Australian election & reactions to Trump

With a Special Interview with Pascal Lottaz & Warwick Powell

This week I am interrupting my planned schedule of the World History Tour. Instead, I am sharing a deep dive post on the Australian election, held on 3 May 2025, and my latest interview on YouTube with two experts on how the world is reacting to Trump’s America.

This one is a special thank you bonus for all readers. No paywall 🙏. There is a special message about how you can support my writing at the end of this post.

Sorry for the interruption to the planned schedule, but it is worth it.

On Saturday in the book recommendation post, I will share my Open Global List of 100 Books to Read Before it is Too Late. The idea was stimulated by The Definitive List of 100 Classic Novels to Read Before You Die by

Liza Libes

. We will return to the World History Tour the following week.

My Latest Interview on YouTube

Today in the deep dive, I am bringing you a surprise interview with

Warwick Powell

and

Pascal Lottaz

.

The interview discusses Kishore Mahbubani’s idea that international relations are changing to reflect a “3M world” that is multipolar, multilateral, and multi-civilizational. How are the USA, China, Japan, ASEAN, the European Union and Australia responding to this challenge?

During the interview we briefly discussed the outcome of the Australian election that was held on 3 May. Although I live in Australia, I comment sparingly on Australian history, culture, and politics. But I thought I would comment today due to all the quick takes, especially by American commentators, that interpret this election result as a reaction to Donald Trump.

The Australian 2025 Election

Re-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Here is a popular, typical example from Substack of this interpretation of the Australian election as part of the melodrama of US politics.

Tristan Snell claims to be a “Lawyer, author, fighter for democracy. Prosecuted Trump University @ NY AG. MSNBC commentator. Author of the bestseller Taking Down Trump.” He is clearly just grandstanding on a platform of misunderstanding of other countries, and indeed “the whole world.” He pays no attention to the actual situation in Australia. He just appropriates the whole world to bizarre American grand political narratives that a “Blue Wave” is sweeping the world.

Let me share the basic facts about the Australian election, bearing in mind that for 33 years I served as a non-partisan government official and have observed the vaudeville of electoral politics and the shadowy realities of real government for my whole adult life.

Let us look first at the actual vote, without getting too deep into election analysis.

Election results graphed by ABC news Source: https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-31496-NAT.htm

Labor is the governing party, led by Anthony Albanese. As you can see, Labor won a smidge over one-third of the vote. Its principal rival, the Liberal-National Parties Coalition, led by Peter Dutton, received a smidge less than a third of the vote.

Labor’s primary vote rose by 2.2 per cent. This increase in the vote comes from a historic low. In 2022 Labor formed a minority government despite receiving its lowest primary vote in a century.

The Coalition’s vote fell by 3.6 per cent. Some of these votes leaked to One Nation, which is a resentful, nationalist party dating from the 1990s.

The “Trumpet of Patriots” party is a copy-cat party of Trump’s MAGA movement. It is led or patronised by Clive Palmer, a political activist and businessman who has tried to imitate Trump’s oligarchical takeover of right-wing politics in Australia for a decade or more. This election season he even beamed Tucker Carlson to Australia and imitated the anti-woke politics of MAGA. As you can see, it failed. Its vote more than halved. Some of these votes may have shifted to the older, less imitative One Nation.

The Coalition’s vote has also leaked over several elections to the Independents, included in “Others” in the graph above. There are approximately 20 party groupings in this “Others” category, of which the largest are the “Independents” or ‘Teals’ who received 7.5 per cent of the vote. This group broadly represents former liberal voters who want better environmental and social policies. It is this group that has won 10 seats in the Parliament, after breaking through as a grouping in the 2022 election. They secured minority government for Labor in 2022. However, Australia has had such “Independent” members of Parliament for decades.

