A Cold Chisel Mind in a NewJeans World
How Australian PM Anthony Albanese missed an opportunity to promote both Australian artists and modern Australia
On Saturday night Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, appeared on the hugely popular British podcast The Rest of Politics – with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. The interview was strategically placed as we are currently in an election campaign here in Australia (with an election on 3 May), and politicians are starting to understand that podcasts are now often where you can gain significant reach. Although British, The Rest is Politics has a huge global audience – enabling Albanese to speak to Australian voters and bring the country into the line of sight of people outside of Australia.
The interview was mostly a softball one. Campbell being a former Labour Party operative in the UK was keen to help its sister party in Australia. While Stewart – a former Conservative Party MP – is deeply suspicious of modern conservative politics.
As an amusing aside, Stewart, with his deference towards institutions, referred to Albanese as “prime minister” when asking a question, while Campbell called him what we call him in Australia – Albo.
Yet in their final softball question, something which seemed of little consequence actually revealed quite a lot. Knowing that Albanese enjoys listening to music (although who doesn’t?) Campbell decided to ask him for some music recommendations. Albanese understood this was an opportunity to promote Australian artists, but without putting much thought into it his immediate reaction was to say Cold Chisel.
Cold Chisel were (or are, given nostalgia tours) a bogan-rock band active from the 1970s and early 1980s. Unless you were making an uninventive parody of Australia there is absolutely no need for anyone to pay any attention to Cold Chisel. In citing the band, Albanese demonstrated that there is a considerable lag between Australia’s political leaders and the country’s modern-day culture.
Something is happening in Australia that the political class seems unaware of. There is a massive cultural shift taking place that is incredibly important for Australia’s integration into its own region, and for the development of a more distinctive Australian culture tied to this integration.
Australia’s most successful musical artists at the moment are in K-Pop groups. The Australian dominance of the industry is under-recognised and under-appreciated phenomenon. And it is highly symbolic of the evolving nature of Australia. Rather than London or LA, Seoul is now where many Australian artists are seeing their opportunities, and – even more importantly – where young Australians see their cultural interests.
Several years ago when I was working at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne there was such an intense interest in both Korean studies and the Korean language that the university was desperately trying to hire more Korean experts to facilitate the demand.
South Korea’s cultural output is a soft power behemoth. But there is also a soft power circulation here. With the interest fans have in various K-Pop group members translating into interest in Australia. These artists now have a global reach far beyond Australia’s other biggest names. Rosie has 25 million more Instagram followers than Chris Hemsworth. If the Australian government understood this it could leverage it.
While South Korea may be the current country of attention, this is more broadly about Australia’s cultural integration into Asia. It’s about recognising how it’s not just demographic shifts, but cultural interests that are building something new and exciting in Australia. And it is about how important culture is for driving Australia’s regional knowledge and relationships.
As cultural reach comes from wealth (that is, having the time and money to be creative), Indonesia will enhance its cultural reach as it moves up to the world’s 4th largest economy by 2050. Maybe this is what will finally enhance Australia’s relationship with is massive near-neighbour – as Australia’s youth develop an interest in the country?
It remains Australia’s greatest strategic oversight for Indonesian to not be a compulsory language in Australian schools right now. Waiting until Indonesia’s cultural reach expands may be too late to build the kind of intimate relationship Australia needs with the country – as by then Indonesia will consider itself in a different league. However, even then, will Australia’s leaders recognise this cultural reach when it appears? By that time they might just be entering the early-2000s.
Albanese’s response to what should have been – as he responded to a different question – “a full toss outside leg stump”1, was symbolic of the lack of foresight in Australia’s political leadership. Built on a lack of knowledge of the present, let alone a vision of the country’s future.
Were the PM a little more switched on he would have understood that to a global audience there was an opportunity to project an image of Australia that was a better reflection of the country as it actually is today. To talk about young Australians’ massive global success in K-Pop groups – even if this isn’t his taste in music, as PM, the idea should be to pivot the question to promote the national interest.
It was a chance to make the country more interesting to those whose knowledge of the country is limited. Not drag the audience back into a past that Australia is evolving away from. But I suspect Albanese doesn’t know about this evolution. So he went for the musical equivalent of Crocodile Dundee instead.
Cricket terminology for a very easy ball to hit