Australia is far from its own Zohran Mamdani moment. Here's why

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21 hours ago

There's not much about American life you'd want to import here.
Their cheese tastes gross, there's no national paid parental leave and their healthcare system is — to put it mildly — awful. Oh, and that's before you get to the guns. Then there's their political system, complete with an electoral college that makes a mockery of the notion of "one person, one vote". It's not ideal.
But on one front, they do have an edge over our system here in Australia: breakthrough, often young, candidates have more of a chance of getting into powerful positions within the major parties.
At the May federal election, Australia elected one of our most diverse parliaments ever with a higher number of women, better multicultural representation and more MPs with disabilities.
It is a parliament that is more like the community it represents, but when it comes to who gets to be a minister vs who's on the back bench things are much more homogenous.
In Australia, for better or worse, it is very difficult for an unexpected 'upset' candidate to win a position of much influence in our politics.
In the United States, it's a different story.
Take New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who recently won the race to be the Democratic candidate for NYC against the wishes of the party establishment.
Yes, mayor is a local government position, but if you're running a city with more people in it than the whole of Victoria it's a pretty big deal.
As illustrated by how much some members of the media in the US are straight up freaking out about Mamdani's candidacy which has also seen him subjected to vitriolic racism from the wider political establishment.
We'd need another whole column with an extended word count to get into the ins and outs of the policies he's running on and whether evidence indicates they will or will not work.
But in short, his pitch was that he's a fresh voice, who wants to make New York a cheaper place to live and that his opponent Andrew Cuomo was backed by billionaires who didn't care about regular people — who had also had to step down from being Governor of the state after subjecting 13 women to sexual harassment.
Though as anyone who follows US politics with any passing interest knows, this is not enough to stop someone making it to the highest echelons of US politics.
Just ask the most successful breakthrough candidate they've ever had.
Disruptive candidates like Mamdani, Donald Trump and Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the exception, not the rule.
But senior lecturer in politics at the Australian National University Jill Sheppard says there's a reason we see them less in Australia.
"What we know of both major parties is that their membership base is getting old and it's predominantly very white and in the case of the Liberals in particular, it's very male," she says.
Unlike Australian pre-selections, the mayoral primaries were open to voters who weren't party members.
"A lot of traditionalist Democrats at the moment are arguing that their wishes were overridden," says Sheppard.
"That could absolutely happen here, but the difference is that a renegade faction would have to actually join the party and go to meetings and be part of the party and abide by its constitution and do all these things."
Sheppard says while Trump and Mamdani are far apart on policy, their experience breaking into politics has some similarities.
"In 2015 when [Trump] was going through his first presidential primary race, a lot of Republicans thought he's annoying, he's getting a lot of attention, but it's fine because our party elders are backing other people."
Similarly in 2025 Mamdani "was able to organise this support outside of the big trade unions, outside of the party elders inside Congress and basically build a workaround to get into politics," she says.
"We just don't have anything like that here right if you want to become elected."
Of all the 21st century's greatest thinkers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the neatest summation of how things work in politics: "It's not about right, it's not about wrong. It's about power."
And in Australia, if you want to have access to the power held by the major parties you need to play by some very particular rules.
"There's a real assembly line for incoming politicians that has changed the nature of the kinds of people that get elected," says Sheppard.
"There is a sense that you have to do the hard yards in a party branch."
While the parliament is slowly growing more reflective of the community it represents, factions — formal or otherwise — dominate who gets a shot, when and at what.
There is significant evidence that people often choose to hire those who look and behave like them, this is no different in politics.
In politics this can lead to a stale, feedback loop exacerbated by factions.
And the thing about a blocked up system? It causes problems.
Just look at issues the Liberal Party is having because its membership doesn't have much of an inclination to preselect women in winnable seats.
Now you might be thinking, but Claudia! What about the independents?!
And yes, the substantial number of independents in politics compared to years prior shows it is possible for unexpected candidates to break into parliament.
What they have not broken into is the ministry or the balance of power. There is a flip side to all of this: stability.
"Even though we don't like the people that we vote for, we still like the system," says Sheppard of Australian politics.
"On the other hand, that can get stagnant, right? You become so stable that you don't move, you're just this sort of turtle that forgets how to walk."
Stability is currently in short supply in the United States at least at a federal level.
We don't know what a Mamdani mayorship would look like because he hasn't actually won it yet.
Here in Australia, it is easy to dismiss these upsets as matters far away especially when Labor has such a thumping majority.
But eventually, there will be a need for renewal and when that time comes if the new generation of political leaders are just carbon copies of their predecessors voters may cry out for something new.
The major parties need to ask whether that new thing can include them.