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, it sounds like pure American Pie. 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?
I'm 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~)
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Let's summarise:
* Australians wary of Americans
* Australians accepting of British and Asian born leaders
* Australians embrace American Culture
* Australians reject American business
* Australian system of government still mostly British
* Americans are rare in Australia
* Australians are lax in securing the personal safety and security of their Prime Minister
* Kristina Keneally = Starbucks
Blimey. What sort of schizophrenic country are you living in, Nick? Because it can't be Australia.
The Australia I know embraces Americans and the United States more generally. I know an enormous number of Americans who live in Australia, and countless more whom I encounter whilst visiting.
Australia's system of government has always had a strong American influence, dating back to the early parliamentarian (American) King O'Malley, the man who put the 'Labor' in Australian Labor Party. Indeed the sensational visits to Australia by Mark Twain left us with some incredible insights into the trans-pacific relationship. During the US election in 2008 Republican Candidate John McCain wrote an article for the Australian press detailing the impact the visit of the 'Great White Fleet' of the US Navy had both on the servicemen and on the Australians who greeted it in 1908.
On the one hand you indeed note the popularity of someone like Don Lane, but you also suggest that Australians are wary of Kristina Keneally. I am confused.
I disagree with you on several counts. I find Americans and their accents commonplace in Australia, I along with millions of my countrymen embrace the arrival of starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, and Krispy Kreme; I believe that despite protestations by antiques to the contrary Australian politics is becoming more Americanised - and a good thing too. I am a democrat, and not a born-to-rule Imperialist like our traitorous Opposition Leader.
I believe the Prime Minister of Australia is far more like the President of the United States than he is like the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. As Australia (unlike the United Kingdom) does not have a resident native head of state, the head of government assumes a role similar to that in a popular sense.
So again, I am confused about the actual point you're trying to make, Nick. Are you saying that Australians embrace Americans whilst rejecting them simultaneously? Are you saying that the British really are still in charge of Australian culture? Are you saying that...
What are you saying?
Are you perhaps trying to tell us that the British in Australia are wary of Americans in Australia?
Tea thrown overboard into Sydney harbour perhaps?
W.
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@Whitlamite - just what are you trying to say? I am not sure where you come from but being born and bred in Sydney I certainly wasn't surrounded by American accents (besides those coming from the 'idiot box'). And please speak for yourself about Starbucks. And the Australian PM being more like the US President? That really has me stumped.
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1 Whitlamite: Yes there are some very 'British' aspect to Nick's post that confirm what I have said in many of my posts. Namely that Brits still believe Australia is 'their' country.
Take for example: "the fact that she was born in Las Vegas, raised in Ohio and speaks still with a distinctive American accent,"
Yet no mention of the accents of the ex Brits that were mentioned. Julia Gillard has a very Aussie accent, as does Tony Abbott. However, Chris Evans and a few others on both sides of Parliament, have made no attempt to speak 'Australian'...Have you ever heard Rupert Murdoch's mother speak...straight out of Buckingham Palace. Walk down any street in Australia and you're bound to bump into a 'pommy' accent more than an Aussie one.
As so far as the American thing, yes there is some schitzoid aspects to what Nick is trying to say here.
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Australia turns to the US and the UK because they have nobody in their own country to call a celebrity. All the commercial networks are obsessed with Hollywood gossip because they just can't compete.
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I hope the new NSW Premier manages to keep her job. Last time I was in NSW nearly two whole Cabinets worth of ministers resigned in three weeks. Talk about a high turnaround!
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Whitlamite, I think Nick's point is that there are contradictions in the relationship between Australia and the United States, hence his 'for and against' examples of the relationship.
His question, i think, was whether the people of NSW would view Kristina Keneally through the positive or negative lens of the AU-US relationship.
I would hope that her birthplace had nothing to do with her popularity. For a country that asks its migrants to integrate into Australian society, the Australian way of life, it would be a cruel irony to then deny them the opportunity to serve in a parliament.
As for Starbucks; i think they arrived in Australia too late. The cafe culture had been well established in Australia for too long, and with a better product, for Starbucks to compete. For that, we can probably thank the Italian immigrants who refused to believe that coffee should come in only one variety; instant.
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On the issue of Kristina Keneally, I don't care that she is American-born or a female, I find the bigger issue is what you noted about Kristina being the puppet of the Eddie & Joe show. Twice now, NSW Labor has dumped a Premier on NSW that we have not voted for, I feel Kristina is a lame duck who will suffer the indignity of a wallopping if the Libs can bring out a policy to go against the ALP.
On the American issue, I think some of us don't realise the infiltration the American culture has in Aussie as well as other Western nations. If we banned all American product then pickings of entertainment, food and recreation would be reduced significantally but we'd find a way around it. I love the USA for visits and friendships I have there but I am proud Aussie is influenced not just by American culture, but as you pointed out Nick, by British, by European, by parts of Asia and by internal Aussie culture; it's what makes us Aussie :-)
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I think on the whole, Australia embraces American culture wholeheartedly...just as it warmly welcomes nearly every other culture that comes to its shores! We're an open and progressive country.
