Speaker 1: So much you're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We
Speaker 2: have recorded this podcast on the Gadigul people of the
Speaker 2: Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their elders past
Speaker 2: and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and
Speaker 2: Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 4: I'm Claire Murphy from Momma MEAs twice daily news podcast,
Speaker 4: The Quickie.
Speaker 1: Look. We have talked a heck of a lot.
Speaker 4: About US politics over the last six months, But just
Speaker 4: in case you missed this, are you aware there's an
Speaker 4: Australian federal election coming up just around the corner.
Speaker 1: What can we expect to be the make or break
Speaker 1: issues for our own pollies next year?
Speaker 4: And what aspects of the recent US election can we
Speaker 4: already see creeping into our own political sphere. In this episode,
Speaker 4: I catch up with Mark Kenny from the Democracy Sausage
Speaker 4: podcast and our US correspondent Amelia Lester to find out
Speaker 4: just how trumpy our own election can get. I'm Claire Murphy.
Speaker 4: This is Muma MEA's twice daily news podcast, The Quickie E.
Speaker 4: Brace yourselves. Another election is coming and this time you'll
Speaker 4: have to get yourself to the ballot box. With Australians
Speaker 4: heading to the polls sometime in the next six months.
Speaker 4: But the question has been just how much will the
Speaker 4: US election influenced the Australian election. There are already reports
Speaker 4: that Liberals are reaching out to Republicans and Opposition leader
Speaker 4: Peter Dutton is already using some very familiar Trumpy terminology. Next,
Speaker 4: we'll catch up with our US correspondent Amelia Lester and
Speaker 4: our Australian political expert Mark Kenny we find out whether
Speaker 4: we're also heading down a Trumpian light. You might have
Speaker 4: heard that right before Parliament broke up for the year
Speaker 4: last week, the government managed to squeeze thirty one pieces
Speaker 4: of legislation through, from housing initiatives to the under sixteen
Speaker 4: social media band bills. Are being crammed through the system
Speaker 4: left and right.
Speaker 1: So why the mad rush?
Speaker 4: Well, sometime between now in May seventeen, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: there will be a federal election and both parties are
Speaker 4: gearing up for the fight. This next Australian election comes
Speaker 4: on the heels of a US election which has returned
Speaker 4: Donald Trump to the White House, and according to reports,
Speaker 4: the liberals are hoping to replicate that return to conservatism
Speaker 4: here too. Mark Kenny is a professor of Australian Studies
Speaker 4: at the Australian National University's College of Arts and Social Sciences.
Speaker 4: He's also the host of the weekly politics and public
Speaker 4: affairs podcast Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny. Mark, do you
Speaker 4: think it's true that the Liberal Party has been reaching
Speaker 4: out to Republican strategists for guidance on how to win
Speaker 4: this upcoming election.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Look, I think it's certainly true that conservatives in democracies
Speaker 6: do tend to talk to each other, and it's also
Speaker 6: the case for the progressive side of politics of the
Speaker 6: British Labor Party and the Democrats and the Australian Labor
Speaker 6: Party and probably the Canadians. They tend to swap learnings
Speaker 6: and get some sort of read on what's happening in
Speaker 6: the electorate and how to measure what's happening in the electorate,
Speaker 6: which is really important. And I think there's no doubt
Speaker 6: that what we've seen in the US is the very
Speaker 6: effective political capitalization, if I can put it like that,
Speaker 6: on a public sentiment of complaint, of disaffection of this
Speaker 6: engagement of being left behind, an anti establishment sort of
Speaker 6: sentiment that is now very very important within democratic politics.
Speaker 6: So I'm not surprised that the Conservatives in Australia would
Speaker 6: take great heart from what happened in the US because
Speaker 6: the polls, of course showed that it was very, very close.
