrants from England are still the largest group.
[14:49] S2: Okay.
[14:49] S3: As they are in Adelaide, as they are in Hobart,
[14:52] S3: as they are in every provincial city in Australia. By
[14:56] S3: the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast has the New Zealand
[14:58] S3: as the top, as does Brisbane. And by the way,
[15:00] S3: Darwin has migrants from the Philippines and Canberra has migrants
[15:03] S3: from India. I actually love that mosaic. Okay. One of
[15:07] S3: the reasons why I love that mosaic is for the
[15:09] S3: previous 200 and something years. And this is why majority
[15:12] S3: migrant is is there are multiple identity shocks within the
[15:16] S3: concept of majority migrant. Up until around 2009, 2010 did
[15:20] S3: not matter where you lived in Australia, the English were
[15:23] S3: on top of every family tree, capital city or regional town.
[15:28] S2: Yes, the political implications that you talk about are that,
[15:33] S2: I'll quote you, Melbourne and Sydney decide who runs this country. Yeah,
[15:37] S2: and that's a shift. And that's because they are they
[15:41] S2: are attracting most migrants and are than the rest of
[15:45] S2: the country. And they are the epitome of new Australians.
[15:49] S3: Absolutely.
[15:49] S2: Okay.
[15:50] S3: So when they're just quickly, there is there is there
[15:52] S3: is a physical manifestation of this. So when the electoral commission, every,
[15:56] S3: every sort of two rounds does the, it checks the
[15:59] S3: population and make sure that all the seats have roughly
[16:01] S3: equivalent numbers of voters in them when they redistribute the
[16:06] S3: boundaries for changes in population. The long story from the
[16:10] S3: 80s through to 2010, uh, which is really the long
[16:14] S3: story of internal migration to Queensland and then the mining
[16:17] S3: boom after the after the turn of the 21st century,
[16:21] S3: Queensland picks up six seats in net terms over this
[16:24] S3: over that long run, and it picks them up pretty
[16:27] S3: much at the expense of Victoria and New South Wales
[16:29] S3: and South Australia. And WA picks up a couple of
[16:32] S3: seats as well at the same time. But since, uh,
[16:36] S3: since the sort of turning, the turning of the sort
[16:38] S3: of population clock in Australia from, uh, the, the mining
[16:43] S3: boom of the first decade of the 21st century to
[16:45] S3: the migration boom of the second decade of the 21st century,
[16:47] S3: that's when Melbourne and Sydney start to come into their
[16:49] S3: own again. And it's not that. It's not that New
[16:52] S3: South Wales is picking up more seats. It's just it's
[16:55] S3: just the boundaries of Sydney are extending further and further
[16:58] S3: into what was previously rural and regional New South Wales,
[17:02] S3: or provincial New South Wales. But Melbourne has been picking
[17:04] S3: up seats because of its population growth, by the way.
[17:06] S3: Also Canberra has been picking up seats. So in that
[17:09] S3: in that sort of cosmopolitan access, that little Bermuda Triangle
[17:13] S3: of diversity between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, Canberra doesn't decide elections,
[17:18] S3: but Melbourne and Sydney now have the numerical weight, especially
[17:22] S3: if the Liberal Party aren't aren't and competitive in those
[17:25] S3: seats have the numerical weight to basically give labor landslides.
[17:29] S2: Okay.
[17:30] S3: At the expense previously, because the political centre for the
[17:32] S3: previous 20 years was was Queensland.
[17:44] S2: Politically, it's also fascinating because the Liberal Party in the
[17:48] S2: last two elections have just collapsed in the major cities,
[17:52] S2: collapsed in Melbourne and Sydney, and I think their review
[17:54] S2: said we can't. There's no way back to government without
[17:58] S2: the cities. We can't can't win. And they've also obviously
[18:00] S2: lost some teal seats too. So can you talk about
[18:03] S2: a little bit about the Liberal Party, how it even
[18:06] S2: works in this new identity that you've outlined in your book?
