When people ask who the hell could support a lowlife like Donald Trump for the presidency after his democracy-destroying antics you normally hear about JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy folks with their lousy lives and no-hope futures.
One name you rarely hear mentioned though is Australia’s 30th prime minister, Scott John Morrison, who has stepped out recently to assure Australians there is nothing to fear.
He is not alone, of course. There are others such as Joe Hockey, Gina Rinehart and, of course, the Murdochs. Yet there is something particularly egregious about Australia’s last prime minister’s apparent natural affinity with a former president who only four years ago fanned attempts to violently halt the transfer of power.
Trump hates democracy and accountability. It’s his calling card. Yet Morrison is right there beside him, grinning like a kid who just met Santa.
Onward Christian soldiers
We had also better put to one side for the moment that Morrison, the great Pentecostal Christian moralist, is more than happy to cosy up to an immoral predator like Trump, who has openly boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy”. We wonder, from far off Australia, how it is that evangelical Christians can support the patently irreligious Trump — but we see an example right here in the form of the daggy dad from Sutherland.
What we now see, very clearly, is the full blooming of Morrison the Christian nationalist, whose real home is the budding evangelical nation of America where his Pentecostal pals have right of way direct to the White House. It was Morrison’s friend and mentor, Hillsong’s Brian Houston, who was part of a group of America’s evangelical Christian leaders invited to meet the then president in the Oval Office in 2019. Now Trump has promised those Christians an even greater say in the running of the country.
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf then? Morrison has deployed his trademark glibness to let us know that any Australian angst about Trump’s return is the result of “hot air and hyperventilation”. This assessment puts the former Sharks fan directly at odds with the likes of the senior Republican Liz Cheney and former White House chief of staff and retired Marine general, John Kelly — among a legion of others — who have raised the alarm over Trump’s fascist intentions and the existential threat he poses to the republic.
Back home, even the ever-reliable conservative John Howard has declared Trump to be unsuitable for the high office of US president, deeming his actions as “not compatible with democracy”. And yet not Morrison, a Howard successor as PM.
A deafening silence
Oddly it has taken a threat to US democracy to illuminate just how far down the anti-democracy path Australia’s new breed of conservatives has travelled. You would think — and, frankly, hope — that Australia’s former political leaders would stand up to be counted as America moves closer and closer to electing a would-be dictator. Surely now is a time for a fellow member of the club of democracies to speak up, notwithstanding the break with tradition that this represents.
But no. Morrison is not speaking up. He is seeking to capitalise on his apparent special relationship with Trump. Imagine that you are at the point where your special credential is knowing how to gladhand a dictator? Yet that is where we are with Morrison, a man who never misses a moment to trail his coat as the Trump whisperer, warning us that Australia will have to be “on its game” if Trump returns to the White House.
Morrison points out that “the things that matter most to us” are the alliance and AUKUS — a happy coincidence which puts him squarely in the frame having introduced AUKUS while in government.
This self-serving opportunism, naturally, brings us to a former treasurer, Joe Hockey, who like Morrison, has been busy assuring Australians that Australia stands to benefit from a Trump presidency — his most recent spruiking on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday.
A whiff of grift
Hockey is another who sells himself as a Trump whisperer. He even gave credence to Trump’s bogus stolen election claims in 2020. Since moving on from government and after a stint as Australia’s ambassador to Washington, Hockey has hit pay dirt hawking business deals between the US and Australia. If Australia prospers from a Trump presidency then so does Joe — big time. Little wonder then that Hockey, like Morrison, is happy to publicly pump up Trump’s tyres rather than warn of the threat he poses.
So when people wonder who the hell would want the destructive power of a maniac like Trump, who is likely to abandon Ukraine to its fate as he plays strongman dictator, the answer is there. It is Australia’s former prime minister and former treasurer, with the enthusiastic backing of Australia’s richest woman and Australia’s most powerful media family. Win, lose or draw in these turning point US elections, they have clearly staked out where their support lies.
They are as anti-government a grouping as you could assemble — and none have the excuse of being of the grievance-riddled underclass seeking revenge for the failures of America.
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