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Hi.
I'm Claire Murphy from Momma MEAs twice daily news podcast, The Quickie.
Look. We have talked a heck of a lot.
About US politics over the last six months, But just in case you missed this, are you aware there's an Australian federal election coming up just around the corner.
What can we expect to be the make or break issues for our own pollies next year?
And what aspects of the recent US election can we already see creeping into our own political sphere. In this episode, I catch up with Mark Kenny from the Democracy Sausage podcast and our US correspondent Amelia Lester to find out just how trumpy our own election can get. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Muma MEA's twice daily news podcast, The Quickie E. Brace yourselves. Another election is coming and this time you'll
have to get yourself to the ballot box. With Australians heading to the polls sometime in the next six months. But the question has been just how much will the US election influenced the Australian election. There are already reports that Liberals are reaching out to Republicans and Opposition leader Peter Dutton is already using some very familiar Trumpy terminology. Next, we'll catch up with our US correspondent Amelia Lester and our Australian political expert Mark Kenny we find out whether
we're also heading down a Trumpian light. You might have heard that right before Parliament broke up for the year last week, the government managed to squeeze thirty one pieces of legislation through, from housing initiatives to the under sixteen social media band bills. Are being crammed through the system left and right.
So why the mad rush?
Well, sometime between now in May seventeen, twenty twenty five, there will be a federal election and both parties are gearing up for the fight. This next Australian election comes on the heels of a US election which has returned Donald Trump to the White House, and according to reports, the liberals are hoping to replicate that return to conservatism here too. Mark Kenny is a professor of Australian Studies at the Australian National University's College of Arts and Social Sciences.
He's also the host of the weekly politics and public affairs podcast Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny. Mark, do you think it's true that the Liberal Party has been reaching out to Republican strategists for guidance on how to win this upcoming election.
Yeah.
Look, I think it's certainly true that conservatives in democracies do tend to talk to each other, and it's also the case for the progressive side of politics of the British Labor Party and the Democrats and the Australian Labor Party and probably the Canadians. They tend to swap learnings and get some sort of read on what's happening in the electorate and how to measure what's happening in the electorate,
which is really important. And I think there's no doubt that what we've seen in the US is the very effective political capitalization, if I can put it like that, on a public sentiment of complaint, of disaffection of this engagement of being left behind, an anti establishment sort of sentiment that is now very very important within democratic politics.
So I'm not surprised that the Conservatives in Australia would take great heart from what happened in the US because the polls, of course showed that it was very, very close. There was a real expectation once the Democrats dropped Biden and went to Kamala Harris. There was huge early enthusiasm for that, but obviously there was something happening in the electorate that that enthusiasm didn't pick up and people are
prepared to ditch governments. I've called it the era of pick and flick, or pick and kick rather than pick and stick, which is what's been the trend in Australia over coming on close to a century of electoral history where we don't have a single term federal governments nowadays. Who knows, It could well be that the Alban Ezy government is the first one term government since nineteen thirty two.
What is happening in the Australian electorate do you think, Mark, are we looking disenfranchised like our US friends are? I mean, a cost of living crisis will do that to you. Are we feeling like maybe Australians are preparing for a switch.
Well, that does seem to be the zeitgeist really, that there's this sense of people being left behind of the market essentially not working for everyone, of policy being determined by elites, as they're often described, which includes the media and government and public servants and universities and essentially all the kind of heavy weights of policy determination in Australia for a long time, there's a sense that that isn't work.
Looking for as many people now in Australia, I think it's a milder form than we see in the US. That's because we have a much better social safety net.
We have, of course universal health insurance in the form of Medicare, and we have a calmer kind of and more moderate kind of political debate because we have compulsory preferential voting in this country and an unimpeachable national electoral system that is the Australian Electoral Commission, highly respected, in fact, by some surveys, the most respected institution in the country. And all of these things I think add up to a less febrile situation than we see in the US.
But it doesn't mean that there isn't a degree of disaffection.
