In the current torrent of international news, it can seem as though Australians are living on a different planet.
We read stories about how Europeans are being advised to pack a 72-hour survival pack because of the increasing threat of war, or that the US is contemplating the clearly illegal idea of routinely deporting its own citizens to be incarcerated in El Salvador. Trillions have been wiped off stock markets by tariffs that make no sense. It’s an overwhelming stream of historic end-of-the-global-order-as-we-knew-it kind of news.
And then there’s the Australian election campaign, calmly engaging in a lacklustre battle between a modest ongoing tax cut or a one-off tax rebate and a few dollars off the price of filling the car with fuel, and hours of debate about the merits of competing policies that will barely scratch the surface of the country’s housing crisis and may push prices up even further.
The small matter of the upending of the post second world war global order has mostly surfaced in this contest as a vibe-prop, a tool for each leader to define himself for the better and his opponent for the worse, rather than as the most pressing issue to be addressed.
Of course, cost of living is a daily source of pain for voters, and the parties have to have policies to address it. But they are duking it out over whose inducements might make us slightly better off next year, against a backdrop of global economic and strategic convulsions that could have catastrophic effects on our collective wellbeing for decades.
Back on the vibe-prop hustings, the deeply unpopular reality of Trump has required Peter Dutton to execute a screeching course correction from his early enthusiasm for the new president as a “big thinker” who displays “gravitas” and someone with whom Dutton alone could definitely do a trade deal.
That became rather uncomfortable positioning after Trump’s domestic unpopularity became obvious, and the president boasted that world leaders were lining up to “kiss his ass”. By Wednesday night’s debate, Dutton was emphasising that he didn’t know the president at all, but also would somehow still be better able to pull off that trade deal.
Just a few months ago Dutton was promising not to stand in front of Indigenous flags if he became prime minister and, without a hint of irony, unveiling the star of the voice campaign, senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, as his second shadow minister for government efficiency. Now his Trump-ish attacks on all things allegedly “woke” and his promises of Doge-like budget cuts are way less prominent, and when Price gushed that she wanted to “Make Australia Great Again” the opposition leader, standing by her side, appeared a bit uncomfortable.
But on the details of actual policies to deal with the global turbulence, the leaders have sounded strangely similar, reciting lines about standing up for Australian interests but also dealing productively with the Trump administration, while insisting the other guy would be hopeless.
They both say they will stick with the Aukus agreement, tying our security to a nation whose leader is threatening to “take” Greenland, the Panama Canal, Gaza and maybe even Canada, the latter a country that also once imagined the US might be a reliable ally. Defence experts, former foreign ministers and Labor branches en masse are urging a rethink. Military experts are warning we need to at least start hedging our bets. But the talking points don’t change.
The prime minister gave a tiny insight into his thinking in Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast interview on Thursday, musing about how the US retreating from the global role it has played for decades, including on foreign aid and climate policy, might mean Australia will need to reassess some things. But that was as far as it went.
Dutton has not yet agreed to an interview with us, but we know he has flagged a significant pre-Anzac Day announcement on defence spending, which will presumably involve some discussion of the rapidly deteriorating security environment.
But so far this election campaign debate has been weirdly silent on the very biggest questions we face.