[18:09] S2: I mean, how does it if they're they're flirting with
[18:13] S2: One Nation? And obviously we'll get to that too. There's
[18:15] S2: a bit of tension around immigration and the pace of
[18:17] S2: it and whether and that's globally, not just here, but
[18:21] S2: how does what's the crisis fronting the Liberals, given your your,
[18:26] S2: you know, the data and how you've described it about
[18:28] S2: how Australia actually is now what our real identity is?
[18:31] S3: The first two shocks are the first two shocks obviously
[18:35] S3: have electoral implications as a majority migrant and also an
[18:38] S3: economy centred on the labor of women. Now we we
[18:41] S3: can visualize on Election Night 2022 that second shock. We
[18:46] S3: can absolutely Visualize it in in the half a dozen
[18:49] S3: seats that went to teals. And they're all professional women.
[18:51] S3: So you saw Allegra Spender on election night, and Zoe Daniel,
[18:54] S3: although she lost her seat subsequently, Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney
[18:58] S3: and you would have seen then and there when you
[19:02] S3: were watching that election night coverage that the centre of Australia,
[19:07] S3: as politics understood it, had shifted, but the centre of
[19:12] S3: the real economy had shifted years earlier. And this is
[19:15] S3: really what one of the one of the reasons why
[19:16] S3: I play around with these identity shocks. I use politics
[19:20] S3: as a bit of a as a bit of a
[19:21] S3: sort of, you know, the train's delayed like the tracks
[19:23] S3: laid out, but the train takes a long time to
[19:26] S3: catch up with where Australia actually is. And um, and
[19:30] S3: the Liberal Party uh, have had, have had warning of the,
[19:36] S3: of the sort of um leaching of the female vote
[19:39] S3: over to labor. And remember, one of the reasons why
[19:43] S3: women used to vote, uh, coalition and overwhelming numbers through
[19:48] S3: the Menzies era in the 50s and 60s, even in
[19:50] S3: the Fraser 70s, is you're looking at traditional Australian family unit,
[19:54] S3: voting unit, voting household dad working full time may or
[19:57] S3: may not be a labor voter. Certainly if he's if
[20:01] S3: he's a trade union member, is likely to be a
[20:02] S3: labor voter. But if he's a professional or a or
[20:06] S3: a small business operator or, or as a farmer, uh,
[20:10] S3: they're likely to vote coalition mums at home raising the children.
[20:14] S3: And mum doesn't go back to paid work. Raising the
[20:18] S3: children is work, of course, but she doesn't go back
[20:20] S3: to paid work until the youngest has turned six. So
[20:24] S3: until the youngest is on average, you know, the majority
[20:27] S3: don't go back to paid work until the youngest has
[20:29] S3: entered primary school. In that world. There's a couple of
[20:33] S3: things were going on. Certainly the coalition had a really,
[20:35] S3: really strong hold on mums at home in middle class families.