Speaker 6: There was a real expectation once the Democrats dropped Biden
Speaker 6: and went to Kamala Harris. There was huge early enthusiasm
Speaker 6: for that, but obviously there was something happening in the
Speaker 6: electorate that that enthusiasm didn't pick up and people are
Speaker 6: prepared to ditch governments. I've called it the era of
Speaker 6: pick and flick, or pick and kick rather than pick
Speaker 6: and stick, which is what's been the trend in Australia
Speaker 6: over coming on close to a century of electoral history
Speaker 6: where we don't have a single term federal governments nowadays.
Speaker 6: Who knows, It could well be that the Alban Ezy
Speaker 6: government is the first one term government since nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 4: What is happening in the Australian electorate do you think, Mark,
Speaker 4: are we looking disenfranchised like our US friends are? I mean,
Speaker 4: a cost of living crisis will do that to you.
Speaker 4: Are we feeling like maybe Australians are preparing for a switch.
Speaker 6: Well, that does seem to be the zeitgeist really, that
Speaker 6: there's this sense of people being left behind of the
Speaker 6: market essentially not working for everyone, of policy being determined
Speaker 6: by elites, as they're often described, which includes the media
Speaker 6: and government and public servants and universities and essentially all
Speaker 6: the kind of heavy weights of policy determination in Australia
Speaker 6: for a long time, there's a sense that that isn't work.
Speaker 6: Looking for as many people now in Australia, I think
Speaker 6: it's a milder form than we see in the US.
Speaker 6: That's because we have a much better social safety net.
Speaker 6: We have, of course universal health insurance in the form
Speaker 6: of Medicare, and we have a calmer kind of and
Speaker 6: more moderate kind of political debate because we have compulsory
Speaker 6: preferential voting in this country and an unimpeachable national electoral
Speaker 6: system that is the Australian Electoral Commission, highly respected, in fact,
Speaker 6: by some surveys, the most respected institution in the country.
Speaker 6: And all of these things I think add up to
Speaker 6: a less febrile situation than we see in the US.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't mean that there isn't a degree of disaffection.
Speaker 6: We know, for example, that younger people are more and
Speaker 6: more disengaged because I think they're disillusioned over things like
Speaker 6: climate change. But they're particularly disengaged because they feel like
Speaker 6: the system is no longer delivering for them. Their parents
Speaker 6: were able to get houses and to accumulate wealth through
Speaker 6: property ownership effectively, but they are not able to break
Speaker 6: into the home ownership and so there's a sort of
Speaker 6: an outsider resentment I think brewing in younger voters, particularly
Speaker 6: among younger men. You put all these things together, I
Speaker 6: think there is still some sort of fertile ground for
Speaker 6: Peter Dutton and the Conservatives to till What was.
Speaker 4: The purpose of Labor pushing so much legislation through at
Speaker 4: the end of the sitting period last week? Does that
Speaker 4: set Labor up in good stead to go into an election?
Speaker 5: Yet? I think one of the reasons that they wanted
Speaker 5: to do that is because.
Speaker 6: They needed to show that the government is active. You know,
Speaker 6: it's interesting to think about the resentment that was directed
Speaker 6: towards Scott Morrison. He was an unpopular Prime minister by
Speaker 6: the end, and there was a very strong kind of
Speaker 6: get rid of Morrison's sentiment at the twenty twenty two election,
Speaker 6: which you know benefited Labor eventually, but Labour's primary vote
Speaker 6: even in that environment was a record low thirty two
Speaker 6: point six percent across the nation. So the situation there
Speaker 6: was quite hostile for the Conservatives but didn't really show
Speaker 6: up in support for Labor except really through the preference system.
Speaker 5: So initially there was this relief that the new Labor
Speaker 5: government was an orderly government.
