Strange scorelines and symmetry continue, but some balancing acts are proving difficult

It is truly funny how patterns once considered odd suddenly seem unexceptional.

After the 0-6 0-6 defeat of Amanda Anisimova in last week’s Wimbledon Ladies’ final, it seemed that the benchmark had been set for the most ignoble sporting result of the year. Not so! Shortly after Wimbledon, in a former outpost of empire, it was the turn of the imperial game of cricket to add to the indignities.

The West Indies Test team, who were the unparalleled champions of the world in my youth, capitulated in playing against Australia to be all out for 27 runs.  By one run, it was the second lowest ever total in Test cricket history, which is as long as Wimbledon’s. Given there are 10 batters in a cricket side, such a total is the equivalent of a 0-6 1-6 0-6 2-6 0-6 drubbing.

After the shock, some marvellous symmetry could be celebrated. Australian fast bowler, Mitchell Starc, was playing in his 100^th test and claimed his 400^th wicket in the rout, finishing with the unbelievable figures of 6 wickets for 9 runs. Adding to the festival of records was fellow bowler Scott Boland who became only the 10^th Australian to take a hat-trick, which is when a bowler takes three wickets from three successive deliveries . Again, symmetry. In December, 2021 Boland had taken Starc-like figures of 6 for 7 in a spell of bowling against England in the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.

After the exertions, come the celebrations. The Wimbledon Champions’ Ball had its traditional glamour, although there was some churlish commentary about both Singles’ champions having served suspensions for drug infractions in the past year. My view, having read the judgements about both offences, is that Swiatek and Sinner fell foul of strict liability offences, with neither of them displaying any intent to dishonour the game.  Australia is a net exporter of  natural resources. Let’s hope exporting our ‘tall-poppy’ syndrome does not become attractive.

Speaking of exceptional, would I be right in thinking that this year’s Men’s final was the first where all involved in overseeing the final were all women- Chair Umpire, Tournament Director, Tournament Referee and President of the AELTC Club?

Regrettably, symmetry  is not so easy to achieve in international relations. Quite the opposite. Chaos seems the norm. A week after nominating President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, Israel’s President, surprises everyone, President Trump included, by launching a military raid against Syria’s military headquarters in Syria. Will peace ever be given a true chance in the region?

Australia’s relationship with China is an exquisite paradox and it has been brought into focus by the recent visit of Australia’s Prime Minister to China, complete with strolls along the Great Wall, visits to panda sanctuaries, private audiences with the Communist President and Secretary  and State dinners. 

Following Mao-Tse Tung’s Communist party’s revolutionary victory in 1949, China was seen by Australia as a sworn enemy who were committed to expanding communism throughout Asia, especially by trying to capture the domino of Korea during the Korean War of 1950-1953.

Australia recognised the legitimacy of the Chinese communist government with the election of the Whitlam Labor government in December, 1972. The USA did not give its de jure recognition until 1979.

Fast forward to 2025. The standard of living of Australia’s capitalist society would not be possible without its immense trade with the communist enemy of the Cold War. China is Australia’s largest trading partner, especially through its consumption of Australia’s iron ore supplies.

However, there could not be larger differences between the political systems, cultural beliefs and defence alliances of the two nations.

Australia is a liberal pluralist democracy. China is a one-party totalitarian state. Australia supports international action to lessen the effects of climate change. The Chinese government does not. Australia has an open and independent judicial system. China does not. Australia supports freedom of opinion and expression through a variety of media. China’s government does not. Australia supports the independence of Taiwan. The Chinese government believes Taiwan is its rightful territory.

Australia wants our ships to be laden with iron ore but does not want China to have its ships in ports controlled by Beijing in either Australia or our South Pacific neighbours, especially the Solomon Islands.

In 1978, I was fortunate, along with fellow Tasmanian senior high school students, to tour mainland China. Mao Tse Tung had died in 1976. His was the first dead body I ever saw as we filed past it in Mao’s  Beijing mausoleum.  China in 1978 was a closed society.  Deng Xiaoping had yet to ascend and pursue his policy of open engagement with the West.  Citizens only wore ‘Mao suits’ in either prison grey or blue.  Huge posters lined city streets and classrooms glorifying Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Equally as large and confronting were posters demonising the ‘Gang of Four, including Mao’s widow, depicting them as vermin that should be exterminated.

Visits to Chinese theatres saw outrageously crude propaganda at play. Before performances, actors would depict themselves as starving peasants being whipped and beaten by the menacing visage of Chiang Kai-shek. Then suddenly, the face of Chairman Mao would appear and rise like the sun behind the stage. Chiang was immediately slaughtered. The crops instantly flourished. It was as unsophisticated as propaganda practised by the current North Korean government.

Re-entering British controlled Hong Kong after two and a half weeks was the starkest introduction one could have had to the radically different norms of the capitalist and communist systems and ways of life.

China is no longer the sealed kingdom it was under Mao’s demonic control; however, I am not sure enough in the West appreciate how stark the differences remain between the East and the West, especially in terms of quotidian personal liberties.

Whilst not as intense as Cold War rivalry, our trading relationship and cardinal defence alliance with America has created an inherent tension in the Australia/ China relationship.  Australia is economically dependent on China but strategically and militarily Australia is inimically opposed to China’s interests. Albanese, like all Australian Prime Ministers, walks a political tightrope in managing these fundamental differences. To his critics he has become reckless and subservient in his relations with China. To his supporters, he is showing a prudent strain of independence and balance.

Western democracies continue to evolve. The British government has announced plans to let 16 and 17 year olds vote at their next general election. First the age of majority was the fabled ‘21’’, then the 1970s saw a shift in the West that allowed eighteen year-olds to vote.

The more important numbers for democracy are not the ages at which people vote, but the declining fertility rates of western countries, confirmed once again for Australia this week.  These falling birth rates are limiting the ability of governments to provide the increased services that more and more of aging communities want but cannot be paid for by fewer and fewer productive taxpayers. There is a limit to how much the productive and rich can pay- if you overly tax successful people, you will not have success. Margaret Thatcher often quoted Lincoln’s observation that governments did not make the poor rich by making the rich poor.

This demographic dilemma is at the heart of whether the next generation of voters, whatever their age, can trust democratic systems to deliver their expectations. The prospect of seismic shifts in voter alliances- let’s not forget Macron did this in France-through the formation of new parties by the likes of Musk and Farrage makes for interesting consideration. In Australia, the shift is well underway. As in the Federal election in May, so too in the recent Tasmanian State election: close to 40% of voters did not choose either major party as their first preference.

Meanwhile, unedifying spats between Trump and Musk and now Trump and Murdoch, which centres on the wholly repugnant life of Jeffrey Epstein, do not give lustre to the democratic process.

It’s time, to coin a political phrase, to remember the glamour and graciousness that Wimbledon provided only a brief shining week ago.  For away from SW 19’s Centre Court, we can only hope and pray that the observations of noted British art critic, Sister Wendy, about the Jackson Pollock masterpiece, Blue Poles, which hangs in Canberra, not far from where parliament is about to resume, holds true for the democratic process:

“… Perhaps it expresses for us our deepest hopes and fears about life itself- that the chaos and lack of control in which we all live will somehow, at the end, become a thing of organised if erratic beauty.”