Can reality TV stars be politicians in Australia? Survivor star King George thinks so

George Mladenov’s future was cast when he was four years old, and was handed a how-to-vote flyer by Paul Keating at the 1996 election. Here was a kid from Bankstown, the son of Greek immigrant cleaners, gazing up at another kid from Bankstown, the son of a boilermaker who had become prime minister, and realising that he could dream big.

Like Keating, Mladenov joined the Australian Labor Party as a teenager. Like Keating, he learnt the art of the political deal in the cut-throat world of the NSW Right. Unlike Keating – but with Keating-esque swagger – he quit politics on the cusp of running for public office to become a reality television star, applying the dark arts of party machinations to two seasons of the Lord of the Flies-inspired Survivor, in which tired, hungry, dirty people scheme against one another to win money.

Mladenov was an unexpected hit. He wasn’t the typically bronzed, small-target contestant. He was an enigma; strategic yet emotional, loyal yet ruthless, social yet awkward, vain yet insecure. With his 50,000-odd Instagram followers and his reality television show acolytes, the self-proclaimed king of Bankstown’s celebrity career may now take more of a Donald Trumpian turn; he’s considering a new tilt at politics, right back where it all began.

George Mladenov, the self-proclaimed king of Bankstown. Credit: Edwina Pickles

It’s a freezing winter’s day in Sydney, and George Mladenov sits at an outdoor cafe wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. His lips are almost blue from cold, and he hasn’t touched the avocado toast in front of him. The 34-year-old seems to have become accustomed to hunger and physical discomfort after filming two series of Survivor.

Mladenov first appeared on the 2021 season of the long-running reality television show, which was filmed in the inland north Queensland town of Cloncurry after COVID restrictions derailed plans to shoot in Fiji. It was an experience that was, he assures me, every bit as physically unpleasant as it looked.

“I’m firmly of the belief that it was the most difficult, condition-wise, Survivor season around the world ever,” he says. “The sheer heat during the day, with no beach to cool off in … and then the near-freezing and, some nights, the actual freezing temperatures. You’ve got literally a tiny fire and the clothes on your back, then limited food rations, then not winning reward challenges. It takes a physical and mental toll.”

It sounds awful. But Mladenov had been fascinated by Survivor since he was a kid. He watched the American version religiously for years, applying the same strategic analysis to the television show as he applied to his other youthful passion, politics. He talks about the show’s eras, the evolution of its tactics, the varying sophistication of its players. For fans like Mladenov, the fascination lies in watching how social animals interact at their most raw.

George Mladenov, also known as “the cockroach of Bankstown”, kept viewers entertained in the 2021 season of Survivor Australia.Credit: Nigel Wright

He’d watch illegally downloaded copies of the American show with his twin brother for years, through school (Bankstown’s De La Salle College, also Keating’s alma mater) and Western Sydney University, where he studied law.

Becoming the first in his family to attend university was a big achievement for his family, which had seen its share of suffering. Mladenov’s paternal family is Greek and Macedonian; after WWII, his grandmother was sent by Stalin to the Soviet Union. Mladenov’s father was born a stateless citizen in Uzbekistan, and eventually brought to Australia by a relative who’d emigrated here decades earlier.

I ask if there’s much trauma in his father’s family. “They don’t think about that,” he says. His parents cleaned houses and raised children and “that’s just what they did”, he says. “They were happy with their lives.” His neighbours have similar stories. “When you’re from Bankstown, you have a different sense of what’s important in life and what’s a priority, and it keeps you grounded.”

Mladenov’s love of his home town drew him to politics. When he talks about Bankstown, he doesn’t mean Canterbury-Bankstown, an uneasy alliance of two councils created by the stroke of a pen in Macquarie Street. He means the old Bankstown council district, stretching up to Villawood, down to Panania, and across to Lakemba.

He believes it needs advocates, as demonstrated during the COVID lockdowns. “It was eye-opening – disappointing, to be honest,” he says, as we sip coffee at hole-in-the-wall Chinchilla Xpress in barren, tired Bankstown Plaza, where there’s barely any shoppers at lunchtime on Monday.

“It rammed home that we don’t have the level of social infrastructure that other parts of Sydney have. The local community deserves better; it just deserves better. You can ponder why we don’t have those quality of life indicator level pieces of infrastructure … whether it’s due to poor decision-making or poor leadership.”

He felt this way as a teen, too, so at age 15 Mladenov joined the local Labor Party “of my own accord”, he says. “Something not many people do with the Labor Party, particularly – historically – in this area.” He means that new members are usually enticed to the party by other members, to boost their faction’s voting numbers.

He tried Young Labor, the path trodden by most of the party’s successful politicians (including a sizeable chunk of the NSW government’s front bench) but didn’t like it. It felt like an extension of the Sydney University Labor Club, “which has people that only think in one certain way, and it’s not the way people think in south-west and western Sydney”.