Speaker 6: You know that it didn't have the Prime minister sworn
Speaker 6: into five ministries, and it didn't have all the kinds
Speaker 6: of scandals and lack of process that was associated with
Speaker 6: the Morrison period. But I think what we've seen since
Speaker 6: with high inflation, high interest rates, the cost of living
Speaker 6: crisis as it is so often described, I think there's
Speaker 6: a level of dissatisfaction with the government and the government
Speaker 6: needs to show that it's out there doing things. And
Speaker 6: it certainly finished with a flourish in terms of getting
Speaker 6: a number of bills through, and that does give it
Speaker 6: a story to tell going into the next election, and
Speaker 6: particularly because some of those things actually go to making
Speaker 6: life easier for people. There's tax cuts and there's more
Speaker 6: money for childcare, and more money for relieved text debts
Speaker 6: and all kinds of things like this. So that gives
Speaker 6: the government a story to tell. Whether it's enough that
Speaker 6: remains to be seen. But the government goes in Nick
Speaker 6: and Nick in the polls, perhaps fractionally behind the Conservatives,
Speaker 6: but with a significant seat buffer, and I think probably
Speaker 6: remains narrow favorite to hold onto government.
Speaker 1: So how are things going over in the US?
Speaker 3: Right now?
Speaker 4: There are tons of posts on social media platforms of
Speaker 4: Americans realizing exactly what some of the things Trump promised
Speaker 4: actually mean.
Speaker 7: I just watched a easily seventy five year old man
Speaker 7: learn what a tariff was in real time. Was he
Speaker 7: stood in line of the health good store. The manager
Speaker 7: of the store, who apparently is his friend, said, oh god,
Speaker 7: and I'm just dried. In January, all of our products
Speaker 7: got to go up twenty five percent, well a majority
Speaker 7: of it. And he goes, the old man goes, what
Speaker 7: are you talking about? He goes, he's putting it in
Speaker 7: terrorists on the first day for Mexico. And you know,
Speaker 7: all of our tomatoes and avocados and everything from Mexico,
Speaker 7: so most of my products is going to go up
Speaker 7: twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: He goes, no, no, no, he's going to put a
Speaker 1: terror on that.
Speaker 7: And the manager looked at him and said, yeah, and
Speaker 7: I have to pay that tariff, So then what do
Speaker 7: you think I'm gonna do? And the old man stepped
Speaker 7: back and looked at him and he goes, you're going
Speaker 7: to pass it on to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some have even said their lives have changed forever by
Speaker 1: their choice to vote for Donald Trump.
Speaker 8: So with official my wife is divorcing me. She said
Speaker 8: she couldn't be with the Trump supporter Tony. I have
Speaker 8: it till the end of the day to get my
Speaker 8: shit out of the house, get all my things.
Speaker 5: That's changing lives.
Speaker 8: She has on working back.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to do, and the choices for
Speaker 4: the Trump cabinet keep raising eyebrows. Emelia Lester is a
Speaker 4: deputy editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and MoMA MEA's US
Speaker 4: correspondent Amelia. The last time we spoke, Matt Gates had
Speaker 4: been tapped for Attorney General, but he's now dropped out
Speaker 4: of the running, saying his issues would be too distracting
Speaker 4: for the new president. But what happens to him now?
Speaker 4: Didn't he resign from Congress?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But I think he's fine with not being in Congress
Speaker 3: anymore because he's resurfaced on Cameo, which is the website
Speaker 3: where you can hire celebrities and quasi celebrities to send
Speaker 3: birthday messages to friends, and he is now on Cameo
Speaker 3: attracting upwards of four hundred and fifty dollars US and appearance.
Speaker 5: I believe so.
Speaker 3: I think he's going to be just fine, and he'll probably,
Speaker 3: like a lot of these Trump orbit personalities, end up
Speaker 3: with some kind of anchor spot on Fox News as well.
Speaker 4: Any other interesting additions to the cabinet since we last
Speaker 4: caught up depends.
