Die 1980er Jahre waren eine Zeit, in der man sich in Europa noch Pseudoprobleme leisten konnte. Die Furcht vor dem Ende der Arbeit, diverse Hormonskandale in der Landwirtschaft und verstrahltes Molkepulver hielten Heerscharen von Journalisten und Politikern in ihrem Bann.

Dummerweise verpasste man es so, sich mit den eigentlichen Zukunftsfragen Alterung, Staatsfinanzen und Integration zu befassen. Man sah den Wald vor lauter Waldsterben nicht.

Nun wiederholt sich die Geschichte in Australien. Statt sich mit den fundamentalen Herausforderungen einer alternden, westlichen Bevölkerung inmitten der asiatischen Wachstumsregion auseinanderzusetzen, führen die Regierungschefin und ihr Herausforderer einen weitgehend inhaltsleeren und von Phrasen bestimmten Wahlkampf. Das könnte sich rächen.

Europe’s lesson too late?

Does history repeat itself? If you believe the great American writer Mark Twain it doesn’t, but at best it sometimes rhymes. English essayist Max Beerbohm went one step further. According to him, it is only the historians repeating one another.

And yet, despite the widespread claims of history’s one-way street, Australia’s present has an eerie resemblance to the past. Not Australia’s past, to be sure. For anyone with a remote memory of Europe’s 1980s, contemporary Australia must seem like a weird kind of time-travelling experience.

Not in the superficial sense, of course. Australians have been spared the return of the shoulder pads; we are not spending endless hours reassembling Rubik’s cubes; and we can only hope that Rick Astley’s comeback attempts won’t go anywhere.

Australia is living through a European 1980s revival. The 1980s in countries like Germany, Austria and Italy were a pleasant era to live. They were not perfect, of course, but the economy grew steadily, unemployment was low and manageable and social cohesion was strong.

If this reminds you of today’s Australia, it should. Australia is enjoying a feel-good phase, just like the one Europe experienced 20 to 30 years earlier. It is all the more remarkable since the rest of the developed world, on both sides of the Atlantic, is battling the consequences of the GFC. Tellingly, only the Australians have abbreviated the western world’s deepest crisis in decades with an acronym as if it was something that didn’t need spelling out.

Hier weiterlesen.

(Dr. Oliver Marc Hartwich)