MAGA Has Arrived in Australia

As an Aussie who has been following American politics for decades and writing about American politics for a few years now, watching Trump get elected in 2016, I have always felt a sense of safety being so far away from the US, not just geographically but also politically. In the US the political electoral system is different. The US doesn’t have rank-choice voting or compulsory voting; these two things alone can make someone like Trump very unlikely to be the prime minister here in Australia. This gives many of us on the left or even centrists a sense of security. In the US, Trump infiltrated the Republican Party and made it the MAGA Party; on the left, the Democratic Socialists are starting to get elected into the Democratic Party, although only a handful at this stage. In Australia the DSA would not be in the center-left party here called Labor; they would form their own party or possibly join the Greens. That’s because rank-choice voting makes it easier for smaller parties to have some power in government. Even though they only have a very small chance of winning the federal/national election, they can pick up Senate seats, and when most elections in Australia are close, that means the winners generally need to negotiate with smaller parties to get legislation through, giving the minor parties leverage to do a deal with the major party. “We will help you pass your legislation, but in return we want this and this, etc.”

In the US, minor parties don’t have this sort of power. So they are forced to infiltrate the two major parties. The Democratic Party is generally a center-left moderate party; the DSA is much further to the left. In reality, they should be in two separate parties. One is capitalist; the other is socialist. Now imagine rank-choice voting in the US. You have the usual Democrats, and then you have the DSA running as a separate party. If you are a voter and you are sympathetic to the Democrats but your views are more aligned with the DSA, you could vote for the DSA but give your second preference to the Democrats; this way your vote is not wasted.

Compulsory voting also helps stop someone like Trump from taking power in the US. Almost half of the country’s eligible voters didn’t vote in the last election. Many Americans tap out of voting from an early age. In Australia compulsory voting is seen as a civic duty, like doing jury duty. It’s only a very small fine if you don’t vote, and if you say you were sick, you won’t even have to pay. But because we have a culture of every able body should vote, we are conditioned to vote from an early age, which incentivizes us to engage with politics. I have many friends here in Australia who don’t pay close attention to politics until a month before an election and then go and do some research on policies, etc. This keeps even the least engaged at least more engaged than the US nonvoter. Data shows the less engaged you are with politics, the more likely you are to vote for someone like Trump. Low-information voters were one of Trump’s biggest demographics. High-information voters were one of Kamala Harris’s largest demographics.

Because of all of the above, I felt protected that a party like MAGA could ever come close to winning. When Trump tried to overthrow the 2020 election, I said to myself, “Thank god I live in Australia.” When Trump spoke about invading Greenland and wanting to break away from US allies, I said, “Thank god I live in Australia,” etc., etc., but alas, Crikey! It’s happening here. Even with all of our protections, MAGA arrived in Australia; it’s here right now, the same way it was in 2016, with the same feeling of dread and the same feeling of, how can so many people like this person? What is happening here? Reading people on Facebook that I know say, “One Nation is the only political party looking out for the average Aussie,” even the same slogans, “Make Australia Great Again,” fighting with the media “fake news”—it’s here now; it’s no longer just an American thing. What happened to “only in America”? I feel embarrassed too that for so many years I felt superior, that Aussies are too well-educated or sensible to vote for a right-wing populist who pretends to be on the side of the working class but is actually on the side of racism, anti-immigration, and policies that help the most privileged amongst us. She wants to make it easier for workers to be fired; she is against rises in the minimum wage; she wants to turn Australia into a US system with few safety nets.

Who is this person? As you might have guessed, it’s not a man; it’s a woman called Pauline Hanson, and she is the leader of the far-right wing group called One Nation. She isn’t new to politics; she has been around since the 1990s. She has been a senator for ten years, but One Nation has always polled around 7% to 10%; she was never a threat. Every country has its extremists; when the best is around 10%, no one takes them seriously. Pauline Hanson gained notoriety in the 1990s after she was elected to the House of Representatives, and she said Australia is being swamped by Asians. She has called for banning Muslims from immigrating to Australia. She dressed up in the Senate in a burqa as a stunt to say Australia should ban the burqa. The rhetoric from Pauline Hanson is not far from Trump’s administration. A long time ago, Australia had the White Australia policy, which mostly only allowed immigrants to come from white European nations. A few days ago Hanson said to English anti-immigration provocateur Tommy Robinson that the end of the White Australia policy was the reason for current migration issues. Pauline is also infamous for not being very well educated, which probably makes her more popular with some voters. When being interviewed in the 1990s about some of her racist comments, the reporter said, “Some of your statements sound xenophobic.” She famously replied with, “Please explain.” She didn’t know what xenophobia meant. “Please explain” turned into a running joke with comedians turning into satirical songs. The interview is on YouTube.