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I'm in a similar position as the Premier, a dual citizen spending most of my life in the States but a notable amount in Oz as well. The above comments sum it up nicely, Australia has a dynamic identity that not everyone agrees on. American culture inevitably leaves its mark, as it does in many places around the world. At the same time, despite their idealistic philanthropy, white Australians are generally less willing to accept Americans as 'Aussie' than other migrants. I have my own theories regarding tall poppy syndrome and an understandable concern for the blurring of identity. In the end, this tempest in a teacup gives us something to talk about and they get to take the mickey out of me.
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Gosh! Whitlamite and Pete, you really do need to try and be a little thicker skinned, you guys seem to find some kind of hidden colonial agenda in everyone of Nick's posts. Redhotgreen summarises very nicely the point Nick was raising.
As for the assertion that "that Brits still believe Australia is 'their' country" because Nick does not detail which of the Brits or Malaysians still have their 'native' accents misses the point rather - this is about Americans (besides, it's pretty hard to miss Gillard's accent isn't it?)
As for the issue in hand, there's undoubtedly a lot of US influence on culture here Australia. There's the obvious TV programmes/films and in my profession at least, legislation and techniques are often borrowed from over the (big) pond. Even some aspects of the school system here seem more American to these European eyes.
But Crygyny is right, you don't hear an American accent all that often - even at the major tourist sites there's more Europeans and Asians milling about (do they know what they are missing?). For this reason, I suspect that Australians will be naturally less trustful of an American politician, at least until she's proved herself.
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Nick,
Kristina's Keneally's accent doesn't sound like "pure American pie" to me, some sentences are completely Oz ,however she still uses the very distinctive American "r" sound.
Most Australians are probably pro and anti-American culture at the same time,it's all very quantum really.We do seem to have a genius for rejecting some of America's best ideas, such as a Bill of Rights or simplified spelling,instead we adopted Starbucks and Halloween.
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Why is it that whenever an article is written about possible anti-Americanism, their accent is inevitably one of the first things mentioned? Sometimes I read or watch the BBC and it seems like they want one standard for American citizens and one standard for the entire rest of the world. As for Australia, it's a nation of immigrants and, as far as I can tell, is pretty used to people from all over the world in important positions.
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Australian politics goes beyond accents and previous nationalitiy, as expected in an immigrant country
The main question about Kristina Keneally is what the departing Nathan Rees stated (and Nick notes) - is she a puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. I think she is more than a puppet, rather an active particpant in the factional mess that is NSW Labor and which has paralysed progress in NSW. They've been a blight on Federal Labor and the Labor movement
Kristina Keneally has been a disastrous Planning Minister, and as the Upper House inquiry indicated, filters information so as not to 'see' her staff involved in dodgy meetings with lobbyists for developers who have paid political donations. When put on the spot she then utters Biblical quotes from her theological training!
Regarding Starbucks, I agree with redhotgreen #6, a cafe culture developed here around the 1970s, influenced by Italian migrants who introduced superb coffee. Starbucks was too late - and a poor comparison
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One reason that Australians find so few Americans in Australia, is ..
That it is so far away and so expensive to travel to. Airplane fare is sooo expensive for an American wanting to go to Australia. And most Americans, are, of course, not rich.
But, funnily enough, we think of Australia as a paradise of beaches and coral reefs. So, we all want to go there. :)
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@ Whitlamite I think Nick is closer to the mark than you think. It's not so much that Australia is schizophrenic than a lot of countries are similar when it's comes to American culture. Certainly UK and France lap up American culture and yet freely sneer at it as much as, if not more so, than Australia. And although the Queen may live in the UK - her role is pretty much ceremonial - in that the country is for all practical purposes is run by the government. So I would say Australian politics is far closer in style to UK than US - because there is a recognisable formal opposition with the Punch and Judy style of Westminster politics and that elections don't run for a year with all the razzmatazz of US elections. What the Australia shares with the US is a federal system.
@Pete111 Still with the bias BBC? I don't see how you can equate Nick's post somehow means that the Brits believe Australia is their country. Fact is - Keneally heritage gets more coverage by Australians reporters in Australia media than other Australian politicians of a British heritage. And due to Australia's heritage - Australians do speak within a range from distinctive Aussie accents to softer - even dare I say, more British accents. That's your heritage. To expect everyone to speak with a typical accent is silly and unpractical. Because I come from Somerset in the UK - do I have to speak like a rustic farmer?
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I am absolutley so happy - Brass balls Bishop, Ruddock are back yippeeee, and Barnaby, now we need, Fielding & Xenophan (?) and we have ideal Govt, who gives a hoot about the "fly by night" NSW premier. She could be from Mars, she's Labor - she's on borrowed time in power. remember the tune, people, come on Aussie, come on, come on, come on Aussie come on... Vote out the Prime Menace, and his cohorts.
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16 Eliza_nsw: Are you serious???
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Australia is a beautiful country and on my many visits, I have found the Australian people to be friendly, salt of the earth, patriotic, and proud of their history.
