Australia's recent election has sparked talks of the 'Trump effect' coming into play.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor Party's had a landslide win, securing a historic second term.
It's widely thought Trump's volatility influenced the outcome.
Global Political Expert Nick Bryant told Mike Hosking it's become more apparent the country wanted to elect an authentically Australian Prime Minister, with the landslide win's a rejection of Americanisation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
There was so much democracy unfolding in front of us
(00:02):
this past week, from Romania to Australia, to Singapore, Canada
and the United Kingdom. We need to tap into some
serious brain power and work through what it all might mean.
Nick Bryant these days, you will remember, resides in Australia,
and he resides in Australia at least in part because
America wasn't the same place as when it was when
he arrived from Britain. Wrote a very good book about that,
in fact, called When America Stopped Being Great. So let's
(00:22):
get into it. Nick Bryant's back with us.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Mate. How are you, Mike, I'm good. How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm extremely well. Did you see elbow coming the way
he did on Saturday night?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Well, it was certainly a big trump efat here in
Australia as it was in Canada. I mean, I think
he was the real beneficiary of Trump's first one hundred days.
I mean Peter Dutton, the opposition leader, obviously thought he
was going to be the beneficiary of what he saw
at Trump's inauguration as this global right wood vibe shift.
(00:54):
But as the one hundred days went on, it became
more apparent that Australia wanted to use its uniquely Australian
model of democracy to elect an emphatically Australian prime minister.
And I think one way of interpreting the labor landslide
Mike is a rejection of Americanization and a collective act
of Australianization. I think that's one of the key things.
(01:18):
And they've really gone for a very authentic Australian. Australian
prime ministers, a very Australian tend to do well. Bob Pork,
John Howard, Anthony ALBERESI.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Do you see him as more popular than many people
saw him prior to the whole Trump thing in the
election campaign, because up until that point my reading was
Dutton was a contender, may not win, but he was
a contender, and people found a lot of things wrong
with Elbow and what he was doing with Australia.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, I think Anthony Alberzi runs the risk of sort
of misinterpreting this result as a kind of massive personal
mandate for him and a sign of his popularity.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I really think it was a reject of the other side.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I mean, sure ALBERONIZI ran a strong campaign there, were
none of the errors that there were three years ago.
It was an effective message that looked at the future
when Peter Dutton was kind of litigating the past. But
I really think the Trump effect was key here because
so much of the sort of liberal rhetoric at the
(02:22):
beginning of campaign, which doesn't seem to think would work,
came back to haunt them. I mean, not least that
comment about working from home for federal employees, which had
an echo of what Elon Musk was saying and what
Donald Trump was saying, that became as facile as the
Liberal Party's nuclear policy. You know, when he went after
(02:46):
the Canbury bureocracy again there was a kind of echo
of what Elon Musk was doing with Doge and I
think this is kind of really hurt Peter Dunton, and
of course he became the sort of Pierre of Australian politics,
losing his seat, as as the Canadian Conservative Leona did
(03:06):
as well.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
The interesting thing about Canada is an elect in Karne
and so your argument about Australia true, turbo charge it
for Canada, but what have they elected. This is a
bloke who's never been in politics before, so they elected
a guy who Yay. We like him because he does
he's going to stand up to Trump. But Kenny, because
do we don't know anything about him?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, I was really amazed how that a Khne sort
of came on as a campaign during this campaign.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I mean, he's not the most charismatic a man.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I mean he's a very technocratic I mean British people
know obviously because he was the governor of the Bank
of England during Brexit and he was a real stabilizing presence,
and I think that's one of the key things. And
I think that's one of the key things in Australia
as well, Mike. I mean, I think that's why there
is a linkage between the two. Because the most powerful
force in politics in twenty twenty four was anti incumbency.
One of the major Trump effects is to kind of
(03:57):
neutralize that and actually to turn incumbent see into an advantage,
the idea that a ton of global chaos and market
chaos that you.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Back somebody you know.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Now, Mark Carney is particularly well placed to kind of
benefit from that because he is such a kind of
master of the economy. He wasn't only the governor of
the Back of England, he was also the Governor of
the Bank of Canada and that helps that financial expertise.