The rise of Pauline Hanson has been rapid, and I mean fast. This time last year Pauline was polling at around 7%. What happened? A few things. First, Pauline Hanson went to visit Trump and his family and his social media team in Mar-a-Lago with Hanson’s good friend Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and a friend of the Trumps. She is a mining magnate. She even gave Pauline a private plane. While visiting Trump, Hanson met with Trump’s social media team and offered to help her in Australia with her social media posts. Not long after she came back to Australia, her polling started to increase. Then we had a terrorist attack in Bondi by a father and son, ISIS-inspired terrorists targeting the Jewish community. Hanson’s polling then went up even further as she was seen as the anti-Muslim politician. But even with the help of Trump’s social media team and the terrorist attack, without the underlying economic conditions, her polling would never have risen this high. How high? One Nation has eaten a large share of the center-right party, the Liberal National Party, the LNP. The One Nation party went from polling 10% to 30% within a few months. In one poll they had the highest primary poll numbers, even higher than the Labor Party, which is in power now and is a center-left party.

The thing I thought could never happen here is happening; the people who I knew voted center-right are now thinking about voting for her.

But the thing is, even with her high polling numbers, it’s still hard for her to win. Because in our system with rank-choice voting, she doesn’t just have to get the most votes; she has to get the preference votes from the other parties like the Greens, independents, and the LNP, and based on the most recent polls, she would lose to the current government. But here is the scary thing: the election is almost two years away. One nation, one year ago, had zero chance. What if there is another terrorist attack or something else that she can pin on the Labor Party and our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese? So many times people in the US said in 2016 that Trump had no chance of winning; the polling showed Hillary Clinton winning by a comfortable margin. The chances of winning today are unlikely, but one year ago I would have laughed at the thought. zero chance. Two years from now I just don’t know.

As someone who pays attention to American politics closely, I notice that many Americans think it’s just Trump; once he goes, everything will be better. Unfortunately it’s not Trump; he is just the symptom. Yes, he is uniquely awful, especially when it comes to his character, and the fact he is charismatic has made it easier for him to get away with a lot. “He’s just trolling the left. “But it’s not that simple. Trump’s base is white working-class people; One Nation’s base is white working-class people. In the UK, it’s the same for Nigel Farage and similar in Europe, which also has a rise in far-right politics. It’s also not just racism, although it is a factor. It’s the economy, especially Gen X, white males, the working class, and people who felt left behind by the two major establishment parties. They tried both, and their lives didn’t change. They couldn’t buy a home and are now renting in a market where rents have soared. If they did buy a home, they took out a mortgage when home prices were already high, meaning the loan amount is much higher than previous generations’. Younger people can’t afford to rent or buy their first home. On the more far right, these people blame immigrants; on the more progressive left, they blame corporations and establishment governments. You have different generations having very different experiences. Boomers who bought a home many years ago have seen an incredible rise in their home prices; they don’t want the home prices to come down. Younger generations want the home prices to come down so they can afford what their parents or grandparents have. Home ownership. The majority of voters who voted for Zohran Mamdani were not blue-collar working-class people; they were college-educated young people who were promised if they went to university, they would have the American dream, but it wasn’t the case. Many of the higher-paying jobs have gone to automation, so they settled for a lower-paying job, and with rents up, most of their money is going towards that. A disgruntled college-educated white working class is becoming the base for the Dems. For MAGA it’s the opposite; the base is blue-collar, who are older but have similar costs of living issues. Many do not have a college degree.

Take the above, and it’s almost identical in many Western countries, including mine. You can’t get away from these far-right-wing parties, like MAGA, without dealing with the underlying issues, and if major parties don’t work out a way, you will see many voters moving away from the establishment parties and to more extremism. That’s why so many voters are not interested in talking about the character of a politician, like Trump, Graham, Platner, etc. They are too consumed by economic issues; worrying about someone’s character who is also promising you the world seems like something someone who doesn’t have economic issues can afford to opine about. I think character matters, a lot, but it’s not that people care less about character; it’s that character doesn’t help buy you a home or lower your rent.

We are all in this together now: the US, Australia, the UK, and Europe. The way out is to come up with material solutions; that makes sure younger generations are not left behind. Gen Z and Millennials are now the biggest voting groups; it’s time politicians start pandering to them. Otherwise, the far right will be the ones pandering to them, and that’s when things become even scarier.