Australian doc provides what-not-to-do lesson for Canadian MPs, and a how-to guide for public broadcasting

OTTAWA–A centre-left government, swept to power in a wave of optimism, clings to power with the help of a smaller party after being reduced to a minority government. The opposition is leading in the polls under the leadership of a populist former attack dog of the last conservative prime minister. He’s using his two decades in Parliament to try and bring the government down in the House while pitching policy via three-word slogans, most prominently to axe the carbon tax. As familiar as this may sound, I’m not writing about Canada in 2024, but Australia in 2013. The opposition leader of whom I speak is Tony Abbott, who would become the country’s 28th prime minister in September of that year. He would go on to lead the conservative Liberal Party to victory after six years of Labor government, something Canadian Conservative MPs doubtless discussed with the man when he visited Ottawa back in December. The similarities between 2013 Australia and 2024 Canada struck me as I watched the first few minutes of Nemesis, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) three-part series about the Liberals’ next nine years in power. But, for the sake of those Canadian Conservatives who met with Abbott a couple of months ago, let's hope that's where the similarities end. The documentary is the fourth such series that the ABC has commissioned as an in-depth look at a government. The value of these programs comes from both access and candour. With the exception of Abbott, every former Australian prime minister in the last 40 years has participated in these documentaries, sitting down for long-form, frank interviews about their time in office. Accompanying them are both friends and foes—ministers, backbenchers, factional allies, advisers, senior public servants, state premiers—most of whom belong to the same party. What follows is a government post-mortem, covering the players’ moments of pride, regrets, and jabs at those who betrayed them. Interspersed with stock footage of the suburb-sized Parliament House in Canberra and fog rising from nearby Lake Burley Griffin, men and women—mostly men—sit in front of the camera and unload on their workmates. Is it edifying? Absolutely not; in many cases it is grotesque and lays bare the self-serving nature of politics. But it is essential for the public to see what those whom they sent to the nation’s capital—and paid generously—actually did with the power and privilege they were afforded. It’s also a decent case for the value of public broadcasting. The seeds of the title Nemesis were laid in 2015: “dry” conservative Abbott was dumped by his party and replaced by “wet” moderate Malcolm Turnbull, who in turn was swapped out for compromise candidate Scott Morrison in 2018. The program’s predecessor, The Killing Season, which covered the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, is a package deal with Nemesis. Both cover a period in which Australia’s highest government office had a revolving door, and that led some paramedics to stop asking concussed patients who the current prime minister was to determine their lucidity. Then-prime minister Stephen Harper, left, with then-Australian prime minister Tony Abbott in 2014. There have been eight changes of Australian prime ministers during the Canadian prime ministerships of Harper and Justin Trudeau. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia For perspective, during the prime ministerships of Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, Australia has had eight changes of prime minister, only three of which were due to a change of government at a federal election. Many Australians remember where they were on those days. But beyond the bare details, we didn’t know exactly what went down until a few weeks ago when Nemesis aired. There’s the trivial tidbits, like when Turnbull reveals that Abbott “generally told me to fuck off” after taking his job. Multiple former ministers noted that they reacted with horror and dismay when Abbott reintroduced knighthoods, and granted one to Prince Philip. When a leadership challenge against Turnbull was aborted, one Liberal MP decided to go and play tennis with Labor MP—and current prime minister—Anthony Albanese for the rest of the afternoon. But beyond the palace intrigue, more substantial information is unveiled. We find out, for example, that when Abbott threatened to “shirtfront” Russian President Vladimir Putin after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down near Ukraine’s border in 2014, he also considered sending in the military to protect the crash site. Morrison hashed out the AUKUS arrangement with the British prime minister and U.S. president on the sidelines of the G7 summit in 2021, while the French were left in the dark about Australia’s cancellation of a $90-billion diesel submarine deal. Then-Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, left, and then-British prime minister Boris Johnson at the G7 Summit in 2021, during which the pair hashed out what became the AUKUS submarine deal with U.S. President Joe Biden. Photograph courtesy of Justin Goff/G7 Cornwall 2021 This type of documentary has also its critics. “All of them re-casting themselves as heroes. What a waste of time this boys club inflicted on the country. Games. Egos. BORING. And so damaging,” comedian and TV presenter Julia Zemiro tweeted. There was also the reopening of old wounds over a plebiscite on same-sex marriage that a University of Sydney study found damaged LGBTQI+ Australians’ mental health, and on “robodebt,” an automated welfare debt recovery system that a royal commission found was unlawful and resulted in a $1.8-billion class action settlement. That’s without getting into the consequences of Australia’s draconian, bipartisan response to asylum seekers arriving by sea, also known through Abbott’s three-word promise to “stop the boats.” My cynical side believes most participants in Nemesis took part as an “if I don’t tell my story, someone else will” survival measure. But my more generous side believes that they see the right to know as a public service—that is, after all, what a career in politics is supposed to be. Now think about the potential for a future CBC program, hypothetically titled The Trudeau Years. What information could we glean from those who were in the room when, for example, the SNC Lavalin scandal broke, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the “Freedom Convoy” occupied Ottawa, or the Conservatives started consistently thumping the Liberals in the polls? If there’s one thing—and I mean only one thing—Canada can learn from Australia’s politics in the 2010s it’s that reflection is a virtue, and that hindsight is the next-best thing. Stephen Jeffery is a deputy editor of The Hill Times, and is a recovering Australian. The Hill Times

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Australian doc provides what-not-to-do lesson for Canadian MPs, and a how-to guide for public broadcasting

There’s little that Australia’s era of revolving-door prime ministers can offer Canadian politics, but a new, no-holds-barred documentary about that period provides a great example of public interest journalism.

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