Speaker 3: How you define interesting. I did want to highlight that
Speaker 3: over the weekend, this completely astonishing letter has been circulating
Speaker 3: from Pete heg Seth's mother. Now, we talked about Pete
Speaker 3: hegg Seth, I believe on the show before. He is
Speaker 3: Trump's nominee for the Department of Defense. He's a veteran
Speaker 3: and perhaps more to the point for Trump, a former
Speaker 3: Fox News host. An email leaked I don't know who
Speaker 3: leaked it, but an email that his mother sent him
Speaker 3: guarding allegations of abuse towards Hegsa's former wife and his
Speaker 3: mother basically said, well, she did say you are an
Speaker 3: abuser of women. That's an exact quote. And she went
Speaker 3: on to denounce his character, and she said how disappointed
Speaker 3: she was in him. It'll be interesting to see whether
Speaker 3: the testimony of someone's literal mother moves the needle at all,
Speaker 3: But so far, I don't think I've seen any persuasive
Speaker 3: evidence that he'll be stepping aside. A couple of other
Speaker 3: interesting developments. Trump's appointment for the Department of Labor is
Speaker 3: Laurie Chaves de Rima. Now, she is a former Republican
Speaker 3: politician who lost her latest Congress run to a Democrat.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting about her is that she is an
Speaker 3: advocate for union rights and for labor rights. She is
Speaker 3: supported by the Teamsters, which is the biggest labor union
Speaker 3: in the United States, and she was one of the
Speaker 3: few Republicans to vote for the expansion of labor rights
Speaker 3: through legislation pushed by Democrats in the last Congress. I
Speaker 3: highlight her because I think one interesting thing that's emerging
Speaker 3: beyond Trump loyalists in this cabinet is that there are
Speaker 3: people who have very different perspectives. I think it would
Speaker 3: be a mistake to think that MAGA means just one
Speaker 3: thing or one perspective. As shown by her inclusion, it
Speaker 3: can mean some surprising populist pull in from different parts
Speaker 3: of the political spectrum. The other thing that I just
Speaker 3: wanted to highlight is that he is continuing a trend
Speaker 3: of appointing people who don't believe in vaccines and who
Speaker 3: certainly don't believe in vaccine mandates.
Speaker 5: On top of Robert F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy Junior, who we've talked about before, who has pushed
Speaker 3: that vaccines cause autism, he is also put in charge
Speaker 3: to the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that's the
Speaker 3: agency that approves all new medications. He's appointed Martin macquerie,
Speaker 3: who is a very vocal critic of the medical establishment
Speaker 3: and a vaccine mandates during COVID, and that the CDC,
Speaker 3: the Centers for Disease Control, which as the name suggests,
Speaker 3: are in charge of panda response if another one comes.
Speaker 3: He has named Dave Worldon, who is another very vocal
Speaker 3: critic of vaccines who has also pushed to that vaccines
Speaker 3: cause autism. So one emerging trend is this pushed back
Speaker 3: against vaccines, particularly among his appointments to scientific and medical posts.
Speaker 4: I think it's really interesting to know to what is
Speaker 4: Joe Biden doing at this point because all the focus
Speaker 4: is on Donald Trump and his transition back to the
Speaker 4: White House. But is Joe Biden doing anything? Because remember
Speaker 4: when Trump went out, we're all terrified of some of
Speaker 4: the things that he was doing that could potentially have
Speaker 4: long term impacts, like judges on the Supreme Court, which
Speaker 4: has essentially led to the overturning of Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade. What's Joe Biden doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's actually a great question. He's doing a couple
Speaker 3: of things. The first is that he is on a
Speaker 3: trip to Africa right now. It began on the weekend.
Speaker 3: It's the first trip to Africa by an American president
Speaker 3: since Barack Obama traveled to the continent in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: This was a trip he was meant to make in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, but which he pushed back because of
Speaker 3: the war in the Middle East. The reason why this
Speaker 3: is significant is because Africa is very much the place
Speaker 3: where the great power competition between China and the United
Speaker 3: States has been playing out. Now, the United States has
Speaker 3: been pretty distracted the last few years and hasn't really
Speaker 3: been able to compete with China in Africa. I guess
Speaker 3: this is kind of a last ditch attempt by Biden
Speaker 3: to nod to that great power competition and to say
Speaker 3: that the United States is still in the game in
Speaker 3: Africa when it comes to foreign investment and the competition
Speaker 3: with China. But it does seem a bit like clustered
Speaker 3: to be doing it in the dying days of his administration.