We know, for example, that younger people are more and more disengaged because I think they're disillusioned over things like climate change. But they're particularly disengaged because they feel like the system is no longer delivering for them. Their parents were able to get houses and to accumulate wealth through property ownership effectively, but they are not able to break into the home ownership and so there's a sort of an outsider resentment I think brewing in younger voters, particularly
among younger men. You put all these things together, I think there is still some sort of fertile ground for Peter Dutton and the Conservatives to till What was.
The purpose of Labor pushing so much legislation through at the end of the sitting period last week? Does that set Labor up in good stead to go into an election?
Yet? I think one of the reasons that they wanted to do that is because.
They needed to show that the government is active. You know, it's interesting to think about the resentment that was directed towards Scott Morrison. He was an unpopular Prime minister by the end, and there was a very strong kind of get rid of Morrison's sentiment at the twenty twenty two election, which you know benefited Labor eventually, but Labour's primary vote even in that environment was a record low thirty two
point six percent across the nation. So the situation there was quite hostile for the Conservatives but didn't really show up in support for Labor except really through the preference system.
So initially there was this relief that the new Labor government was an orderly government.
You know that it didn't have the Prime minister sworn into five ministries, and it didn't have all the kinds of scandals and lack of process that was associated with the Morrison period. But I think what we've seen since with high inflation, high interest rates, the cost of living crisis as it is so often described, I think there's a level of dissatisfaction with the government and the government
needs to show that it's out there doing things. And it certainly finished with a flourish in terms of getting a number of bills through, and that does give it a story to tell going into the next election, and particularly because some of those things actually go to making life easier for people. There's tax cuts and there's more money for childcare, and more money for relieved text debts and all kinds of things like this. So that gives the government a story to tell. Whether it's enough that
remains to be seen. But the government goes in Nick and Nick in the polls, perhaps fractionally behind the Conservatives, but with a significant seat buffer, and I think probably remains narrow favorite to hold onto government.
So how are things going over in the US?
Right now?
There are tons of posts on social media platforms of Americans realizing exactly what some of the things Trump promised actually mean.
I just watched a easily seventy five year old man learn what a tariff was in real time. Was he stood in line of the health good store. The manager of the store, who apparently is his friend, said, oh god, and I'm just dried. In January, all of our products got to go up twenty five percent, well a majority of it. And he goes, the old man goes, what are you talking about? He goes, he's putting it in
terrorists on the first day for Mexico. And you know, all of our tomatoes and avocados and everything from Mexico, so most of my products is going to go up twenty five percent.
He goes, no, no, no, he's going to put a terror on that.
And the manager looked at him and said, yeah, and I have to pay that tariff, So then what do you think I'm gonna do? And the old man stepped back and looked at him and he goes, you're going to pass it on to us.
Yeah.
Some have even said their lives have changed forever by their choice to vote for Donald Trump.
So with official my wife is divorcing me. She said she couldn't be with the Trump supporter Tony. I have it till the end of the day to get my shit out of the house, get all my things.
That's changing lives.
She has on working back.
I don't know what to do, and the choices for the Trump cabinet keep raising eyebrows. Emelia Lester is a deputy editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and MoMA MEA's US correspondent Amelia. The last time we spoke, Matt Gates had been tapped for Attorney General, but he's now dropped out of the running, saying his issues would be too distracting for the new president. But what happens to him now? Didn't he resign from Congress?
Yeah?
But I think he's fine with not being in Congress anymore because he's resurfaced on Cameo, which is the website where you can hire celebrities and quasi celebrities to send birthday messages to friends, and he is now on Cameo attracting upwards of four hundred and fifty dollars US and appearance.
I believe so.
I think he's going to be just fine, and he'll probably, like a lot of these Trump orbit personalities, end up with some kind of anchor spot on Fox News as well.
Any other interesting additions to the cabinet since we last caught up depends.