[20:40] S3: But the other thing was migration and this is, um,
[20:44] S3: this something was always a surprise to me until I
[20:46] S3: could figure out the why. Women were more resistant to
[20:50] S3: the post-war migration wave of the 50s and 60s than
[20:53] S3: their husbands were, because the men were working with the
[20:56] S3: migrants and were getting on all right. Migrant migration was
[21:00] S3: still a was still a concept that you could be
[21:04] S3: terrorised by. If you read the account of the latest
[21:07] S3: knife crime from somebody in the so-called ethnic community in
[21:11] S3: the 50s and 60s. So for the mum that Australia
[21:14] S3: was a little a little less familiar. So when you
[21:18] S3: get the sort of great feminisation of the workforce, and
[21:21] S3: it really does begin in the 70s. So a couple
[21:23] S3: of things have happened. Obviously the, um, uh, the pill
[21:26] S3: in the 60s, but then also Gough, you think about
[21:29] S3: Whitlam and free university education, which really spits out this
[21:33] S3: in a good way. This spits out this cohort that
[21:35] S3: a previous generation of women, you know, their expectations were
[21:39] S3: to work for a few years, get married, have kids,
[21:41] S3: and then not really re-engage with the workforce. That big
[21:45] S3: change in the workforce would occur through the 70s, 80s
[21:48] S3: and 90s, and reaches its inevitable conclusion with professional women
[21:52] S3: as the largest group of workers. Those women are switching
[21:56] S3: to labor votes. They're becoming labor voters because labor is
[22:00] S3: obviously a party that's more anchored in, um, in the
[22:03] S3: trade union movement, even if the trade union movement is declining. Now, labor, um,
[22:08] S3: as terrible as it looked when it lost the 1996 election,
[22:12] S3: during that wipe out, when Paul Keating pretty much lost
[22:14] S3: the suburbs and lost the regions and was just left
[22:16] S3: with the, with the, um, with the inner inner cities,
[22:22] S3: that's about the only place where they held their seats.
[22:25] S3: They had already made the decision to switch to the quota. Yes.
[22:28] S3: Quota quota comes in 94. Now I argue and, uh,
[22:33] S3: others may others may want to challenge this fact, but, um,
[22:37] S3: I argue that labor almost learnt to win despite itself
[22:40] S3: because the quota forced it. The quota forced it to
[22:44] S3: diversify its parliamentary ranks.
[22:47] S2: You've also got a very interesting interview with Paul Erickson,
[22:49] S2: the campaign director for the last couple of elections for Labour,
[22:54] S2: who talks actually about the strategy, you know, to take.
[22:57] S2: Can you talk a little bit about that, the strategy
[22:59] S2: of actually attracting women a bit of resistance within Labour,
[23:02] S2: and certainly pulled that off?
[23:04] S3: Yeah, there was certainly a bit of resistance. So Paul
[23:05] S3: Erickson had workers worked as the deputy national secretary for
[23:11] S3: those losing shortened campaigns, uh, 2016 and 2019 and coming
[23:17] S3: out of the 2019 campaign. Because remember, that was the
[23:19] S3: one Labour thought was a lay down misere for them
[23:21] S3: because the coalition had just sacked itself for the second time.
[23:24] S3: And Scott Morrison wasn't that well known. And there were
[23:27] S3: a lot of people, you know, heading for the exit door.
[23:29] S3: A lot of senior ministers were not going to recontest,
[23:31] S3: and it looked like a smell of death about the government.
[23:34] S3: By the way, Scott Morrison himself told me a very
[23:36] S3: interesting thing in his interview. He said he said the
[23:40] S3: situation I'm paraphrasing now was so diabolical, uh, that the,
[23:46] S3: you know, those that remained in the party had no
[23:48] S3: choice but to be unified. And that made it actually
[23:53] S3: that actually released him to be able to run that, that, that, um,
[23:57] S3: that strategy, which basically outflanked labor because it, you know,
[24:01] S3: they held their base in the regions and labor didn't
[24:03] S3: know where to look in the cities for those extra
[24:05] S3: seats that were begging to be taken. Now, coming out
[24:08] S3: of that election, labor did two things. There was there
[24:11] S3: was the the post-mortem, which was written by Craig Emerson
[24:15] S3: and Jay Weatherill, Craig Emerson, former minister and also economics
[24:19] S3: at the former federal minister and also economics advisor to
[24:21] S3: Bob Hawke in the 80s, and Jay Weatherill, former South
[24:25] S3: Australian Labor premier. They did their review. The. What went wrong?
