For much of my life, I was something of a political animal, tempered by social requirements, but eventually tamed and then driven into apathy by circumstance. However, given a chance this week to watch a series of brilliant documentaries about Australian politics with a Tokyo connection, I felt stirrings of an old flame. Mark Willacy, a journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation who was based in Tokyo as its North Asia correspondent from 2008 to 2013, interviewed more than 60 current and former Australian politicians for the three-part documentary series, Nemesis, that aired over the past couple of weeks and…
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Australia’s last man of the people to become prime minister is no longer. Robert James Lee “Bob” Hawke died earlier this week, just two days before his beloved Australian Labor Party is expected to re-take office in the May 18 federal election following six years of misrule by an incompetent Liberal–National Party coalition government. Hawke was 89. He was a popular prime minister whose time in office went from 1983 to 1991. He remains the longest-serving Labor prime minister in Australian history. Hawkey didn’t really have much to do with Japan during his time in office. Perhaps the closest project…