The Most Cooked Moments In An Extremely Cooked Decade Of Australian Politics

Over the last decade, Australia has become less free. We know this because a group of freedom geeks called CIVICUS who track these things just downgraded us from “open” to “narrowed”.

In light of, well, almost everything, Australians’ trust in democracy plummeted from 72 percent in 2010 to an all-time low of 41 percent in 2018. That’s lower than the 46 percent of people who believe artificial sweeteners are healthy, meaning our nation enters the 2020s trusting diet cola more than democracy.

How did we get here? It’s been a sad, baffling decade.

Let’s take a look at some of the moments that truly exemplified the state of Australian politics from the last decade.

28 Seconds Of Silence

If there is a single auspol moment that captures the mood the 2010s, it’s Tony Abbott staring down Channel 7 reporter Mark Riley for a full 28 seconds in response to a question about comments he made about the death of an Australian soldier.

The immediate shitstorm came and went back in 2011, but as a symbol of a weird and broken decade, the silence — sullen, confused, unwilling to answer questions — remains the perfect metaphor for relations between Australia’s media, our politicians and the people who elect them.

Abbott would later have an undistinguished stint leading the country — but there was one notable moment.

Tony Abbott Eats An Onion On Television

Oh wait, I’m sorry. He did it twice.

Raids For Days

By the back end of the decade, people who asked embarrassing questions or occupied inconvenient positions for political leaders got more than the silent treatment.

Journalists and advocates for workers’ rights received enthusiastic doorknocks from the Australian Federal Police. In 2017 the Australian Workers Union was raided as part of an investigation later found to be invalid by the Federal Court.

This year journalists at the ABC and NewsCorp were raided over reporting on special forces operations in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2013, and over stories relating to the powers of Australian spy agencies.

Media outlets, reporters and media unions have united in the Your Right to Know campaign to warn that politicians are perverting our democracy to their own ends – a pursuit previously reserved for media moguls and Clive Palmer.

Era Of The Single-Use Prime Minister

Labor marked the beginning of a new decade by slipping into minority government at the 2010 election after ditching Kevin Rudd for Australia’s first female PM Julia Gillard, on the premise that she was more electable.

Navigating minority government and a brutally effective Opposition Leader in Tony Abbott was difficult, but Gillard delivered the National Disability Insurance Scheme, a carbon price, an apology for victims of forced adoptions and the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.

It wasn’t enough to save her from her own party who re-installed Rudd ahead of the 2013 election, on the premise that he was more electable.

Rudd lost the election to Tony Abbott, who was removed by his own party to install Malcolm Turnbull who pointed out Abbott had lost 30 Newspolls in a row. Turnbull lost more than 30 consecutive Newspolls and was bumped for Scott Morrison in 2018, who surprised everyone by winning the 2019 election after losing yet more Newspolls.

“I Will Not Be Lectured By This Man”

If the decade provided one iconic piece of oratory, this was it.

Julia Gillard’s response to pressure from Abbott around the ALP’s support for speaker Peter Slipper, who was embroiled in a nebulous series of scandals, was a scorching release after months of unquestionably horrific treatment as Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

To our knowledge, it’s the only political speech to be printed on a tea towel.

We Broke The Internet

There is no part cyberspace left un-botched by this decade. The NBN has disintegrated into a patchwork mess of obsolete copper wire, sub-standard internet speeds and unethical sales tactics.

Metadata is available without a warrant to everyone from the fisheries department to the tax office to the post office.

And last year we broke with democracies around the world when we passed a law that weakened encryption.

Climate Of Fear

If you think the internet situation is bad I have some distressing news for people who breathe air.

At the end of the 2000s it looked like everyone was behind action on climate change. The Rudd Government designed an emissions trading scheme that would be difficult to unwind and negotiated the support of the Turnbull-led opposition.

Then Abbott used internal dissent to knock off Turnbull and the Greens voted with him to block the Labor scheme, arguing it lacked ambition. The replacement carbon price was removed when Abbot won the 2013 election.

Labor types say the Greens placed self-interest and moral purity above progress. Greens argue that Labor is divided on coal and can’t be trusted to act quickly enough.

Everybody gets to be right, nobody who gives a shit has been able to legislate since 2013 and large parts of the country have burned to the ground.

Nazis Came Back

It wasn’t that long ago that calling someone whose politics you disagreed with a Nazi was a pretty undergraduate way to escalate an argument.

But the 2010s saw a Federal Senator calling for a “final solution”, the infiltration of the National Party by white supremacists and rallies where attendees threw up Hitler’s gang sign on St Kilda beach.

Some Good Shit Got Done

It’s an important act of national self-care to recognise that some decent things made it through the “worst timeline” filter in the 2010s.

In a divisive and unnecessary postal survey run primarily to satisfy regressive elements of Malcolm Turnbull’s government, Australians voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality.

The injustices of the past and present — and the systems that enabled them –- were put under the microscope in a series of Royal Commissions.

And young workers who have been targeted by dodgy bosses for years got together and fought, embarrassing the hell out of some celebrity chefs. Maybe, just maybe, the kids are alright. Speaking of…

Egg Boy

The only energy we want to take from this decade into 2020 is egg boy.

A teenager named Will Connolly smashed an egg on Senator Fraser Anning’s head following his disgusting comments in the wake of the New Zealand terrorist attack.

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Lachlan Williams is a writer and communications consultant based in Melbourne. He has worked for the union movement and advised a Labor MP. You can bother him on Twitter