[24:29] S3: It's quite. Of all the post-election reviews I've read, including
[24:32] S3: some of the secret ones, this was probably the one
[24:34] S3: that was most honest because it said, whatever we've been
[24:38] S3: doing hasn't worked. We now need to look at Australia
[24:41] S3: as it really is and maybe park some of our
[24:44] S3: assumptions and and have a rethink about what the purpose
[24:46] S3: of the Labour Party is after the election. Paul Erickson
[24:52] S3: and one of the labor pollsters, Campbell White, then did
[24:55] S3: this great big who is the voter we need, uh,
[25:00] S3: to get into government. What have we been missing? Where
[25:03] S3: is the political center? What is the median voter? And
[25:07] S3: they came. They came to quite a quite a counterintuitive conclusion.
[25:11] S3: And it was more about maximizing the people who are
[25:15] S3: already coming into their column, uh, which was women, not
[25:19] S3: professional women, by the way, but women in the caring sector,
[25:23] S3: who to all intents and purposes are working class. Some
[25:25] S3: of them may have a tertiary degree, but most of
[25:27] S3: them don't. Now that worker, now the numbers of those workers.
[25:32] S3: And then I went and had another look at the
[25:33] S3: data for myself, because I didn't have the full report.
[25:36] S3: I had his research detailed to me by Paul himself. The, um,
[25:41] S3: when I mentioned earlier, professional women are outnumbered male trades,
[25:46] S3: which is essentially the qualified part of the workforce, the
[25:49] S3: semi-skilled part of the workforce, the head to head between
[25:52] S3: a labourer again, a guy who works with his hands
[25:55] S3: and construction sector, a labourer or a carer, a woman
[25:59] S3: working in childcare, aged care. You know, a nurse may
[26:03] S3: not be qualified, may not have a university degree, especially
[26:07] S3: older nurses who don't have university degrees. The carers outnumber
[26:13] S3: the labourers.
[26:13] S2: Okay.
[26:15] S3: And that wasn't the case even five years ago.
[26:18] S2: And Ericsson pitch for for them. I think he said what?
[26:20] S2: Our voter is a 38 year old woman.
[26:24] S3: Well she is, yeah. She is tall intents and purposes
[26:27] S3: a woman in the suburb. She's, she is, um, a
[26:31] S3: carer and to all intents and purposes working class. Yeah.
[26:33] S3: She's not a professional by the way. So I think
[26:35] S3: people got a bit bamboozled by the teals on the
[26:38] S3: night of the election. And thinking that this is how
[26:40] S3: Labour won its election, Labour didn't win the election that way.
[26:43] S3: Labour won the election because women of all ages and
[26:47] S3: of all income groups and of all qualifications, all swung
[26:51] S3: to labour. All. Every age group swung. The coalition lost
[26:54] S3: every group in that election. You asked me before about
[26:57] S3: what was, you know, why the Liberals didn't understand the cities,
[27:01] S3: the composition of the workforce in the cities. Forget the
[27:04] S3: diversity part for one bit. The composition of the work
[27:07] S3: of the workforce in the city is not men working
[27:10] S3: with their hands. The dominant, the dominant driver of economic
[27:14] S3: activity now is the services sector, not not the physical
[27:18] S3: manufacturing or building sector. That doesn't mean that mining doesn't
[27:21] S3: create a lot of income for the nation. It does.
[27:23] S3: It's just not a big employer. And, and I think
[27:26] S3: that that part of that part of real Australia, uh,
[27:30] S3: was lost on the Liberal Party, partly because they didn't
[27:34] S3: think they needed a quota. And by the way, going
[27:36] S3: into the going into their three successful elections, 13, 16
[27:41] S3: and 19. The coalition had fewer women in the lower
[27:45] S3: house MPs than Howard did in 96. And think about
[27:50] S3: think about the changes in the intervening 20 and 30 years.
[27:52] S3: And suddenly you still think you want to be 80, 20,
[27:55] S3: like 80% blokes, 20% women. And the women themselves are
[27:59] S3: not prominent apart from Julie Bishop.
[28:01] S2: Yes.
[28:01] S3: It doesn't you know, it doesn't add up.