Finally, the Greens vote has been stable. This election, however, the Greens lost seats in the lower House in inner city areas that were traditional Labor seats. The Greens’ real power base, however, is in the Senate, where proportional voting delivers many seats. They will continue, in effect, to hold the balance of power in the Senate, making them de facto the third major political force in Australian politics.

That is the vote count. In summary, the Australian electorate is evenly spread in thirds. Two thirds vote for the “major parties” (Labor, Liberal/National). One third vote for “minor parties”. The minor party vote is also spread in rough thirds. One third of this one third vote for right-wing nationalist and libertarian parties (such One Nation and Trumpet of Patriots). One third again vote for Greens. One third vote for socially and environmentally progressive Independents.

The decline of the major party primary vote is a long-standing trend, as shown up to 2020 below. The last time Labor neared 50 per cent of the primary vote was in the 1980s, during Bob Hawke’s ascendancy. The emergence of the Greens has stimulated a long-term trend towards a new stable equilibrium for Labor of one-third of the vote. The emergence of the Australian Democrats in the 1970s, One Nation in the 1990s, and the Teal Independents in the 2020s has provoked a similar trend for the Coalition.

Source https://www.tallyroom.com.au/47443

Of course, the electoral system in Australia translates this multifarious spread of votes into a simpler, starker seat count. Australia has compulsory voting. In the lower house of government, or House of Representatives, there is mandatory preferential voting. You can vote for outliers, but, in the end, you have to make a choice between the majors. Your preference will go to either Labor, Coalition or, in a small number of seats, a Green or high-profile independent. This system accounts for the fact that with just two per cent more of the vote, the Labor Party has received double the seats of the Coalition in the lower house.

In the Senate or upper house, there is optional preferential voting. In addition, all states are equally represented, despite differences in population size. As a result, major parties do not get majorities in the Senate. It has been that way with one brief exception for decades. Despite the “landslide win” for the Labor Government, they will, as ever, need to negotiate issue by issue with other parties to pass legislation.

There is one fundamental feature of Australian politics that commentary from afar is missing. Australia has a two-party political system, but a multi-party, fragmented society. The country never votes for “unity over division,” as Anthony Albanese said. It has not voted to reject Trump or “fascist” parties. Yet the political culture wants to pretend that one-third of the country voting, with highly variable passion, for one party has united the country behind a mandate.

There is a gap between how the major “parties of government” (Labor, Liberal) behave and how the heterogeneous, fragmented, multicultural society votes its preferences. This gap has grown more acute especially since 2010. One manifestation of it is the bitter rivalry between Labor and the Greens. Their voters desire for them to work together is ignored by the party officials who compete over the electoral map. The major parties want to continue with Australia’s hybrid British-American political system, which is known as Washminster, a combination of Washington and Westminster. But the voters, in their hearts, want European-style coalition-building.

I do not expect the tension to go away anytime soon.

What about the Trump factor?

It has been widely reported that in late 2024 the Coalition was performing better in the polls and expecting an election victory. On election night there were many reports that Trump’s crazy caudillo performance as President was unpopular in Australia. The tariff policies in particular harm Australia, which relies, like any mature nation, on open world trade. The Coalition has adopted some stances in rhetoric and policy reminiscent of Trump. In particular, Peter Dutton had a ‘hard man’ image.

On the surface then, it might seem that Australia rejected Trump. But polls and appearances are deceptive. Foreign policy towards the USA was not an issue at all in the election. This election was entirely different to the Canadian election, where the USA had threatened Canada’s independent national existence, and there was a clear rallying behind the leader who was most capable and resolved to stand against America. Unlike Mark Carney, Mr Albanese has said nothing as clear or courageous about changing Australia’s servile relationship with the USA.

Other issues cruelled the Coalition pitch. I watch domestic Australian politics lackadaisically these days, but I am reliably informed that nuclear energy, work-from-home policies, student debt, reaction to anti-China rhetoric in Australia’s large Chinese diaspora, and housing were more decisive issues.