And I think Alberan Easy, who you thought was going
to be a victim of anti incumbency six months ago,
(04:27):
has ended up being a beneficiary of incumbency as far
as so.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
To counter your argument though Canada, yes, we get Australia,
we get Singapore to a individual story, but the same
thing applies. How do you then and Romania you can
dismiss because Eastern Europe's a strange block of countries, But
how do you explain Farage over the weekend?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
He's yeah, I think that's really fascinating. You asked me that,
and I've got an answer for you. You know, Nagia
Farrage did lead the Reform Party to storming victories last
week in the local action.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It ended up gaining control some local councils.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
It wrenchs the parliamentary seat from Liverpool from labor on
the fringes of Liverpool in Runkle with a massive, a
massive seventeen percent swing. You know, Farage has a charisma
that doesn't lacks and an understanding of political showmanship that
the Canadian Conservative leader didn't have. But my hunch is
(05:24):
that a kind of Australian populist with Arrage like skills
or an as Canadian populist with Farage like skills would
struggle because the political cultures are very different. In Brittany,
you had Boris Johnson. You know, the Brits have shown
that they're prepared to go for a prime minister who's
kind of populist, charismatic, unconventional, somebody with a lot of
(05:47):
journalistic entertainment value that I don't think is what Canadians want.
That is certainly not what Australians want. I think there's
a kind of rejection of a kind of it's just
not the Australian way to have that kind of demagoguery.
It kind of violates the tall Poppy syndrome to begin with,
(06:08):
and I think something similar probably operates in New Zealand
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So nicka earlier on this morning, we had the former
Prime Minister John Key on the program. He was the
one who initiated the terror or the deals here for
the film industry, got Peter Jackson to make Lord of
the rings here, we cut some tax and seen terms
all that sort of stuff. The reason I asked that
we'll talk about that is because Trump, of course one
hundred percent for movies on that he's right. So in
(06:31):
other words, that he wants to rebalance dealings with the world,
he's right because countries have taken business away from us,
taken business away from America. And yet all of the
rest of it, the madness, the nuttiness, how do you
explain it.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think it's almost as if he wants to take
America back to the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I mean, it seems that so many things that have.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Kind of guaranteed and made America's pre eminence in the
post war world, the international trading system which America created,
the international rules based order which America created, the scientific
trailblazers at the university, these amazing governmental medical institutions that
are packed with the greatest scientists in the world, that
(07:16):
sort of underscored its innovative and technical dominance. It's almost
like he wants to get rid of all of that
and returned to a country. And he said this in
his inauguration when he talks about America returning to being
an expansionist country as it was in the nineteenth century.
He missed it at the time because he ended that
(07:37):
centence by saying We're going to plant the stars and
stripes on Mars, and then Elon Musk went bonkers and
that was a headline. But it was worth rereading the
inaugural address because it shows how Donald Trump Kanner doesn't
really want America to be as it was in the
twentieth century, which is internationalist and interventionists. He wants it
to be like it was in the nineteenth century, the
Gilded Age, when there were tariffs, when there was an
(07:58):
income text, when there's a very small government, you didn't
have to finance it with income taxes, when America had
antagonistic relationships, it didn't have an alliance system, it didn't
have this kind of technical dominance at the beginning. That's
one way that I interpret these first one hundred days.
And his new hero, his new sort of historical crush,
is William McKinley, this guy that was called the Napoleon
(08:20):
of tariffs. And you know, he always has loved Andrew Jackson,
which again was a nineteenth century president who wrote roughshodo
over Congress and who wrote roughshod over the Supreme Court.
That's the kind of America that he sees is great.
I think, and that's what he's tried to take America
back to.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But the problem with the statistics, and you saw the
GDP the other day, they're going backwards and they've got midterms,
and when that goes wrong for him and he's a
lamed up president, at some point that must register that
things aren't the way they're supposed to be in his mind.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And what we're learning, I don't think the market's a
moderating influence on Trump because they go up and down,
and indeed a lot of the sort of reverses that
we saw in Liberation DWN it's aftermath have been recovered
by the end of April. But what does affect him,
and what is obviously a moderating influence, is the bomb market.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
You can't mess with the bomb market. And Scott Bessen
told him this, and sure, you know, he inherited a
really strong economy.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
You know, the Biden economy was coming good, and he's
turning it to a very bad economy. And that's really interesting, Mike,
because I think, you know, some of his supporters will
support him up to a point. What will always struck
me when I went into the brast belt, I went
into the farm belt. Talk to people who are being hit.