[28:04] S2: But but but can you reflect maybe a little bit
[28:06] S2: more on contemporary politics, but are there going through these,
[28:09] S2: these sort of conniptions and, you know, pulling themselves apart
[28:12] S2: over both immigration and Australian values? Or do we believe
[28:16] S2: in multiculturalism or don't we? They're still talking about whether
[28:19] S2: they should have quotas or not. They've completely collapsed in
[28:22] S2: the cities. Their female vote is catastrophic. I mean, what
[28:26] S2: where do they go? You know.
[28:27] S3: Now the Liberal Party, knowing that they've had this problem
[28:30] S3: for a long time, haven't culturally been able to adjust
[28:32] S3: this labor. I think adjusted. There was almost an automatic
[28:36] S3: stabilizer through the quota that made their caucus, even when
[28:41] S3: they were losing elections, look more like the country it
[28:43] S3: was seeking to represent. And of course, it manifests itself.
[28:47] S3: This difference manifests itself in the 2022 election, where you've
[28:51] S3: got Scott Morrison trying to trying to win another election
[28:54] S3: on his own. You've got the big breakout in the
[28:57] S3: Me Too movement, which happens. You know, in Covid, you've
[29:00] S3: got a climate change issue also coming at him as well.
[29:03] S3: And you've got the integrity in government. Those sort of
[29:05] S3: the three factors that are driving the the teal campaign.
[29:09] S3: But something more than that was also going on, you know,
[29:11] S3: coming out of Covid, you had this crazy situation where
[29:15] S3: people were at home and getting paid to be at home.
[29:19] S3: So the guy ended up getting more money than the
[29:22] S3: than the part time mum, let's say in a household.
[29:25] S3: So let's say your traditional two income household, dad's on
[29:28] S3: full time work, mum's on part time work, he gets
[29:31] S3: all his job keepers, she gets less than less than
[29:34] S3: he gets. Both of them are working at home. And
[29:36] S3: guess what he's asked her to do because we know
[29:37] S3: the stats have shown this. He's asked her to do
[29:39] S3: more housework now that the two of them are living together.
[29:41] S3: He hasn't chipped in on average across the population. I'm
[29:44] S3: not trying to. I'm not trying to stereotype or even generalize.
[29:47] S3: But on average, across the population, the coping load of
[29:51] S3: remote learning for kids and all the other stuff in
[29:55] S3: managing those sort of Covid lockdowns in and out of
[29:57] S3: lockdowns for those two years fell disproportionately on women. Also,
[30:01] S3: the job losses fell disproportionately on women. And so for Labour,
[30:05] S3: you think about it, you can reach the correct conclusion
[30:09] S3: by the wrong path. And they sort of came at
[30:11] S3: it by the wrong path and they didn't realise that Covid.
[30:14] S3: I think when when Eriksen presents his research in 2020,
[30:17] S3: he's not thinking that COVID's can act as an accelerator
[30:19] S3: cultural accelerator for Labour. Not in his wildest dreams. I mean,
[30:23] S3: he's a very smart bloke, but he's not he's not
[30:26] S3: a prophet in that respect. Um, those of us, myself
[30:29] S3: and myself sort of covering this at this period, you
[30:32] S3: sort of sense something had really shifted in the country,
[30:34] S3: but you couldn't really count it until it happened and
[30:37] S3: you then had to do your maths, working your electron mass,
[30:40] S3: working backwards. And here's the luckiest break, by the way,
[30:44] S3: the luckiest breaker Anthony Albanese had was the delay of
[30:48] S3: the first budget. The first budget. It went from May
[30:52] S3: to October. That gave him an extra six months to
[30:55] S3: process this research from Ericsson and Campbell White. And it
[30:59] S3: also gave him an idea that when I do my
[31:03] S3: budget reply speech, I'm going to have to properly product
[31:06] S3: differentiate to signal to women the true middle, the true
[31:11] S3: swinging voter, the ones who are sort of leaning towards us.
