What Young Australians Can Learn From The World’s Richest President.

Laura Klein | Publications Officer

Image sourced from via Wikimedia Commons.

… since living is an everyday thing, we don’t value it. It’s the most valuable thing, the adventure of being alive. - Jose “Pepe” Mujica, 2024

Jose “Pepe” Mujica, former Uruguayan President, died in May of this year at the age of eighty-nine. Mujica understood the world as a man rich in experience, having seen all its sides, spending decades as a flower grower and seller, a political prisoner, and president.

The title of this article presents Mujica as the world’s richest president, in direct opposition to the way the media headlined his death as the passing of the world’s poorest. These portrayals of his material reality are deceiving, inviting not just reflection but demanding a deeper scrutiny. By examining the narrative constructed around Mujica, we are confronted paradoxically by the honest simplicity at the heart of his teachings and the materialism embedded in the narratives currently framing young Australians' psyche.

Mujica never received formal intellectual or academic qualifications, having not completed the Australian equivalent of grade twelve. Nevertheless, he is heralded as one of Uruguay’s most valuable intellectuals, philosophers and speakers, who strongly favoured the spoken rather than the written word. One of Mujica’s most notable messages is to consider and act against the narrative that life’s purpose lies in work driven by consumption. In this vein, he argued that work should have meaning only when it enables one to gain the freedom to participate in life with happiness beyond work.  

In deconstructing the narratives young Australians are told today through Mujica's lens, we can experience their hypocrisy. For example, earning beyond your salary is necessary, and housing is considered the asset to invest in. However, an average home costs 16.4 times that of the average household income. Under these pretences, the prospect of entering the housing market is framed as an elite impossibility - accessible only through luck or significant sacrifice. The hypocrisy lies in promoting home ownership as a fundamental aspiration, while making the notion of owning a home fit for purpose as a home - a space of personal safety, comfort and shelter - increasingly unattainable. Such foundations offer young people the path to a future that is the striking antithesis of what Mujica aspired to - one that guarantees the fundamental right to a personal safe space and, with it, freedom beyond the demands of the workplace. 

The economic and ethical realities and consequences of this message are clear. The 2025 Australian federal election saw its Opposition Leader and profiteer of a AUD$30 million property portfolio lead his party to its greatest loss since its inception in 1944. This loss underscores how such politicians fail to reflect a future that the majority of voters wish to see. It reveals a deeper truth: the fundamental Australian ideal of the ‘fair go’ remains powerful in the national psyche, though it falls short in political practice. 

Although the specific concerns of young Australians may seem a world away from Mujica and his home country of Uruguay, his words transcend these barriers and speak to such ideals that are shared and remain deeply relevant. Mujica spent fourteen years held as a political prisoner in the 1970s and 1980s during Uruguay’s military dictatorship. He then went on to become the country’s President, famously donating 90 per cent of his salary to live on the average Uruguayan income. ‘Naides es más que naides’, translating to ‘nobody is more than anybody else’, was a phrase frequently quoted by Mujica - akin to the ‘fair go’ - and used as justification for his chosen living standards despite having held the presidency. 

At the end of his life, Mujica acknowledged that he failed to bring the kind of instrumental change in his country and the world that he envisioned. Nevertheless, he emphasised that:

 “I didn’t have a wasted life, because I didn’t spend my life just consuming things. I spent it dreaming, fighting, struggling.” - Jose “Pepe” Mujica, 2024

Again, the words of ‘common sense’ wisdom espoused by an old man on the other side of the world may seem foreign at first glance, but in reality, are closely aligned with young Australians. No one political ideology has a monopoly on the use of the ‘fair go’; rather, its use reveals the contours of the ideas that have shaped our nation. Across different countries and contexts, it continues to resonate as a fundamental expression of equality. Through Mujica’s words, we can deepen our understanding of the spirit of this ideal - a consciousness rooted in community, fairness, and a grounded sense of purpose. When young Australians struggle for foundational access to a home, a clean environment, or an affordable education, though our wealthy nation does not lack such resources, something essential to this spirit of purpose and fairness is lost.

Mujica’s co-authored forthcoming book describes him posthumously as a man who has garnered international fame for his message of sustainability and common sense. Mujica, in having experienced the best and worst that can befall a single person and yet still mastered common sense, speaks powerfully to the need for fairness not simply to be acknowledged but practised. It calls on us to observe, question, read and write with this intention - and to hold out political leaders to the same standard.

Laura Klein is a current Publications Officer and former Latin American Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. She completed her Bachelor of International Relations at the Australian National University, majoring and minoring in Spanish and Latin American Studies, and is currently undertaking a Master's program at the London School of Economics, where she is further engaging in research. She has a deep affection and respect for the Latin American region and in her writing, strives to destigmatise and promote the opportunities that abound in Latin America, especially to an Australian audience.