Speaker 1: We're going to start today in Australia, where progressives scored a massive
victory in the Australian elections. Those were on Saturday, dozens of you emailing me
about this and saying, David, you've got to cover what's happening in Australia, because not only
is it a massive victory for the left, it's also a big signal about what could be possible maybe
in the United States if the United States became significantly less crazy. And we'll get to that
in a moment. The Liberal Party in Australia, led by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison,
wanted a fourth term in a row and the opposition, the main opposition, the strongest opposition was
the left wing Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese. Votes are still being counted, but it does appear
as of this morning as though the Labor Party will have the ability to form a government due to some
major wins that they had. And as of right now and again, they're still counting votes. These numbers
may change. As of this morning, I should say this morning, Australia time. Labor looks to be up to
73 seats, while the Liberal Party appears to have lost 24 seats from 75 before the election down to
only 51. This is a big defeat for the centrist Liberal Party and it is a crushing victory for
the left wing Labor Party. Now also of note, the Green Party, led by Adam Bandt, appears to have
secured three seats. They previously had one, so gaining too from 1 to 3 seats. As of this morning,
the Green Party, although the final numbers may change a little bit. So this would make Anthony
Albanese the fourth Labor leader. And by the way, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, the fourth
Labor leader to win control of the government since World War two. So the first question is
how on earth did Labor achieve this? What did they run on? Well, a huge component of Labor's 2022
platform was climate change. It was a platform of renewal, not revolution and Labor making a number
of promises along the lines of the environment and dealing with climate change. Labor promised
to nearly double Australia's 2030 target cuts to carbon emissions, saying let's cut by 43% by 2030
and be it completely net zero by 2050. Very ambitious. Is it possible to do that? Well,
time will tell. But they ran on it and the voters liked it. Transitioning to renewable energy,
upgrade the nation's energy grid, roll out solar banks and community batteries have meant,
as many of you know, it's great that solar panels are becoming more and more efficient,
but you've got to be able to store that energy to really increase the viability of solar
at a larger level. The Labor Party said that they would approve new coal mines
if they stack up environmentally and economically. So not saying we're not doing any more fossil
fuels, but saying it's really got to make sense in context. A promise to keep the Australian Great
Barrier Reef more protected, to protect endangered species, to do more about bushfire recovery, and
also campaigned on increasing Australia's federal national minimum wage, more funding for childcare
centers, nursing homes and disability services. And understand that this is not communism, this
is not socialism. There were right wingers all over Twitter and all over Troth, Essential and all
of these other places saying Australia has gone completely communist. Now the really funny thing
is the very many of the very same people would say that the Liberal Party was also Communist.
Now understand that this is true what I would call left, center left. You've got the center, you've
got the center left, which would be like the Liberal Party, like Justin Trudeau in Canada, more
or less. That's the center left. And then you've got this is not far left. This is what I would
call left, center left. It's social democracy. It's certainly to the left of Biden and Justin
Trudeau. But it is not socialism and it is not communism. It's basically where I am. It's social
democracy in something more or less approximating the Nordic model, the northern European model. So
understand that many of the same people that are now saying, oh, Australia has elected socialists,
they say Justin Trudeau is a socialist. They said that the Australian Labor Party, a Liberal Party,
was also socialist, but they were not. So these people, you can't really go to them.
This is going to be a major experiment. Can labor in power get things done and
maybe even more importantly, are. The things Labor wants to do actually viable will they
work? Because another big criticism of many of the ideas that I and other Social Democrats espouse
is that stuff would never work if you had the opportunity to make it law, to make it policy,
to actually do this stuff. It will implode your country. It will be a disaster for your country.
Well, let's see. And depending on the level of obstruction that's possible in Australia,
we may in a few years have some answers. Do these ideas actually work?
Despite what the right loves to say when people like me and others propose them in the United
States? So it's going to be a fascinating time. And this is we can't shortchange what this is.
This is a massive victory for the left. Running on climate change, environmental justice,
economic justice, renewable energy, all of these things we've been talking about. A couple of
notes. Stephanie from Australia wrote in to me and said, quote, One of the most interesting aspects
of this has been a large number of very wealthy, traditionally Liberal Party inner city districts
being taken by a group of loosely aligned independents who are economically moderate. Right.
But pro action on climate change, political integrity and gender equality. This is being seen
as a repudiation of the Conservative government's move to the right towards a more Republican style.
Would an independent movement like that with funding from rich, moderate conservative backers,
is this the case here? Have any chance in similar areas of the U.S.? Well,
the question in the US is. I don't know that we have that group. I mean, I guess anecdotally there
are some center right moderates who are quite socially liberal and pro action on climate change.
But I don't really know that that's really a big contingent. I mean, here, you know, if you if you
think of the center right in the United States and I know everybody, this is fraught because
people would say those aren't really center right people. If you think of the center right in the
United States, which is people like Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney, they don't seem big on taking
bold action on climate. They seem to really want to kind of just protect business interests
when it comes to thinking about climate. So, sure, Stephanie, it would work if we had that contingent
in the United States. I don't know that we do, but I'm willing to have my mind changed. Also,
our friend Josh Zips, who I've been on his show, I don't remember if he's been on my show. He's
Australian. He had a good tweet, quote, The lesson of the Australian election is unambiguous. If
you refuse to address a big problem that voters persistently say they care about,
they'll smack you down. Australians are fed up with excuses about climate chaos. They've been
saying this for years. Welcome to democracy. Hopeful results in Australia a really big deal.