[31:15] S3: But we want to build supermajorities with. I want to
[31:18] S3: signal to them that I'm on your side. And the
[31:22] S3: very first thing you did in budget Reply was universal childcare. Yes, yes.
[31:26] S3: And that was, by the way, Paul Scott Morrison. That
[31:28] S3: was the first assistance tap they turned off was free childcare.
[31:32] S3: So at the time that the coalition were moving you
[31:35] S3: back to the you're out on your own again because
[31:37] S3: the virus is gone. Albanese is pitching universal child care,
[31:41] S3: and it didn't seem, you know, to all the hard
[31:44] S3: heads in the gallery at the time, it didn't seem like,
[31:46] S3: you know, the earth had moved, but he'd laid down
[31:49] S3: a marker that was going to make labor more competitive
[31:52] S3: than it had been in any previous election the previous
[31:54] S3: 20 years.
[31:56] S2: So the bigger picture, what's the danger of all this?
[31:58] S2: I mean, you talked about how you found it interesting
[32:00] S2: that Sydney is different from Brisbane and different from Perth
[32:02] S2: and so on. But is there a danger in in,
[32:06] S2: I guess, a political danger or a cohesion danger in
[32:08] S2: sort of concentrating old Australians in certain areas and new
[32:13] S2: Australians in other areas? Do they talk to each other?
[32:16] S3: Yeah. So the map at the moment looks like Australia's polarising,
[32:19] S3: not just by place and by income and education, but
[32:23] S3: by identity. So it does look like the electoral map
[32:25] S3: is polarising. And when you think about where one nation
[32:28] S3: has suddenly gone from, you know, six, 8% of the
[32:31] S3: last federal election, depending on when you're looking at metro
[32:34] S3: or non-metropolitan seats to, you know, consistently tracking in the
[32:39] S3: 20s and at some point, you know, competitive, you know,
[32:43] S3: equal to or even above labor. Look at the last
[32:45] S3: state election in South Australia. And this is the one
[32:49] S3: this is where the this is an actual election as
[32:52] S3: opposed to this poll or that poll. No disrespect to
[32:55] S3: the pollsters, but in that actual election, the One Nation
[32:59] S3: primary vote is almost identical, 22.9% to the primary vote
[33:03] S3: they got at their very first state election in Queensland
[33:06] S3: in 1998. And how did those seats distribute? So again,
[33:10] S3: you always have to look at seats. There are 33
[33:14] S3: seats in Adelaide, in the South Australian parliament, in the
[33:18] S3: lower house, and 14 outside labor won 32 of the 33.
[33:22] S3: It picked up an extra five off the libs, and
[33:23] S3: the libs were left with just one seat in uh,
[33:27] S3: in Adelaide. But in a number of the, the sort
[33:30] S3: of older, uh, less diverse electorates on outer suburbs of
[33:35] S3: Adelaide One Nation are of finishing second, and that is
[33:38] S3: a concern for Labour at the at the at that boundary,
[33:40] S3: at that sort of the sort of boundary between the
[33:43] S3: city and the and the regions in the regions, though
[33:46] S3: it's interesting, Labour only went into the election with two
[33:49] S3: seats in the regions, and they held those two seats.
[33:51] S3: Bear in mind, Malinauskas has won a landslide because he's
[33:54] S3: won 32 out of the 33 seats in Adelaide, One
[33:57] S3: Nation have won for the libs of one for an
[34:00] S3: independence of one for. So South Australia, for good or
[34:04] S3: for real, gives you the template for what a federal
[34:07] S3: electorate might start to look like if one nation do
[34:10] S3: make those inroads at the coalition's expense, and you get
[34:13] S3: essentially in the regions, you know, we're one third of
[34:17] S3: the Australian population lives, two thirds live in capital cities.