Trump supporters who are being hit by the tariffs. They
were prepared to support Trump even though it hit their
bottom line because they just wanted somebody to fight for them.
(09:34):
It was kind of they were making a cultural choice
that was against their kind of economic self interest. But
you know, their patience doesn't last forever, and I think
that's one of the problems they're facing Trump.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
In regards to the media, I'm reading this morning out
of Australia Guinea. Ryan Hart's blaming and this goes back
to Australia blaming what she calls the lift media and
very short. People are very short on understanding. What's your
take on how the American media is covering Trump, in
whether they've learned anything from Trump?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Somebody asked me, Yeah, somebody asked me to book festival
Mike where the journalists are afraid?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
The other day.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I don't know any journalists that's afraid. Certainly know my
colleagues in the BBC are afraid. Are any of my
friends that I knew in places out in New York
Times to the Washington Post. What I do worry about
is that the owners of some of these big media
organizations are afraid.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
They're frightened of Trump, They're frightened of what he can do.
You know, we saw the.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Chief of sixty minutes resign because he felt that paramount,
the owner of sixty minutes and CBS, which is trying
to do this big murder at the moment that could
be scuffered by Trump, was being interventionists and interfering, and
that was wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And that's what worries me.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
You know, watching that inauguration, it's great people watching, isn't it,
But it's always great power watching as well. And to
see those kind of heads of the big tech companies,
the princes of Silicon Valley, the jeff bezos Is and
the Zuckerbergs given better seats than incoming senior members of
the Trump administration, you know, it was deeply worrying. And
I think they've made a calculation based on two things.
(11:06):
A they're worried what the Trump administration could do to them,
and B they've looked at the election result, where Trump
became the first Republican in twenty years to win the
popular vote, and they think, well, he's more representative American
than we thought it was, so we better reflect that
in our policies. But I wonder now whether you know
the tanking of his approval ratings, the instability in the economy.
You know, a corporate America that basically capitulated at the
(11:27):
start of the Trump administration might start showing a bit
more backbone.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Always a pleasure to have you on the program mate,
We'll catch up again soon. Appreciate it very much. As
Red Nick Bryan out of Australia in the early hours
or early issu hours of a Tuesday morning. For more
from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks
it'd be from six a m. Weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
There was so much democracy unfolding in front of us
(00:02):
this past week, from Romania to Australia, to Singapore, Canada
and the United Kingdom. We need to tap into some
serious brain power and work through what it all might mean.
Nick Bryant these days, you will remember, resides in Australia,
and he resides in Australia at least in part because
America wasn't the same place as when it was when
he arrived from Britain. Wrote a very good book about that,
in fact, called When America Stopped Being Great. So let's
(00:22):
get into it. Nick Bryant's back with us.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Mate. How are you, Mike, I'm good. How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm extremely well. Did you see elbow coming the way
he did on Saturday night?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Well, it was certainly a big trump efat here in
Australia as it was in Canada. I mean, I think
he was the real beneficiary of Trump's first one hundred days.
I mean Peter Dutton, the opposition leader, obviously thought he
was going to be the beneficiary of what he saw
at Trump's inauguration as this global right wood vibe shift.
(00:54):
But as the one hundred days went on, it became
more apparent that Australia wanted to use its uniquely Australian
model of democracy to elect an emphatically Australian prime minister.
And I think one way of interpreting the labor landslide
Mike is a rejection of Americanization and a collective act
of Australianization. I think that's one of the key things.
(01:18):
And they've really gone for a very authentic Australian. Australian
prime ministers, a very Australian tend to do well. Bob Pork,
John Howard, Anthony ALBERESI.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Do you see him as more popular than many people
saw him prior to the whole Trump thing in the
election campaign, because up until that point my reading was
Dutton was a contender, may not win, but he was
a contender, and people found a lot of things wrong
with Elbow and what he was doing with Australia.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, I think Anthony Alberzi runs the risk of sort
of misinterpreting this result as a kind of massive personal
mandate for him and a sign of his popularity.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I really think it was a reject of the other side.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I mean, sure ALBERONIZI ran a strong campaign there, were
none of the errors that there were three years ago.