After one particularly unpleasant experience, he never went back to the party’s youth branch. “Stupidly, naively at the time … I started talking about the state of the footpaths in Bankstown,” he says. “I wish to god I remember who it was, but someone from the Young Labor executive at the time stood up and said, ‘nobody cares about Bankstown’.”

Jonathan LaPaglia on the set of the Brains v Brawn series of Australian Survivor, which was filmed in Cloncurry, Queensland.Credit: Nigel Wright

He focused on the local branches, helped on campaigns, and became president of the Bankstown Labor Party. An avid soccer fan, he was also on the board of Bankstown City Football Club when it signed soccer prodigy Mary Fowler, then 16, who has gone on to be a star of Australian women’s soccer.

For several years, he worked as an electorate officer for local MP Tania Mihailuk, who quit Labor before last year’s state election, after sensationally claiming under parliamentary privilege that then Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Khal Asfour was furthering the interests of developers and “identities, in particular [corrupt former Labor MP] Eddie Obeid” (Asfour was cleared of Mihailuk’s accusations by a council investigation, but withdrew from Labor’s upper house ticket. He’s running for council again).

Mladenov quit Labor at around the same time. He says he has no issue with the party, and will not follow Mihailuk to One Nation – “I’m very delighted to tell you I’m … nowhere near that party on the political spectrum”. Politics was just too big an impost on his life. The work was unpaid and all-consuming. “It was at great personal toll … and for not a lot of thanks. Just the stress involved in running local branches, campaigning at every single election.”

Decision time came for Mladenov in 2021. He was confident being preselected for a safe spot on Labor’s ticket for Canterbury-Bankstown council. And he was offered Survivor. “I [thought], ‘Can I do both? Can you go on a TV show and be a real-life political candidate?’ [It’s] probably not going to fly. I decided to prioritise myself for the first time in 10 years. I’m glad I did.”

Khal Asfour (left), Tania Mihailuk and Eddie Obeid.Credit: SMH

Mladenov was the first backroom political operative on Australian Survivor (Nova Peris, former Olympian and senator, had been on the celebrity version). He wasn’t great at the physical challenges, but his years in the NSW Right, as well as a passion for poker, gave him a tactical advantage.

He did not play the small target game. “What I detest is politicians who do absolutely nothing because it lowers their threat level,” he says. Historically, that approach had worked for winners of Australian Survivor too. “I didn’t play the cookie-cutter Survivor game. I had not waited my whole life and through a global pandemic to go on Survivor and do nothing.”

He harnessed his campaign experience, that ability to look at the state of play and work out the steps required to get ahead, while outmanoeuvring his opponent. “I would look at … the players as chess pieces, and I would move them in a direction that was unconventional.”

He knew that his relative lack of brawn would make his fellow teammates see little value in him, because the way to gain protection from being evicted, and some relief from the physical privations, is winning Survivor’s challenges.

“But if I can pull the wool off the eyes of key enablers, so they don’t just value strength and performance at challenges, I’m going to be someone that has a degree of influence over this game. And to do that, I had to basically move three steps backwards, telling myself that if it works, I’ll move seven steps ahead.”

Another skill he was grateful to have honed over years of Bankstown branch meetings was building relationships. “You should always work out what people’s priorities and intentions are. When multiple parties get a win, that’s the best deal at that point in time,” he says. He thinks the word manipulation has a bad rap. “What’s the difference between manipulation and influence? Semantics.”

Mladenov came runner-up in two Survivor seasons, and is enjoying celebrity life. He just finished a tour of the United States, in which he hosted Survivor viewing parties with another former contestant. He’s got 49,000 Instagram followers and is popular on the site Cameo, in which he records personalised video messages for $36. He no longer has to invest time in forging relationships in Bankstown; people who recognise him from television walk up to him on the street.

Which has got him thinking. The local government elections are in September. Given his celebrity status as the king of Bankstown, Mladenov doesn’t need a party’s apparatus to get his name into the community. Perhaps celebrity status and politics are not mutually exclusive; just look at Republicans Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and, latterly, Donald Trump, for whom Celebrity Apprentice paved the way to the presidency.

Local government, like its state and federal counterparts, is dominated by party politics. With less scrutiny than the other two levels, it can also be dirtier; councils keep the corruption watchdog busy, and Canterbury-Bankstown has contributed more than its fair share of scandals. Independents, who are less likely than party affiliate to be using it as a stepping stone, can often be the most effective representatives.

“I’m not ruling out running as an independent [for council],” Mladenov says. “I look at it like this; when you get into politics, you make a great sacrifice in your personal life. I’ve got until August 15 to decide whether I’m going to be a candidate or not. Would I get elected if I ran as an independent at a local government election, with three counsellors getting elected for each ward? I think I would.

“I think a few people find that frightening. For good reason, they should.”

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