An open letter to my current MP

My name is Joshua Meadows; whilst I am originally from the United States, I've been living in Australia for nearly twenty years. In September, I will mark my tenth anniversary of being a dual citizen of both countries. More to the point, I've been a member of your electorate for about two years and this will be my first election where I'm casting a vote for who gets to hold the seat. I moved from the CBD back in 2023, in an electorate held by the Greens, and this is my first time living in a seat held by Labor.

Coincidentally enough, I live just down the street from your office and regularly pass it while heading to and from the train station, which is why I feel there is value in reaching out directly.

I recently received campaign material from you putting the upcoming election into a stark contrast between a better future with Labor or a dramatic regression under Peter Dutton and the Coalition. As an American living overseas for two decades, I've been watching what such a regression might look like as Trump and his enablers enact wide swathes of devastation across economic and social safety nets, trash civil rights for vulnerable minorities, arrest and terrorise those who are just seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones, and destroy democratic norms that have been taken for granted for hundreds of years. I'm terrified for what my friends and family back home are going through, and I'm terrified at how easily the same thing could happen here.

But, I must strongly disagree that the upcoming choice we have in this election is a simple binary one between Labor and the Liberals. One of the wonderful things about Australia is that the two-party system is not a requirement, unlike back in the United States, and there are other options if the major parties are leaving much to be desired.

While Temu Voldemort would objectively be a terrible, horrible development for Australia (I lived through Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison in quick succession, so I know what a right-wing government does when it has the chance), I don't think a Labor majority is objectively much better than simply throwing one's arms in the air and saying "can't be worse."

Labor has been in government for several years now and has done nothing to meaningfully deal with income inequality, media consolidation in the hands of wealthy people who do not respect democracy, immigration justice and fairness for the neediest who are fleeing situations all of us cannot even comprehend, protecting trans folks or tackling the existential threat caused by climate change, nor taking a bold moral stance on recent global developments like Trump's catastrophic reappearance or the ongoing genocide in Palestine. I constantly look for Albanese to put forth a brave and powerful point of view on these issues and countless times I am simply left wanting. And, while you are not Anthony Albanese himself, you're campaigning under the same party — a party that is asking me to make a choice between an objectively awful future for everyone without millions of dollars in their bank account or "well, at least it won't get worse."

That's a political binary I am used to in the United States, but it fortunately is not the case here. While I preference Labor above the Coalition (and certainly above the more regressive and bigoted parties like One Nation), they have not done much to directly earn my vote. I don't hold the view that they do well for the majority of the country when they are in the majority themselves — why would they, when so many Labor MPs are similarly also millionaires and landlords with investment properties benefitting from negative gearing who went to the same private all-boys' schools that send off feckless, spineless "journalists" to cover corruption and inequality in the country?

I know I am amongst many across Australia who feel that the binary choice between the two major parties is not making life better for most of us. It's disheartening that such attrition goes to the right-wing nationalist fringe groups when Labor could pick up a lot by putting forth genuinely transformative policies instead of being catatonic at the possibility of what Dutton and Murdoch might whine about; if Labor didn't vote in mostly lockstep with the right-wing and then complain that genuinely progressive groups are taking them to account for not being that different on paper, they would eagerly get the votes from people like me.

Albanese doesn't hold my seat, but you do — and if the historical record is much indication, you will likely retain it next month. But, for all this letter might simply be pointless recrimination when you don't need my vote one way or another, I politely extend the advice that repeatedly giving people a choice between "worse, or the same" every time only works to a certain point.

It's an undeniable reality out of the 2024 US election that millions of progressives simply stayed out of voting, in a country where it isn't compulsory, because the Democratic party failed to meaningfully engage with anyone at all left of the centre (and even there it's debatable given how far the US' Overton window has shifted). Labor is repeating the same mistake: I, and millions of other progressives like myself, don't need to be sold on the possibility that the Coalition will make things worse — we all know that they will. If you care about courting our votes, we need to be sold on the idea that Labor is going to make things better.

I'd rather not see Australia emulate what is happening in the US when someone with populist charisma and abhorrent viewpoints on democracy comes along to pull enough of the disenfranchised and disaffected who feel let down by the status quo. We're all getting to witness what that looks like in real time, and I want Australia to be better than "can't get any worse."

So, for the sake of us all, if Labor gets a majority government again, I hope you actually do something with it beyond "hey, at least we aren't Peter Dutton."