Commentary

Some readers will know me as the author of Romulus My Father (1998). Romulus is not a book of philosophy, but it was obviously written by a philosopher profoundly affected by painful events in his childhood and the influence on him of his father and his father’s dear friend Pantelimon Hora, who helped raise him. Many people who have read the book said that it is obvious why I became a philosopher.

For Australia, a nation that has long balanced its economic ties to Asia with its security alliance with the United States, the second Trump administration represents an unprecedented challenge to its foreign policy. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has ushered in a new era of economic nationalism that threatens to reshape the Asian security landscape. For the newly re-elected Albanese Labor government, this presents plenty of risks. But its decisive mandate also provides an opportunity for Australia to develop greater self-reliance in foreign policy and deepen relationships across Asia.

Last month’s remarkable federal election result has produced a metric plethora of articles explaining how it was achieved and what it means for the government, for the electorate, and for elections to come.

There are moments in political history when the electoral contest is real, visceral, and there are other times when the governing party is so visibly exhausted and the context so apparently unfavourable that the prudent move is not to try too hard to win. Such was the case at the last British general election, held in July 2024. After four consecutive victories, five changes of prime minister, and a litany of disasters, scandals, and failures, the governing Conservative regime led by the likeable but hapless Rishi Sunak finally keeled over and gave way to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Starmer won a majority of 174 seats, with a relatively modest thirty-four per cent of the popular vote.

Night after night, the protests swirl into one. Slogans blast through the distorted echo of plastic megaphones. Whistles are blown at such a piercing volume that my ears ring when sleep eventually comes, usually around 7 am. Blockades close the city’s main arteries and highways. Police in riot gear are deployed to each of the three main roads that lead in and out of the city. Rustaveli Avenue, the main street in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital and largest city, has once again become the nation’s political fault line.

As we go to press, a May federal election seems likely – though anything seems possible in 2025. Last November, we invited a number of key commentators to reflect on the US presidential election, with a particular focus on the Australian obsession with American politics. As Australians prepare to vote, we wanted to do something similar – to come at our election from a different angle.

Reading fiction is an intimate business. For ten, fifteen, twenty hours of glorious solitude, you engage with ideas, events, and, most especially, characters located in periods and places not your own. The connection with fictional characters can sometimes feel more real and enduring than relationships with real people. For a few years in my youth, I was so deeply attached to the young Hurtle Duffield in Patrick White’s The Vivisector that I wrote a short story in which Hurtle and I lived with Patrick White and Virginia Woolf in Bloomsbury.

On a Tuesday morning in April 1954, Australians awoke to sensational headlines. The wife of Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov, who had recently sought asylum in Australia, was dragged aboard an aircraft in Sydney, as an impassioned, noisy crowd of a thousand tried to prevent her departure. Whether you were a dock worker or a stockbroker, your morning newspaper carried some version of what has become the Petrov Affair’s most iconic image: Evdokia Petrova, shoeless and eyes streaming, flanked by two bulky Soviet couriers, marching her across the tarmac. By all appearances, a terrified Russian woman was dragged, unwillingly, towards a dire fate in the Soviet Union.