Speaker 3: Another thing that he's doing internally, that he's being pushed
Speaker 3: to do by Democrats is to appoint as many judges
Speaker 3: as possible in these remaining days in office. In total,
Speaker 3: he's appointed two hundred and twenty one federal judges during
Speaker 3: his tenure, and in these last few days he's going
Speaker 3: to be trying to confirm up to fourteen federal judges,
Speaker 3: and he's hoping that that is going to act as
Speaker 3: a bulwark against some of Trump's more extreme positions in
Speaker 3: the coming administry. Generally, he does have quite a few
Speaker 3: possible avenues to explore in these last few months to
Speaker 3: attempt to shore up his legacy. I think people are
Speaker 3: now feeling like Biden's legacy has been really tarnished by
Speaker 3: being sandwiched between these two Trump administrations. There's a growing
Speaker 3: frustration in the Democratic Party that he should have stood
Speaker 3: aside earlier, and that he should have done that as
Speaker 3: early as the twenty twenty two midterms or thereafter.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you what impact tariffs will have here
Speaker 4: on Australia Because Donald Trump's campaign to become president, he
Speaker 4: talked a lot about tariffs. As it turns out, a
Speaker 4: lot of Americans didn't quite understand how that works and
Speaker 4: how that is going to essentially increase some prices of
Speaker 4: goods and services. So they come into the US and
Speaker 4: we know that there are countries who are desperately scrambling
Speaker 4: to try and ensure this doesn't happen. Justin Trudeau, the
Speaker 4: Canadian Prime Minister's flown to the US to have discussions
Speaker 4: about this.
Speaker 1: Will it impact Australia at all?
Speaker 3: So this is kind of the million or billion dollar
Speaker 3: question that everyone's been asking whether Trump is just using
Speaker 3: these threats of tariffs as leverage to get more favorable
Speaker 3: trade deals out of Mexico and Canada and China. These
Speaker 3: are the countries that he's singled out as wanting to
Speaker 3: put particularly onerous tariffs on. But the short story is,
Speaker 3: if he does follow through on them. It is going
Speaker 3: to hurt Australia. Economists say that it could even lead
Speaker 3: to some kind of global financial crisis.
Speaker 5: And here's why.
Speaker 3: Even if he doesn't put direct tariffs on Australian goods
Speaker 3: coming into the US, there's going to be all these
Speaker 3: knock on effects from the tariffs that he puts in
Speaker 3: other countries. For example, China is Australia's biggest market for
Speaker 3: energy and resources. If China sells fewer goods to the US,
Speaker 3: and it will with tariffs because it will make the
Speaker 3: goods coming in from China more expensive, that means that
Speaker 3: China's demand for Australian energy and resources is going to fall.
Speaker 3: Another knock on effect from the tariffs. We've already seen
Speaker 3: that the US dollar has strengthen compared with the Australian
Speaker 3: dollar in recent days. That's because people are anticipating that
Speaker 3: with the tariffs, the tax cuts, and the deportation of
Speaker 3: millions of US documented workers, basically the US is going
Speaker 3: to have to take on trillions of dollars of more debt.
Speaker 3: That's going to mean that interest rates are going to rise,
Speaker 3: and that's likely going to be a trend that will
Speaker 3: see worldwide, and the Reserve Bank has been predicted that
Speaker 3: it may raise interest rates by as much as a
Speaker 3: point pretty soon.
