Rachel and Mike in Australia

Is the answer to the question “Did Australians pay attention to the American presidential election? In fact, the election has been a major topic of small talk for the last few weeks. Probably half of the people I’ve spoken to (from store clerks to friends of friends) have brought up the election. At first, they’re often quite timid about the topic…until I’ve answered the inevitable question of “Who are you going for?” The answer of Obama generally solicited a big smile and a “Good on ya” or “Good girl.” I think the recent economic woes have made it particularly apparent what a large influence the U.S. has on the rest of the world.*

Thursday's front page

But the Australians also take a very active role in their democracy in general…partly because they’re forced to. Voting in Australia is compulsory, and one guy I spoke to said he was fined nearly $200 for not voting in an election. Australians have been very surprised at how few American’s vote. Trying to defend our nation, I argued that in some cases it was because the person lived in a state that leaned heavily one way or the other, so their vote was unlikely to make a difference. In retrospect, that was not a very smart line of defense because it required me to get into the electoral college (which thanks to Bush/Gore they think doesn’t make any sense). I’ve been having to call upon all my middle school social studies skills to try and explain it to them (not sure I’m making Mr. Dubbs proud).

On election day, we had no trouble following the results via the internet, and apparently all the Aussie TV stations carried Obama’s acceptance speech live. We went to a pub to celebrate and had just missed the speech (luckily, YouTube had the video posted a couple hours later), but the pub had CNN on, so we got to hear some of Anderson Cooper’s analysis of the speech. The afternoon of the results, I saw some ardent Aussie supporters of Obama running down the street with red, white, and blue balloons and yelling O-bah-ma in their Aussie accents. The name sounds much fancier the way they pronounce it.

Obama was the lead story on all the newspapers on Thursday (election results came in Wed afternoon our time). The Sydney Morning Herald website had video postcards to him where they recorded people on the street in Sydney congratulating him. Australians seem hopeful for what he’ll do on the world stage. Nevertheless, some of Australia’s major bookies won’t pay out until he’s actually inaugurated, in case he gets hit by a bus or has a stroke before then. There are a variety of forms of legal gambling in Australia and Australians do seem to enjoy gambling. Last week was the Melbourne Cup race (more or less equivalent to the Kentucky Derby). and one of the popular ways to bet is to buy a ticket where you don’t get to pick the horse. You pay $5 or $10 and they hand you a ticket that you then tear away a portion of reveal what horse you’ve bet on. I thought that was crazy…but actually the only person I know who won had bought that type of bet, so maybe it’s not so crazy after all.

Australian Obamaphiles

*We have been surprised that the Aussie dollar has fallen relative to the US dollar since the beginning of the credit crisis. Apparently, the Australian banks were essentially penalized for not offering loans to those who couldn’t really afford them, since the American banks did so and made a big profit (for awhile anyway), and are now being bailed out by the government when things have gone sour. I know that’s a very simplified view…but it’s the best understanding I have of the situation.