I have as much of an attention span for Australian politics as I do for our soccer teams. In the lead up to an election, I engage with the fervour of your average citizen swept by Mathilda’s fever. Then, when the results are in and the atmosphere mellows, my focus wanes and I return to my previous distractions or form new ones. 

 

I used to stay abreast with politics, or at least pretend to. I’d help the Greens campaign, giving out how-to-vote cards. I even wondered if one day I could be a politician myself. Not anymore. Greens members message me every election to see if I want to be part of the campaign; I ignore the messages, feel bad about it, move on. 

 

I write this in one of those brief moments of engagement, where I binge the political news, scour the Wikipedia pages of politicians, watch YouTube videos summarising the parties and their policies. I talk with other people about the current climate like I’ve known exactly what’s going on this whole time and they should, too. And I vote Greens again.

 

Less than two days ago, Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party won a federal election against the Dutton-led Liberals in humiliating fashion. It was the biggest landslide since Menzie’s first term in the 1940s. I don’t remember anything about Menzies besides that he must be important because they made us do a whole course on him in high school, of which the only thing I can recall is his nickname: ‘Pig Iron Bob’. 

 

Anyway, this election was a big deal, and Labor won with a bloodthirsty glut, gutting the Liberals and everyone else in their way. Not even my beloved Greens were spared, their leader Adam Bandt losing his seat to the ALP just as Dutton did. This was Labor’s first back-to-back election win since Hawke—Whitlam’s repeat term was their very first. 

 

On the night of their 2025 victory, Albo was pictured drinking beers named after him by a brewery local to his electorate, Grayndler, or more commonly, the Inner West. The area is full of breweries: the so-called ‘Ale Trail’. I should know, because I work at one, around the corner from another named after a different Labor PM: Bob Hawke. 

 

I contemplate this from the fuzzy blue seat of a train bound for Liverpool. I’ll be getting off at Cabramatta, where I’ll proceed to 32 Albert Street, The Whitlam House, so called as it was once the home of that Labor Prime Minister who preceded Hawke. 

 

ALP leaders hobble through my mind’s eye like monkeys evolving into cave people, blossoming into later-middle-aged men in suits behind lecterns. As confessed, I’m a Greens voter, and not a particularly informed one. 

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Yet these pollies haunt me as

 

though they were dead relatives

 

trying to tell me something.

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I don’t know much about any of them, least of all Gough. And right now I’m on the train, meaning no Wifi, and I need to save my battery for Google Maps when I arrive in Cabramatta, so no hotspot. In any case, I feel compelled to write about them, bashing my laptop keyboard as I do when I’m excited, hopefully not disturbing my fellow passengers.

 

I’m on my way to the Whitlam House because I successfully applied for an essay-writing residency there. An opportune time to do such a residency, you might say. The program is run by Varuna and competitive. They made the announcement about who got the places with a headshot and a bio of the six successful applicants, of which mine was the least imposing. In my application, I said I might write about Gough. I guess they must’ve liked that. 

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The Whitlam House sits in the middle of suburban Western Sydney, surrounded by average family homes in brick and fibro. It neighbours what appears to be a building site, a single-storey dwelling with a front yard cluttered by hoards of construction scrap and rusting white goods. From somewhere nearby, perhaps the same property, a rooster crows. I have to double-check with Google Maps that I’m in the right place.

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