[34:20] S3: So even just think about those two thirds, one thirds, um,
[34:23] S3: divides one nation, concentrating in the regions and threatening labor
[34:28] S3: in some provincial towns like the Hunter, that electorate, uh,
[34:32] S3: former coal mining area or think about some of the
[34:35] S3: Wider parts of Sydney. So the electorate of Lindsay or
[34:38] S3: maybe the the outer north of Melbourne, uh, they can
[34:42] S3: pick up a couple of seats there. But what is
[34:44] S3: happening in the cities is to me more interesting because
[34:47] S3: that's still where the elections are decided. And this is
[34:49] S3: what really concerns me. But the collapse of the Liberal Party,
[34:52] S3: because the Liberal Party at the moment are now so
[34:54] S3: spooked by One Nation. Essentially, what's happened to the Liberal
[34:57] S3: Party is that their city based vote has given up
[35:00] S3: on them. And so they've gone to the teals or
[35:02] S3: labor and a few sort of hanging around. But, you know,
[35:05] S3: they only got one seat in metropolitan Melbourne, only three
[35:08] S3: in Sydney, only one in Brisbane, in Sydney, by the way.
[35:11] S3: They've got three, but the teals have got four and
[35:13] S3: Daly makes it five. So they're outnumbered in the cities
[35:16] S3: by the crossbench. So they're not a major party in
[35:19] S3: the cities anymore. One nation bobs up and essentially conservative
[35:23] S3: voters in the regions coming out of that last election
[35:25] S3: are looking at the coalition thinking they're not going to
[35:28] S3: win an election any time soon, and I'll never vote
[35:30] S3: for bloody labor. So I'm going to send to smash
[35:33] S3: the system signal. And you saw that in SA because
[35:37] S3: in South Australia there was no conception of the Liberal
[35:39] S3: Party even being competitive at that state election. They had
[35:42] S3: leadership issues before the current leader. So in that this
[35:46] S3: is a long way of answering a question. But if
[35:48] S3: you think about if that polarization continues and you're looking
[35:53] S3: at city based voters, more diverse, more gentrified, and some
[35:56] S3: of the inner city electorates as well, because you're not
[35:58] S3: just looking at labor with a lock on the migrant electorates,
[36:01] S3: you've still got teals and you've still got greens. You
[36:04] S3: look at the city based voter where the taxes are collected.
[36:08] S3: This is even before we go to the identity question.
[36:10] S3: And you look at people in the regions where some
[36:13] S3: of the services have been delivered from the taxes raised
[36:16] S3: in the city, how do you hold that country together?
[36:18] S3: If the people in the region are saying, you're a
[36:21] S3: bloody bunch of city slickers and you're not real Australians,
[36:23] S3: where the real Australians and by the way, net zero migration,
[36:26] S3: by the way, this by the way, that climate, climate
[36:29] S3: change is a hoax. The transgender. And so can you
[36:31] S3: imagine how you hold that country together if that's the
[36:34] S3: level of discourse between the parties. Between the parties of
[36:38] S3: the city and the parties of the regions. I mean,
[36:41] S3: a lot of this is on the Liberal Party, unfortunately.
[36:44] S3: Yes it is. A lot of it is on the
[36:45] S3: Liberal Party. Once they lose the city and there's no
[36:48] S3: pass back to majority government for them. What do they do?
[36:50] S3: Are they going to chase one nation in the regions
[36:52] S3: to see if they get out? Pauline. Pauline. John Howard
[36:55] S3: had this dilemma in 98. But coming out of that
[36:57] S3: Queensland election, how did he answer the problem? He went
[37:00] S3: for the GST. He went to repolarize the electorate in
[37:04] S3: an economic contest between labor and the coalition. Yes.
[37:07] S2: He focused on the economy.
[37:08] S3: Basically took her off the table. Angus Taylor hasn't quite
[37:11] S3: got that memo yet because in his budget reply he
[37:14] S3: had a good idea in there. But he also wanted
[37:15] S3: to cut um migration. Yes. So if he just said
[37:20] S3: in his budget reply, by the way, I'm not even
[37:21] S3: going to pay any attention to Pauline Hanson. I'm going
[37:24] S3: to tell the people who used to vote for us
[37:25] S3: in the cities that I'm on their side again. Last point,
[37:28] S3: and this is the this is the bigger risk of
[37:30] S3: polarization in the long run, especially when a labor government,
[37:33] S3: even if they become the natural party of government and
[37:35] S3: they get tired and they ended up like the Victorian
[37:37] S3: government and just just end up like the Victorian Labor government.