How you define interesting. I did want to highlight that over the weekend, this completely astonishing letter has been circulating from Pete heg Seth's mother. Now, we talked about Pete hegg Seth, I believe on the show before. He is Trump's nominee for the Department of Defense. He's a veteran and perhaps more to the point for Trump, a former
Fox News host. An email leaked I don't know who leaked it, but an email that his mother sent him guarding allegations of abuse towards Hegsa's former wife and his mother basically said, well, she did say you are an abuser of women. That's an exact quote. And she went on to denounce his character, and she said how disappointed she was in him. It'll be interesting to see whether the testimony of someone's literal mother moves the needle at all, But so far, I don't think I've seen any persuasive
evidence that he'll be stepping aside. A couple of other interesting developments. Trump's appointment for the Department of Labor is Laurie Chaves de Rima. Now, she is a former Republican politician who lost her latest Congress run to a Democrat. But what's interesting about her is that she is an
advocate for union rights and for labor rights. She is supported by the Teamsters, which is the biggest labor union in the United States, and she was one of the few Republicans to vote for the expansion of labor rights through legislation pushed by Democrats in the last Congress. I highlight her because I think one interesting thing that's emerging beyond Trump loyalists in this cabinet is that there are
people who have very different perspectives. I think it would be a mistake to think that MAGA means just one thing or one perspective. As shown by her inclusion, it can mean some surprising populist pull in from different parts of the political spectrum. The other thing that I just wanted to highlight is that he is continuing a trend of appointing people who don't believe in vaccines and who certainly don't believe in vaccine mandates.
On top of Robert F.
Kennedy Junior, who we've talked about before, who has pushed that vaccines cause autism, he is also put in charge to the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that's the agency that approves all new medications. He's appointed Martin macquerie, who is a very vocal critic of the medical establishment and a vaccine mandates during COVID, and that the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, which as the name suggests, are in charge of panda response if another one comes.
He has named Dave Worldon, who is another very vocal critic of vaccines who has also pushed to that vaccines cause autism. So one emerging trend is this pushed back against vaccines, particularly among his appointments to scientific and medical posts.
I think it's really interesting to know to what is Joe Biden doing at this point because all the focus is on Donald Trump and his transition back to the White House. But is Joe Biden doing anything? Because remember when Trump went out, we're all terrified of some of the things that he was doing that could potentially have long term impacts, like judges on the Supreme Court, which has essentially led to the overturning of Roe v.
Wade. What's Joe Biden doing?
Yeah, that's actually a great question. He's doing a couple of things. The first is that he is on a trip to Africa right now. It began on the weekend. It's the first trip to Africa by an American president since Barack Obama traveled to the continent in twenty fifteen. This was a trip he was meant to make in twenty twenty two, but which he pushed back because of
the war in the Middle East. The reason why this is significant is because Africa is very much the place where the great power competition between China and the United States has been playing out. Now, the United States has been pretty distracted the last few years and hasn't really
been able to compete with China in Africa. I guess this is kind of a last ditch attempt by Biden to nod to that great power competition and to say that the United States is still in the game in Africa when it comes to foreign investment and the competition with China. But it does seem a bit like clustered to be doing it in the dying days of his administration. Another thing that he's doing internally, that he's being pushed to do by Democrats is to appoint as many judges
as possible in these remaining days in office. In total, he's appointed two hundred and twenty one federal judges during his tenure, and in these last few days he's going to be trying to confirm up to fourteen federal judges, and he's hoping that that is going to act as a bulwark against some of Trump's more extreme positions in the coming administry. Generally, he does have quite a few possible avenues to explore in these last few months to
attempt to shore up his legacy. I think people are now feeling like Biden's legacy has been really tarnished by being sandwiched between these two Trump administrations. There's a growing frustration in the Democratic Party that he should have stood aside earlier, and that he should have done that as early as the twenty twenty two midterms or thereafter.
Can I ask you what impact tariffs will have here on Australia Because Donald Trump's campaign to become president, he talked a lot about tariffs. As it turns out, a lot of Americans didn't quite understand how that works and how that is going to essentially increase some prices of goods and services. So they come into the US and we know that there are countries who are desperately scrambling
to try and ensure this doesn't happen. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister's flown to the US to have discussions about this.
