Donald Trump’s landslide election win is likely to give the Republicans a majority on every measure of electoral success with the House of Representatives only six members off a majority at the time of writing. Expecting the Democrats to win, the Albanese government failed to prepare for the Trump tsunami. The big question, however, is what will Mr Dutton do?
So confident were lefties everywhere of a Harris win that the phrase ‘lefties losing it’ can now be rebranded ‘socialists sooking it’. The seemingly endless videos of people crying on social media because their political party didn’t win an election are outrageous examples of ‘sadfishing.’ The poor luvvies.
I wrote previously that Trump’s win ‘narrowly’ saved us from war. I didn’t mean he won narrowly. In my opinion, the world was one US Presidential term away from war. It doesn’t get much narrower than that. Meanwhile, in Australia, the Albanese government didn’t narrowly miss the Trump ascension, it only started burning the evidence after Trump had already won.
The infamous English King Ethelred the Unready was unable to unify his forces to repel the Danish invasions. His epithet is a play on Ethelred, meaning ‘noble counsel’, and Unready, from the Old English meaning ‘no counsel’.
Rather than being unready, Albo was asleep at the wheel. Much like the American band of the same name, Albo is now singing the chorus of their hit song to his senior ministers:
‘Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.’
Only this is no joke.
On the right, Kevin Rudd, in his position as Australian Ambassador to the US, was caught still vacuuming when the visitors arrived. He was busy deleting his earlier tweets that were derogatory towards Mr Trump well after it was clear Harris had been declared persona non grata (diplomatic pun intended) by US voters.
On the left, Foreign Minister Penny Wong complained about colonisation to UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, a black man, who served under Rishi Sunak, the conservative UK Prime Minister of Indian and Hindu heritage. He blinked at her in disbelief. Wong, too, has also been found wanting. In 2021, she stated that Mr Trump was ‘prepared to trash alliances and partnerships for personal political interest’.
In the middle, Albo was busy rushing through the Misinformation and Fisinformation (MaD) Bill and banning teenagers from social media to help shore up his ability to control ‘the truth’ and to implement a Digital ID for all Australians. Never mind banning TikTok. Nothing to see there.
Banning social media is so much government overreach, not only on our liberties, but on government’s capabilities. Even someone like me who has remained computer literate since Basic and PC-DOS first started, I still get my adult sons to help me do many things online. Good luck holding back that tide, King Canute.
Incidentally, Canute fixed up Ethelred’s shockers. If he wanted to, Mr Dutton could be Albo’s Canute. But even Mr Dutton is in on the MaD and banning social media gigs. (If this keeps up, it won’t be long before people have me singing from the ‘Uniparty’ song sheet. But I digress.)
How is it possible that our government wasn’t prepared for both possible election outcomes?
To be sure, Australia has a right to choose its ambassadors. We should not simply do the bidding of foreign powers if it is not in our national interest. But that doesn’t mean Mr Trump or his team have to see Mr Rudd. Ever.
Is it enough that Mr Rudd deleted a few tweets? It depends. Mr Trump is regarded as a transactional leader. In the leadership literature, such leadership can create in-groups and out-groups. We saw much of this in Mr Trump’s first term as President. But it also means that individuals can become part of the in-group even if they have said negative things about Mr Trump. JD Vance is an obvious case in point.
While there is plenty of scope for Albo and his team to gain Mr Trump’s favour, Albo will find it difficult to do so without upsetting his own electoral heartland. Mr Trump is likely to expect Australia’s offering to be to increase defence spending and to allow more American troops and equipment to be deployed in Australia. While that would make sense in purely strategic terms given our current state of harmlessness, the Greens are already agitating for Australia to pull out of Aukus. Not only would this be a huge mistake, but with the Greens getting too much airtime for their crazy media grabs, if Labor’s left joins the call to leave Aukus then Albo’s relationship with Mr Trump will suffer.
The same might be said of Wong’s penchant for currying favour with the UN, an organisation that is likely to bear some of Mr Trump’s classic scorn. The UN is increasingly irrational and acting in the interests of illiberal governments rather than trying to maintain a rules-based liberal world order. I attended a UN forum in Berlin in 2019 and saw it with my own eyes. How so much disorganisation can upset so many people while costing so much can’t be done through carelessness alone. To be so wildly out of control takes years of practice. Which brings me back to Mr Dutton.
King Canute didn’t try to hold back the tide. He was demonstrating to his court that ‘only God has control over nature’. Unlike Canute, Mr Dutton thinks he can control the truth and stop teenagers from accessing social media. Given that Mr Trump hates fake news, and that the majority of social media applications that Australian kids use are owned by US companies, Mr Trump is unlikely to support Australia’s attempts to control the truth and prevent access to social media.
Some commentators have suggested that the more conservative of Dutton’s courtiers want to bounce off Trump’s win to implement a cure for the Woke mind virus. They claim that such a move will undo years of bringing the Liberals back to the centre.
What Mr Dutton hasn’t counted on, however, is that just as the Woke mind virus spun out of the US and into Australian society, so too will its cure. It is up to Mr Dutton whether he replicates the unifying role of Canute and the prosperous times England enjoyed as a result, or otherwise he becomes like Ethelred’s son and short-lived successor, Edmund Ironside, who only lasted a few months before the real Canute emerged.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is National Vice President of the Telecommunications Association, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other person or organisation.