that the centrist President Emmanuel Macron called a national election in shock. But it’s silly to be shocked;the social problems that preceded the significant shift to the right have been brewing for a long time.
Marine Le Pen,leader of National Rally,and party president Jordan Bardella at a European Parliament election campaign rally.Bloomberg
Naturally,Australian hand-wringers have immediately found a way toonshore the EU alarm. They have declared Opposition Leader Peter Dutton our own Trump-like figure. The claim is ludicrous. Dutton is a moderate on the scale of the latest EU elections. Canberra is not in the same pickle as Paris because he and others have played the boogeyman when it was needed. But Australia can,with just a little bit of effort,find itself exactly where the EU is now.
The first step would be for Australia’s insulated classes to keep virtue-signalling on immigration. Virtue-signalling is when you telegraph your deep well of empathy on an issue to show others what a wonderful person you are. Sometimes signallers really only want to say nice things. But signal services,virtuous ones included,reach far and wide.
Just ask former German chancellor Angela Merkel. When she announced that Germany would welcome refugees fleeing the Syrian war in 2015,Syrians gratefully streamed towards Germany – but so did a whole lot of unsavoury types,who gained entry as the nation’s systems were overwhelmed.
The lesson that Australia could learn from Europe is that virtue-signalling is precisely the wrong thing to do. On immigration policy,nations need to telegraph their meanness – growling menacingly so they can gentle their claws when dealing with real cases of need.
The most effective and kindest immigration policy that Australia has maintained for any span of years was devised by former prime minister John Howard. To put a stop to boat arrivals,Howard made a big deal of denying entry to asylum-seeker boats attempting to land in Australia.
Most readers will remember or have heard of the Tampa affair,when Howard refused to let a Norwegian freighter,which had picked up 433 asylum-seekers from a distressed fishing boat in international waters,land in Australia. The Tampa controversy created an international anti-virtue signal,a rumbling growl which reverberated around the world. The message was clear:Australia was not going to allow itself to be a destination for unregulated immigration.
In the end,the asylum-seekers from the Tampa were taken to offshore detention in Nauru. A few years later,when attention had turned elsewhere,the claws could be gentled:those who had been found to be genuine refugees were quietly resettled in Australia.
Had Howard not put a hard stop on the increasing number of boat arrivals when he did,Australia might well be in the same situation as the EU now,voting for far-right governments to try to deal with the problems created by decades of unregulated migration. Starting from where the EU is now will be ugly,but if Australia really wants things to become as bad,we can still catch up.
The second thing we could do to follow the EU’s bad example is to ensure that we conflate concerns over integration,culture and the behaviour of some groups with racism. When a family or group forces their school-aged daughters into arranged marriages,brings intercultural violence to Australia,or refuses to abide by the laws of the land,we can choose to condemn not their behaviour but instead to call the people who denounce it racist.
The EU has become really good at this. You might have read,which celebrated how polite Australian men have been to her during her stay. “France has changed,” she wrote. “Now,women regularly experience harassment and insults in the street;it’s hard to feel completely at ease there when you’re a woman.”
The fact that she couldn’t saywhy – or chose not to – is a symptom of the EU malaise:many women in Paris (Berlin,Barcelona and elsewhere),myself included,have felt the increase in street harassment. Many would tell us it comes from men of cultures in which women have fewer rights and freedoms – men who have not changed their behaviours in line with European values.
But a lot of young women are afraid to say so,lest they be accused of racism. If Australia wants to follow the EU,we can continue to say that calling out such behaviour is racist,until the only way people can protect themselves is by casting a hard-right ballot in private.
Finally,we can continue to tear down our own culture,focusing on how far we are from perfect instead of celebrating how far we’ve come to create something others yearn for. Europe has really delivered a masterclass in this. As tourists marvel at the centuries of art,architecture and culture of Europe,underpinned by stable governance delivered by the democratic institutions,European nations have been busy learning to claim that there is nothing special about their civilisation.
Developing nations,many of which once enjoyed high civilisation and then lost it for reasons that historians debate,can only dream of being so rich and replete that the only thing left is to tear themselves down. Australia has a good shot at catching up quickly to Europe. Rending the national flesh is already a popular pastime.
If Australia really wants it,the EU’s turn to the hard right is ours for the taking. Just keep doing what they’ve done over there and wait another few years for a democratic revolution.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.