How much did Donald Trump sway Australia’s election result?
A lot, if you take the implication from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in the sense that Australians rejected a conservative opposition seen to carry the whiff of a MAGA worldview.
“We do not need to beg or borrow or copy from anywhere else,” Albanese told cheering supporters in Sydney on Saturday night after Labor was returned with a substantially increased majority.
“Our government will choose the Australian way, because we are proud of who we are and all that we have built together in this country.”
Donald Trump is certainly unpopular among Australians. A special Lowy Poll released during the election campaign showed trust in the United States has crashed to its lowest levels. And for the Coalition in Australia, scenes of a key political lieutenant of Opposition leader Peter Dutton intoning “Make Australia great again” and sporting a MAGA cap was seized on by Labor to suggest this style of politics was heading down under.
Trump accelerated global uncertainty, but international unease didn’t begin with his second inauguration in January.
Dutton himself stumbled by arguing that he could have struck a deal with Trump to spare Australia from the President’s punitive tariff regime. True, the Coalition had won an exemption in Trump’s first term. But given that no country was spared this time, Dutton opened himself up to questions about what more he would have surrendered, amid US complaints about Australian quarantine laws and pharmaceutical policy. His focus extended to so-called “culture wars” issues, such as Indigenous ceremonial acknowledgements or the quality of the history taught in the school curriculum. This prompted a devastating quip from commentator Nikki Sava, that three leaders ran in this election, “and only one of them was definitely not Trump”.
However, branding Dutton “Trump-like” carries a risk for the government, now that the next step for Albanese is to work with the US President. Historian James Curran picked up on this point in the campaign, arguing Trump could be furious that “the Prime Minister speaks two languages on America”. In one, Albanese is committed to the US alliance; in the other, he presents himself as the antidote to Trumpian politics in Australia. Trump likes winners, so I doubt the President will much care. It will nevertheless make for an awkward first face-to-face encounter.
When explaining a remarkable result from what is generally seen as an unremarkable campaign, the Trump comparison, while politically effective, may oversimplify a more complex electoral story. Unlike the experience in Canada, where Trump’s annexation threats dominated the campaign, Trump isn’t threatening to make Australia part of the Untied States.
Instead, Dutton was long known as a hard man of local politics. He never really shook that reputation. Trump accelerated global uncertainty, but international unease didn’t begin with his second inauguration in January. Labor had to cope across its first term with the economic aftermath of the pandemic via spiralling inflation and spiking interest rates at home. Ukraine and Gaza dominated headlines. The government’s caution, which the public seemed willing to punish in the months leading up to the election, was judged to be what Australians favoured after all.
The challenge now is to separate campaign rhetoric from diplomatic necessity.