However, I do think there was a “Trump factor” in the way in which political and media elites conduct politics today. Both major political parties are deeply influenced at a cultural and operational level by American politics and media. They copy campaign tactics, policy ideas, polling methods and strategic thinking about politics. They watch American news media and comment in a tedious, second-hand way on the issues of the day in the Washington media circus. Political leaders, advisers, party officials, journalists, government officials, and even now alternative media play this same game. Their eyes are on America, and not really what is going on in their own society.

I think this phenomenon trapped the Coalition campaign, although it is of course only a hypothesis. When the mood shifted after Trump’s election, the Coalition’s strategy was caught out. They thought they could replicate Trump’s energy dominance with nuclear, and disregarded longstanding local sentiment against nuclear waste. They thought they could fight the anti-woke culture wars. And didn’t realise we had all moved on. They ran a bad campaign, and forgot which country was voting this time. They absorbed the ethos of the Washington Gang, to use Emmanuel Todd’s term. They were victims of the globalisation of politics, especially through the media, which has been commented on by Dr S Jaishankar, the Indian External Affairs Minister. The Labor Party skilfully outmanoeuvred them and cornered them as “un-Australian.” However, the recent conversion of some Australian political commentators (e.g. The Australia Institute) to “progressive nationalism” has not stopped Labor leaders continuing to fawn to America.

I do not think, however, that the ‘Trump effect’ changed the election result, rather than the tactics of the major parties. Australia did not reject Trump or “fascist right-wing parties.” Australia voted in the usual muddled way. Their votes landed in a political system that does not accommodate well the population’s diversity and plural opinions. American Democrats and Progressives who are congratulating Australia for joining their anti-Trump campaign are unwittingly insulting us with remote arrogance. Overseas geopolitics analysts, who ignorantly appropriate election results to their own obsessions, only demonstrate the arrogant blindness of a pseudo-imperial state.

Regrettably, Australia shows little to no sign of thinking more imaginatively about its role in the world, reconsidering the USA alliance, or practising principles of “More Asia, Less America”, as advocated by the distinguished former Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans.

The Australian mind, in our elite politics and culture, has been recolonised over the last forty years, as I wrote in this piece, Patrick White, Nobel Prize and Australia’s aborted cultural decolonisation, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Patrick White’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

Our political system, its institutions and culture, are in advanced decay, as I explained in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. Our political elites follow the political culture of the nihilistic, oligarchic Washington Gang, whether MAGA, Republican or Democrat. The people outside the system cry out for something better by voting forlornly for minor parties. This is the silent cry for my country that is muffled beneath the applause for rejecting Trump. In truth, we are trapped in the ethos of manipulative, partisan elites while the public yearn for more consensual ways of governing to fix our real and substantial problems.

In Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, I included an essay—which I wrote in 2010, fifteen years ago!—following the Rudd-Gillard crisis. Entitled “Untimely thoughts on the parliamentary crisis”, it concluded:

Kevin Rudd’s election [2007] disguised the decay of political elites on both sides. That decay became evident in this election [2010], and especially in the factional administration of the ALP. The Australian-American political sociologist, John Higley, has thought more deeply on the problems of political elites than any other thinker alive today. Higley accepts the fundamental importance of elites to politics, and thus the necessity for some kind of moral code to influence, at least, a powerful fraction of the elites in order for societies to be governed well. Higley argues the performance of a consensual elite is essential to the health of democracy. If so, what does the observed decay of political elites in Australia mean for the values and efficacy of democracy.? What does the degraded ethos of the sub-elite of the union movement and Labor Party careerists mean for the capacity to govern among this elite?

The degraded ethos of Western political elites is now, of course, a problem for the whole world. You can buy my writing on governing in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat here.

Look forward on Saturday to my Open Global List of 100 Books to Read Before it is Too Late, and next week we will resume the China World History Tour.

Thanks for reading

🙏❤️🌏

Jeff