It was an effective message that looked at the future
when Peter Dutton was kind of litigating the past. But
I really think the Trump effect was key here because
so much of the sort of liberal rhetoric at the
(02:22):
beginning of campaign, which doesn't seem to think would work,
came back to haunt them. I mean, not least that
comment about working from home for federal employees, which had
an echo of what Elon Musk was saying and what
Donald Trump was saying, that became as facile as the
Liberal Party's nuclear policy. You know, when he went after
(02:46):
the Canbury bureocracy again there was a kind of echo
of what Elon Musk was doing with Doge and I
think this is kind of really hurt Peter Dunton, and
of course he became the sort of Pierre of Australian politics,
losing his seat, as as the Canadian Conservative Leona did
(03:06):
as well.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
The interesting thing about Canada is an elect in Karne
and so your argument about Australia true, turbo charge it
for Canada, but what have they elected. This is a
bloke who's never been in politics before, so they elected
a guy who Yay. We like him because he does
he's going to stand up to Trump. But Kenny, because
do we don't know anything about him?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, I was really amazed how that a Khne sort
of came on as a campaign during this campaign.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I mean, he's not the most charismatic a man.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I mean he's a very technocratic I mean British people
know obviously because he was the governor of the Bank
of England during Brexit and he was a real stabilizing presence,
and I think that's one of the key things. And
I think that's one of the key things in Australia
as well, Mike. I mean, I think that's why there
is a linkage between the two. Because the most powerful
force in politics in twenty twenty four was anti incumbency.
One of the major Trump effects is to kind of
(03:57):
neutralize that and actually to turn incumbent see into an advantage,
the idea that a ton of global chaos and market
chaos that you.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Back somebody you know.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Now, Mark Carney is particularly well placed to kind of
benefit from that because he is such a kind of
master of the economy. He wasn't only the governor of
the Back of England, he was also the Governor of
the Bank of Canada and that helps that financial expertise.
And I think Alberan Easy, who you thought was going
to be a victim of anti incumbency six months ago,
(04:27):
has ended up being a beneficiary of incumbency as far
as so.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
To counter your argument though Canada, yes, we get Australia,
we get Singapore to a individual story, but the same
thing applies. How do you then and Romania you can
dismiss because Eastern Europe's a strange block of countries, But
how do you explain Farage over the weekend?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
He's yeah, I think that's really fascinating. You asked me that,
and I've got an answer for you. You know, Nagia
Farrage did lead the Reform Party to storming victories last
week in the local action.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It ended up gaining control some local councils.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
It wrenchs the parliamentary seat from Liverpool from labor on
the fringes of Liverpool in Runkle with a massive, a
massive seventeen percent swing. You know, Farage has a charisma
that doesn't lacks and an understanding of political showmanship that
the Canadian Conservative leader didn't have. But my hunch is
(05:24):
that a kind of Australian populist with Arrage like skills
or an as Canadian populist with Farage like skills would
struggle because the political cultures are very different. In Brittany,
you had Boris Johnson. You know, the Brits have shown
that they're prepared to go for a prime minister who's
kind of populist, charismatic, unconventional, somebody with a lot of
(05:47):
journalistic entertainment value that I don't think is what Canadians want.
That is certainly not what Australians want. I think there's
a kind of rejection of a kind of it's just
not the Australian way to have that kind of demagoguery.
It kind of violates the tall Poppy syndrome to begin with,
(06:08):
and I think something similar probably operates in New Zealand
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So nicka earlier on this morning, we had the former
Prime Minister John Key on the program. He was the
one who initiated the terror or the deals here for
the film industry, got Peter Jackson to make Lord of
the rings here, we cut some tax and seen terms
all that sort of stuff. The reason I asked that
we'll talk about that is because Trump, of course one
hundred percent for movies on that he's right. So in
(06:31):
other words, that he wants to rebalance dealings with the world,
he's right because countries have taken business away from us,
taken business away from America. And yet all of the
rest of it, the madness, the nuttiness, how do you
explain it.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think it's almost as if he wants to take
America back to the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I mean, it seems that so many things that have.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Kind of guaranteed and made America's pre eminence in the
post war world, the international trading system which America created,
the international rules based order which America created, the scientific
trailblazers at the university, these amazing governmental medical institutions that
are packed with the greatest scientists in the world, that
(07:16):
sort of underscored its innovative and technical dominance. It's almost
like he wants to get rid of all of that
and returned to a country. And he said this in
his inauguration when he talks about America returning to being
an expansionist country as it was in the nineteenth century.
