Doing nothing to kill the stereotype of Australia as a spectator sports-centered society, seven footballers are running as candidates in the upcoming Victorian state election. Tellingly, six of them are running for the right-wing Coalition (four of those for the National Party, the coalition's more conservative party). Could this be another sign of the Australian Right having embraced anti-intellectualism (which could be argued to be a traditional Australian value) as a core part of its identity, and conceded the very idea of engagement with culture and ideas more sophisticated than a gut sense of tribal belonging (or, as John Howard called it, "mateship") to the leftward end of the spectrum?
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