Will it impact Australia at all?
So this is kind of the million or billion dollar question that everyone's been asking whether Trump is just using these threats of tariffs as leverage to get more favorable trade deals out of Mexico and Canada and China. These are the countries that he's singled out as wanting to put particularly onerous tariffs on. But the short story is, if he does follow through on them. It is going to hurt Australia. Economists say that it could even lead to some kind of global financial crisis.
And here's why.
Even if he doesn't put direct tariffs on Australian goods coming into the US, there's going to be all these knock on effects from the tariffs that he puts in other countries. For example, China is Australia's biggest market for energy and resources. If China sells fewer goods to the US, and it will with tariffs because it will make the goods coming in from China more expensive, that means that China's demand for Australian energy and resources is going to fall.
Another knock on effect from the tariffs. We've already seen that the US dollar has strengthen compared with the Australian dollar in recent days. That's because people are anticipating that with the tariffs, the tax cuts, and the deportation of millions of US documented workers, basically the US is going to have to take on trillions of dollars of more debt.
That's going to mean that interest rates are going to rise, and that's likely going to be a trend that will see worldwide, and the Reserve Bank has been predicted that it may raise interest rates by as much as a point pretty soon.
We have talked previously about just how much what happens in the US influences us here in Australia, and I think the question is whether the sentiment around this current US election might follow us into the twenty twenty five
Australian federal election. And we have seen some movements from the Liberal Party to reach out to Republican strategists and Peter Dutton's uses of words like you know, if you feel like you're better off than you were four years ago, which is something that Trump had said quite consistently through his campaign. Why are we so influenced by what the US does here in Australia.
I think it's because we're pretty similar countries. For a start, we share migration and trade, and there's a constant flow of people and goods between the two countries. We're both relatively young democracies who belong to the same organizations like the OECD. And then I think that culturally we consume a lot of American contents, so we're sort of bound to go in the same direction as America and a
whole lot of things. Generally, I think that Peter Dutton would be crazy not to look at this election and draw some lessons on how he can successfully fight Anthony Albanesi in the next election. There are clearly these global headwinds,
not just in the US, but globally. People are feeling angry with the pandemic and with the post pandemic response by their governments, with the fact that governments spent all this money on trying to prop up economies during COVID, and now people are facing the consequences of that out of control government spending, and clearly Trump has found a way to tap into that sense of anger and frustration. I think it would only be natural or sense to look to the US for campaign strategies.
So, with all of us gearing up for another Rossie election, just how trumpy do our experts feel This upcoming Australian election.
Will be a lot happens in election campaigns now that you don't sort of see the macro level. It's targeted messaging online through social media and through social media groups and so forth, to particular demographics and even right down to particular voters.
So I think we'll see a fair bit.
Of exaggeration, misrepresentation, hyperbole, sort of resentment harvesting as a result of cost of living and other grievances that people have. I don't think we can ignore that, but it's going to be quite hard to see all of that, and probably it won't all come just from Peter Dunton.
I don't see how Australia avoids these so called global headwinds that have thrown governments out everywhere in the wake of the pandemic and the spending that accompanied it. I do think that the Liberal party here is going to be looking closely at how Trump managed to assemble a very diverse and very broad coalition, winning support from young people in a way that we might not have expected.
Weeks that have had this idea for a long time that young people were naturally more progressive, and trump selection has definitely put the lie to that idea. So I would imagine that the Liberals are looking for ways to bring together people who maybe haven't even voted liberal before, who don't think of themselves as liberal in the same way that Trump has by appealing to this idea of you're angry, you're frustrated, you're done with the mainstream. You
want to burn it all down. You're sick of this system, this neoliberal system that hasn't worked for you, and I think that a populous turn is all but inevitable in that kind of climate.
Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with us today. The Quickie is produced by me, Claire Murphy and our executive producer, Tailor Strom, with audio production by Teagan Sadler. We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Quikie. If you're after more news like this, we drop episodes twice a day to get you up to speed on what's happening around the globe.
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