Australians set to cast judgment on their American “head of state”

SYDNEY, Australia — Sydney, writes economic journalist Jessica Irvine, "is the Elizabeth Taylor of Australian cities. It is a little-appreciated fact that the ageing Hollywood glamazon was born just weeks before the grand opening ceremony for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. The city and the star have been making a living off their good looks ever since.”

In the wake Taylor’s death on Tuesday, Irvine’s analogy can be viewed in both historic and future context, denoting a golden girl’s lost glory days and portending certain doom.

Only a decade ago, the capital of New South Wales state was a city on the brink of its imagined destiny — a metropolis blessed with a millennium moment it could claim all to itself.

When an American tourist, Shane Perdue, a Texan native who lists New York and Paris among his previous homes, arrived in Sydney on holiday in 1999, he was thrilled to find himself in a city on the brink of its imagined destiny.

Beautiful and brash, and rich to boot, Sydney prepared for the year 2000 and a new century by brandishing the ultimate global accolade: the Olympic Games.

But after the party, came the hangover.

A decade on, Sydney no longer promises infinite possibility. Worse, it frets about a five-ringed legacy squandered. It worries that it doesn’t work as a super-city should. It hates its government — the same government that ran those “best-ever” Games. Self-doubt rules.

“A sadder, meaner, angrier city,” declared The Sydney Morning Herald in a recent analysis that compared the place to, of all things, a Hollywood superstar on her last legs.

Liz Taylor metaphors aside, there is added reason to examine Sydney’s present and future through American eyes — though even Hollywood would battle to compete with this storyline.

What if you took a stumbling city from Down Under and cast a feisty young woman from Toledo, Ohio, as its savior?

Meet Kristina Keneally, one of the most unlikely political leaders in Australian history.

Born in Las Vegas, raised in Ohio, married to an Aussie, Keneally is the premier — equivalent to governor — of New South Wales, the state of which Sydney is the capital. And she’s a one-off. No woman has led Australia’s biggest state before. (It’s a first and probably a last for Toledo, too.)

She is only 42. She’s been an Australian citizen a mere 11 years and speaks with a trans-hemisphere twang unique in local politics. (Imagine even a hint of an Australian accent emanating from, say, the governor’s mansion in Albany.) The camera loves her. She’s marketable, as pundits would put it. In the pubs they’d likely settle on “pretty.”

Keneally seems whip-smart. She displays relentless energy, unceasing optimism. A mom of two, she endlessly proclaims her love of family in personal and policy terms. She has pop-star appeal in a city that loves razzle-dazzle.

But there's the twist in this peculiar fairy tale: Keneally is on track to become Australia’s biggest ever political loser, an unlucky leader bracing for the punch as state voters deliver their verdict on the Labor Party she leads.

It promises to be brutal. Polls suggest Labor – traditionally a party of the center-left, and long the state’s dominant political force — faces annihilation at local elections this weekend, confirming the public’s judgment on a decade of post-Olympic disappointments.

Keneally, to be fair, inherited a mess — taking over a Labor government that has now been in power for 16 years, and that is blamed for flubbing the challenges of the past 10.

Post-Games, Sydney faced a boom that proved a tough beast to ride. Overflowing with people, the city confronted issues demanding solutions that were not obvious, easy or cheap — relentless pressures on housing, health-care, traffic congestion, public transport. 2005 brought shocking race riots in a Sydney seaside suburb.

And in recent years there have been endless political scandals — including a minister convicted on child sex charges. There is also the telling charge against a city that thought she had it all: She simply rested on her Liz Taylor laurels.

Into this mess two years ago came Keneally, the fourth party leader since 2005, and largely unknown. She was branded a puppet of [male] party power brokers, but declared: ''I am nobody's puppet, I'm am nobody's protege, I am nobody's girl.''

She credited her American upbringing and her loving, supportive parents as her most powerful influence. “I’m my own person. Ever since I was a little girl I have been able to make up my own mind.”

There was much media cynicism, but, unexpectedly, the public took a shine to the Toledo tyro. Her personal approval ratings were dazzling. Keneally’s challenge was to use her own popularity to fuel a broader government revival. She has tried everything, including a public embrace with U.S. talkshow queen Oprah Winfrey during her Australian visit in December.

But even Oprah failed to work her magic. Scandals, policy mishaps and an irresistible tide of voter anger and exhaustion have put paid to any hopes of an Ohio Surprise. The election this Saturday will be the day of reckoning.

Indefatigable, Keneally refuses to admit defeat — even as polls suggest her party will be reduced to a minor player in the new parliament. While some in the premier’s own ranks have all but conceded, Keneally plays it tough. "There might be some blokes in the Labor Party who want to curl up in a corner,” she said, “but this woman is tougher than that.”

Indeed, she has embraced her unusual life story in a bid to woo back voters — with one newspaper granted extraordinary access to family and friends in the U.S. and Australia to offer a slick portrait of a determined woman on a mission.

Shane Perdue, the Texan, who found himself so smitten by Sydney a decade ago he's still there, admits he finds Keneally’s blending of her American past and Australian present inspiring. “I know how difficult it is to move to another country on the other side of the world … in that sense I have total admiration for her and what she’s done.”

Not that Keneally can count on a vote from her fellow American. Perdue’s partner, Adrian Bartels, is a candidate for the conservative Liberal Party, which is expected to take statewide power this weekend. And Perdue is also Bartels’ campaign manager.

A gay couple with progressive views on social issues, on paper the pair might seem more at home in Keneally’s Labor Party. Resolutely, they are not — and they believe Sydney will wake on Sunday to a government that can give the place back its missing mojo.

Bartels is blunt in his assessment of the decade since that Games glory. “Sydney was amazing then. But since then we’ve sat on our asses and done nothing. We’ve said ‘look at us, we’ve got the harbor, we’re great’.”

A great harbor it still is, and as Perdue is at pains to note, Sydney is still “a beautiful, amazing” city.

“I believe in this place,” he says.

Voters will be hoping to share a similar optimism about their city and state after this weekend.

Kristina Keneally, meanwhile, will face fresh questions about her own future. Defeat will crush her party on a state level. But it may prove oddly liberating for a politician whose personal appeal suggests she could have a future on the broader national stage.

Bred Toledo tough, she shows no sign of shying away from the most unlikely of challenges — Australia's first American prime minister.