As a Brit living in the USA that makes frequent visits to family living Australia, I was struck by the outward appearances at least, just how like America Australia is. The American influence is obvious in its buildings, shopping malls; even the colour’s that they are painted. You could be anywhere in the USA with the same buildings, colour schemes etc. The Australian TV is definitely American influenced. Which I’m guessing translates in to the use of American words such as “cookies, chips” etc. I think it is a great shame and something every culture needs to be mindful of not loosing its own national identity whilst embracing other cultures. It is possible to live side by side and retain your own identity but I believe when you have been given the compliment of living in someone else’s country you should become a citizen of that country and not try to change it in to the country you have just left
Australia is great, its people are the best, I’d live there tomorrow if I had the money. Sadly it costs far to much to migrate there with fees in the high thousands or a ten year waiting list for the likes of parents that would like to be close to their children. So the Aussies don’t have to be concerned about any more bloody pommes moving to Aus or that they still think it’s their country as one writer wrote. That is why immigration is down from Europe and up from China there is only the Chinese and Americans that can afford the high fees that the Australian government charges for visa applications etc.
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#17: I fear she is.
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Nick makes it seem like the US - Australian relationship is a one-way street. Americans in general have a lot of affection for the Aussies and Australian entertainers have made their mark on the US. Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Olivia Newton John, Dame Edna, and the late Heath Ledger are beloved by legions of US fans. Australian singer/actress Helen Reddy served as California Parks and Recreation Commissioner for three years. When I ask my friends and family to name the overseas destinations that they dream about, Australia is often at the top of the list. I myself hope to visit in a year or two. America and Australia are bound together by their common cultural heritage, frontier spirit, shared language, and as nations built by immigrants.
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the real distinction between the US and Australia is the influence of British culture. Nick's blog looks at American culture, which is relatively new in it's global hegemony. perhaps this discussion is better left to the future, when the pressure of world culture will drown out that of America on the Australian psyche. it's interesting how vehemently people get when they feel their "culture" is under attack; as if this abstract, human invention is all that defines us as an human being. Australia's culture is whatever the people there choose to absorb.
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19: 16 Eliz_nsw mentions Bishop, Rudd, Joyce, Xenephon, Fielding as if they will somehow replace the NSW State Government. I asked was she serious because ALL of them are currently Federal Reps of Senators...no way can they topple Keneally...they are in different Governments.
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Kristina Keneally has a much bigger fight on her hands than the idea of her being an American. As Nick correctly points out, the NSW Labor government is seen as an 'ugly and repellent political machine' rather than a servant of the people.
Back room political deals at the hands of factional interests have long been a feature of Australian politics, regardless of their ideological orientation. The difference now is that the back room has spilled over to the front lawn and the ugliness, in all its sordid splendor, is now for all to see.
As for the American cultural imperialism, I suspect it is more to do with the size of the respective populations that determines the extent of Australian TV's content composition.
America is, after all, around 15 times the size of Australia (population and economy wise that is). It is not unreasonable to expect the amount of American TV content in Australia to be around the same ratio. I don't suppose you could find out Nick?
I think Australian culture is more British than American. I think the Australian 'tall poppy syndrome' is due to entrenched English reserve railing against perceived American brashness. Australian's love a winner, so long as you don't appear boastful, like an American.
So perhaps Kristina Keneally will be fine, so long as she is humble.
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Nick, was it your intent to cause dissension between Australia and the US? I most certainly think you did.
Shame on you.
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It isnt because she is American - its because she is a puppet of the same people who have controlled NSW for last 15 years. Oh im nobodys puppet eh? ok your a wind up doll the Kristina.
Nick we have been welcoming Americans here since the gold rush - even had a US President working here in early 1900's.
We are about to see the death throws of a government - well we have for last 2 years. Kristina will be just the pig on the spit!
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I think Nick makes a good point about whether Australia will accept an American-Australian politician as readily as they have accepted say Italian or Chinese Australian politicians. Kristina doesn't sound pure American Pie to my ears, in fact she veers quite weirdly between Yank and Strine. I've found that Australians get on well with Americans on a personal level (we have quite a few US-Australians in our office) but many seem to have that patronising Jeremy Clarkson-style antipathy towards "Americans". This is all rather academic for Kenneally, however. She is seen a a puppet of the hated Labor-right faction in NSW and unless she can persuade us otherwise she will get the boot at the next election, regardless of whether she is accepted as a fair dinkum Aussie.
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The only part I found to criticise was the bit about Starbucks. McDonalds, every bit as much of an American import and much slagged-off on that account, has flourished like cown-of-thorns starfish. For ine, Starbucks has had to draw back a bit because we already had what they offered; ie really good coffee in cute atmospheric surroundings. I loved Starbucks when it arrived in Japan (where the alternative was the sort of coffee you'd serve your mates in a student house, but at six bucks a cup and in a smokey room) but would never darken their doors here - not out of anti-Americanism but because, well, what would be the point?
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#20 - Spot on!
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I like Austalians without regard to observational generalizing stuff--let people be people.
And she IS right wing, so dislike of her is not based on anti-Americanism--it is only *helped* by anti-Americanism--in my center/left bent thinking.
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