Speaker 4: We have talked previously about just how much what happens
Speaker 4: in the US influences us here in Australia, and I
Speaker 4: think the question is whether the sentiment around this current
Speaker 4: US election might follow us into the twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: Australian federal election. And we have seen some movements from
Speaker 4: the Liberal Party to reach out to Republican strategists and
Speaker 4: Peter Dutton's uses of words like you know, if you
Speaker 4: feel like you're better off than you were four years ago,
Speaker 4: which is something that Trump had said quite consistently through
Speaker 4: his campaign. Why are we so influenced by what the
Speaker 4: US does here in Australia.
Speaker 3: I think it's because we're pretty similar countries. For a start,
Speaker 3: we share migration and trade, and there's a constant flow
Speaker 3: of people and goods between the two countries. We're both
Speaker 3: relatively young democracies who belong to the same organizations like
Speaker 3: the OECD. And then I think that culturally we consume
Speaker 3: a lot of American contents, so we're sort of bound
Speaker 3: to go in the same direction as America and a
Speaker 3: whole lot of things. Generally, I think that Peter Dutton
Speaker 3: would be crazy not to look at this election and
Speaker 3: draw some lessons on how he can successfully fight Anthony
Speaker 3: Albanesi in the next election. There are clearly these global headwinds,
Speaker 3: not just in the US, but globally. People are feeling
Speaker 3: angry with the pandemic and with the post pandemic response
Speaker 3: by their governments, with the fact that governments spent all
Speaker 3: this money on trying to prop up economies during COVID,
Speaker 3: and now people are facing the consequences of that out
Speaker 3: of control government spending, and clearly Trump has found a
Speaker 3: way to tap into that sense of anger and frustration.
Speaker 3: I think it would only be natural or sense to
Speaker 3: look to the US for campaign strategies.
Speaker 4: So, with all of us gearing up for another Rossie election,
Speaker 4: just how trumpy do our experts feel This upcoming Australian election.
Speaker 6: Will be a lot happens in election campaigns now that
Speaker 6: you don't sort of see the macro level. It's targeted
Speaker 6: messaging online through social media and through social media groups
Speaker 6: and so forth, to particular demographics and even right down
Speaker 6: to particular voters.
Speaker 5: So I think we'll see a fair bit.
Speaker 6: Of exaggeration, misrepresentation, hyperbole, sort of resentment harvesting as a
Speaker 6: result of cost of living and other grievances that people have.
Speaker 6: I don't think we can ignore that, but it's going
Speaker 6: to be quite hard to see all of that, and
Speaker 6: probably it won't all come just from Peter Dunton.
Speaker 3: I don't see how Australia avoids these so called global
Speaker 3: headwinds that have thrown governments out everywhere in the wake
Speaker 3: of the pandemic and the spending that accompanied it. I
Speaker 3: do think that the Liberal party here is going to
Speaker 3: be looking closely at how Trump managed to assemble a
Speaker 3: very diverse and very broad coalition, winning support from young
Speaker 3: people in a way that we might not have expected.
Speaker 3: Weeks that have had this idea for a long time
Speaker 3: that young people were naturally more progressive, and trump selection
Speaker 3: has definitely put the lie to that idea. So I
Speaker 3: would imagine that the Liberals are looking for ways to
Speaker 3: bring together people who maybe haven't even voted liberal before,
Speaker 3: who don't think of themselves as liberal in the same
Speaker 3: way that Trump has by appealing to this idea of
Speaker 3: you're angry, you're frustrated, you're done with the mainstream. You
Speaker 3: want to burn it all down. You're sick of this system,
Speaker 3: this neoliberal system that hasn't worked for you, and I
Speaker 3: think that a populous turn is all but inevitable in
Speaker 3: that kind of climate.
Speaker 4: Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with
Speaker 4: us today. The Quickie is produced by me, Claire Murphy
Speaker 4: and our executive producer, Tailor Strom, with audio production by
Speaker 4: Teagan Sadler. We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Quikie.
Speaker 4: If you're after more news like this, we drop episodes
Speaker 4: twice a day to get you up to speed on
Speaker 4: what's happening around the globe.
Speaker 1: There'll be a link to follow us in the show
Speaker 1: notes