A little while ago a friend of mine shared an anecdote concerning her father when he was her age and attending the University of Sydney. In the retelling, he’s marching alongside a misaligned peer—a young politician—who objects to (then) recent cuts to education funding. The image is not unlike that of a scene written and directed by Shonda Rhimes (a truly dramatic TV-series concept that must be optioned immediately). The contingent press forward, bunched up together as they riot and pound the campus pavement, righteously projecting their voices outward. It’s a typical slice of Australian #stupol history and still resonates. At family dinners her father now shares a very different sentiment: ‘If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.’

For The Conversation, James Tilley muses that ‘This maxim—variously attributed to Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli and Victor Hugo, among others—neatly captures the common notion that to be on the left of the political spectrum is to be young and idealistic, while to be on the right is to be older and more pragmatic.’ Joe Hockey, the other young man from that vision, goes on to be the Australian treasurer, because that’s simply how things work and Australian politics is quite predictable: endlessly rewarding vague charismatic personalities on the basis of nepotism and the ability to speak brazenly and cartoonishly enough for whatever role demands it. A televised interview with him is later dug up from the archives, to be shown side to side with his more recent ones. The stark difference between each video could not be more obvious, but it’s also not entirely unsurprising.