World

Thu May 1

Donald Trump has cast a long shadow over the Australian election. Will it prove decisive?

Written by: Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Donald Trump is everywhere, inescapable. His return to power in the United States was always going to have some impact on the Australian federal election. The question was how disruptive he would be.

The answer is very – but not in the ways we might have thought.

As soon as Trump was elected president, the political debate in Australia focused on whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would be best suited to managing him – and keeping the US-Australia security alliance intact.

Initially, at least, this conversation was predictable.

The Coalition looked set to continue an ideological alignment with Trumpism that had flourished under the prime ministership of Scott Morrison. Dutton prosecuted the argument that given his party’s experience with the first Trump administration, it would be better placed than Labor to handle the second.

Albanese, meanwhile, appeared caught off guard by Trump’s victory and timid in his response.

But as has become all too clear, the second Trump administration is radically different from the first. That has rattled the right of Australian politics and worked to Labor’s advantage.

A turning point at the White House

In January, the Coalition announced that NT Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price had been appointed ^[1] shadow minister for government efficiency – a direct importation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being led by Elon Musk in the US.

In a barely disguised imitation of the Trump administration’s attacks on “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) measures, members of the Coalition, including Price, singled out ^[2] Welcome to Country ceremonies as evidence of the kind of “wasteful” spending it would cut.

When the Coalition seemed to be riding high in the polls, Dutton, too, nodded at “wokeism ^[3]” and singled out young white men feeling “disenfranchised”.

Soon after, however, this began to change. The first few weeks of Trump’s second term were marked by a cascade of executive actions targeting trans people, climate action and immigration. Trump and his new appointees began the process of radically reshaping the United States and its role in the world.

In February, polling by the independent think tank The Australia Institute found Australians ^[4] saw Trump as a bigger threat to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

And then Volodymyr Zelensky went to the White House.

The Ukrainian president was humiliated ^[5] in an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, laying bare how the administration was willing to treat the leader of an ally devastated by a war it hadn’t started.

Trump’s territorial threats towards Canada and Greenland, in addition to his dismissive statements about European allies, shattered the long-held assumptions about the US as a force for stability in the world.

Trump’s treatment of Zelensky in the White House raised questions in Australia about the trustworthiness of the US alliance. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

MAGA ideology isn’t ‘pick and choose’

After this incident, Dutton was careful to distance himself from Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine. He even went so far as to say that leadership might require ^[6] “standing up to your friends and to those traditional allies because our views have diverged”.

Similarly, influential Coalition powerbroker Peta Credlin wrote in The Australian ^[7]:

it’s hard to see America made great again if the Trump administration’s message to the world is that the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.

Therein lies the bind for the Coalition – an ideological alignment with “Make America Great Again” cannot be fully reconciled with a nationalism that puts Australian interests first.

MAGA ideology is all-or-nothing, not pick-and-choose.

During the election campaign, the Coalition attempted to walk the path of “pick-and-choose”. And Labor quite successfully used this against them. Assertions the opposition leader was nothing but a “Temu Trump ^[8]”, or “DOGE-y Dutton ^[9]”, stuck because they had at least a ring of truth to them.

The opposition’s pledge to dramatically reduce the size of the public service, for example, was clearly linked to Musk’s efforts at DOGE to take a chainsaw to the public service in the US. This idea has been deeply unpopular ^[10] with Australian voters, and the Coalition has faced innumerable questions ^[11] about it.

For all the talk of “shared values” and how essential the US alliance is to Australian security, this campaign shows that Australia is not like America.

Most Australians concerned about Trump’s impact

When Trump’s tariffs arrived on “Liberation Day” in early April, both leaders claimed they were best placed to negotiate.

Albanese insisted Australia had got one of the best results in the world, while Dutton asserted, without evidence, that he would be able to negotiate a better one.

More broadly, the Trump tariffs have contributed to a growing sense of unease in the electorate.

A recent YouGov poll ^[12] found that 66% of Australians no longer believe the US can be relied on for defence and security. According to Paul Smith, the director of YouGov, this is a “fundamental change of worldview”.

In the same poll, 71% of Australians also said they were either concerned or very concerned Trump’s policies would make Australia worse off.

While neither party has signalled it would make a fundamental shift in Australia’s alliance with the US if elected, that doesn’t mean changes aren’t possible.

Independents and minor parties may well play a significant role in the formation of the next government. Some, like Zoe Daniel and Jacqui Lambie, are increasingly vocal about the risks the Trump administration poses to Australia.

A limit to Trumpism’s appeal

As election day approaches, many of the assumptions driving conventional Australian political thinking are under pressure.

Labor’s recovery in the polls, and the Liberals’ election win ^[13] in Canada, suggest assumptions about the dangers of incumbency might have been misplaced. The dissatisfaction with incumbent governments last year may have had more to do with unresponsive political parties and systems.

There’s evidence emerging, instead, that in more responsive democracies with robust institutions like Australia and Canada, Trumpism does not have great appeal.

The idea that “kindness is not a weakness” may yet prove to be a winning political strategy.