He missed it at the time because he ended that
(07:37):
centence by saying We're going to plant the stars and
stripes on Mars, and then Elon Musk went bonkers and
that was a headline. But it was worth rereading the
inaugural address because it shows how Donald Trump Kanner doesn't
really want America to be as it was in the
twentieth century, which is internationalist and interventionists. He wants it
to be like it was in the nineteenth century, the
Gilded Age, when there were tariffs, when there was an
(07:58):
income text, when there's a very small government, you didn't
have to finance it with income taxes, when America had
antagonistic relationships, it didn't have an alliance system, it didn't
have this kind of technical dominance at the beginning. That's
one way that I interpret these first one hundred days.
And his new hero, his new sort of historical crush,
is William McKinley, this guy that was called the Napoleon
(08:20):
of tariffs. And you know, he always has loved Andrew Jackson,
which again was a nineteenth century president who wrote roughshodo
over Congress and who wrote roughshod over the Supreme Court.
That's the kind of America that he sees is great.
I think, and that's what he's tried to take America
back to.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But the problem with the statistics, and you saw the
GDP the other day, they're going backwards and they've got midterms,
and when that goes wrong for him and he's a
lamed up president, at some point that must register that
things aren't the way they're supposed to be in his mind.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And what we're learning, I don't think the market's a
moderating influence on Trump because they go up and down,
and indeed a lot of the sort of reverses that
we saw in Liberation DWN it's aftermath have been recovered
by the end of April. But what does affect him,
and what is obviously a moderating influence, is the bomb market.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
You can't mess with the bomb market. And Scott Bessen
told him this, and sure, you know, he inherited a
really strong economy.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
You know, the Biden economy was coming good, and he's
turning it to a very bad economy. And that's really interesting, Mike,
because I think, you know, some of his supporters will
support him up to a point. What will always struck
me when I went into the brast belt, I went
into the farm belt. Talk to people who are being hit.
Trump supporters who are being hit by the tariffs. They
were prepared to support Trump even though it hit their
bottom line because they just wanted somebody to fight for them.
(09:34):
It was kind of they were making a cultural choice
that was against their kind of economic self interest. But
you know, their patience doesn't last forever, and I think
that's one of the problems they're facing Trump.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
In regards to the media, I'm reading this morning out
of Australia Guinea. Ryan Hart's blaming and this goes back
to Australia blaming what she calls the lift media and
very short. People are very short on understanding. What's your
take on how the American media is covering Trump, in
whether they've learned anything from Trump?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Somebody asked me, Yeah, somebody asked me to book festival
Mike where the journalists are afraid?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
The other day.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I don't know any journalists that's afraid. Certainly know my
colleagues in the BBC are afraid. Are any of my
friends that I knew in places out in New York
Times to the Washington Post. What I do worry about
is that the owners of some of these big media
organizations are afraid.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
They're frightened of Trump, They're frightened of what he can do.
You know, we saw the.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Chief of sixty minutes resign because he felt that paramount,
the owner of sixty minutes and CBS, which is trying
to do this big murder at the moment that could
be scuffered by Trump, was being interventionists and interfering, and
that was wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And that's what worries me.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
You know, watching that inauguration, it's great people watching, isn't it,
But it's always great power watching as well. And to
see those kind of heads of the big tech companies,
the princes of Silicon Valley, the jeff bezos Is and
the Zuckerbergs given better seats than incoming senior members of
the Trump administration, you know, it was deeply worrying. And
I think they've made a calculation based on two things.
(11:06):
A they're worried what the Trump administration could do to them,
and B they've looked at the election result, where Trump
became the first Republican in twenty years to win the
popular vote, and they think, well, he's more representative American
than we thought it was, so we better reflect that
in our policies. But I wonder now whether you know
the tanking of his approval ratings, the instability in the economy.
You know, a corporate America that basically capitulated at the
(11:27):
start of the Trump administration might start showing a bit
more backbone.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Always a pleasure to have you on the program mate,
We'll catch up again soon. Appreciate it very much. As
Red Nick Bryan out of Australia in the early hours
or early issu hours of a Tuesday morning. For more
from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks
it'd be from six a m. Weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
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