[37:41] S3: What happens to that to the electorate at that point?
[37:45] S3: Could you see a situation if the teals have already
[37:48] S3: shown you one part of the map can take, can, can,
[37:50] S3: can switch from a major party, traditional major party, you know,
[37:54] S3: never lost an election in these seats to suddenly electing
[37:56] S3: and reelecting professional women. Is it possible that in the
[38:00] S3: western suburbs of Sydney or the west of Melbourne, or
[38:02] S3: the north west of Melbourne, or the south east of Melbourne,
[38:05] S3: is it possible that in in the south west of Sydney,
[38:07] S3: is it possible in these electorates that suddenly migrant communities decide. Well,
[38:11] S3: labor hasn't been paying attention to me anyway. Labor are
[38:14] S3: about to lose this election. Why don't I elect one
[38:16] S3: of my own? When you get that polarised and this
[38:19] S3: is the thing that really bothers me in the future,
[38:21] S3: it's there's not an anti-immigrant comment at all, by the way.
[38:24] S3: I'm a child of migrants, but I don't want every
[38:26] S3: tribe in Australia electing their own MP.
[38:29] S2: Yes.
[38:29] S3: And I certainly don't want every tribe in Australia signalling
[38:32] S3: to to, to foreign nations who, you know, routinely interfere
[38:36] S3: in other people's democracies. That my vote is a is
[38:41] S3: not an Indian Australian voter or a Chinese Australian vote.
[38:44] S3: It is an Indian voter, a Chinese voter, or a
[38:46] S3: Muslim vote. That faction in 2025 that were running as
[38:50] S3: Muslim vote the Muslim vote faction. Well, read your constitutional history.
[38:57] S3: Our Constitution was designed in a way to leave. There
[39:00] S3: is no formal religion in the Australian Constitution and in
[39:03] S3: those Federation debates. Henry Higgins, bless him, he was one
[39:06] S3: of the ones who insisted that that line be put in.
[39:09] S3: He ended up being the first chair of the arbitration
[39:12] S3: commission who came up with a living wage. Um, you
[39:15] S3: don't want to live in that country. You don't want
[39:17] S3: to live in that country where you've got a multi-party system,
[39:19] S3: but also multi-ethnic political party system. Again, we can cheer.
[39:24] S3: I would certainly cheer Daly's election and Fowler, but I
[39:27] S3: think Labour losing Fowler for the long run is the
[39:31] S3: thing that they would worry about more, which is a
[39:33] S3: repolarization of the urban electorate between whites and non-whites.
[39:37] S2: Okay. On that somber note, thank you very much, George.
[39:41] S2: I really enjoyed your book. I just think it brings
[39:44] S2: together some ideas that we're all going to have to
[39:46] S2: grapple with as we've, you know, changed so significantly in
[39:48] S2: such a such a brief time, really. But appreciate you
[39:52] S2: again for joining us.
[39:52] S3: Thank you Jay.
[39:56] S1: To enjoy more in-depth journalism from the latest edition of
[39:58] S1: Good Weekend, visit us at the age.com.au or smh.com.au. This
[40:04] S1: episode was produced by Konrad Marshall and edited by Tim Mummery,
[40:08] S1: with technical assistance from our executive producer Tammy Mills, Lisa
[40:13] S1: Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. Oversee our podcasts and Melissa Stevens
[40:17] S1: is the editor of Good Weekend. If you enjoyed this episode,
[40:21] S1: follow our podcast and leave us a review on Apple
[40:24] S1: or Spotify. And thanks for listening.

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