Why Should We Care About Australia’s Remarkable Election Results?
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And welcome one and all to Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific, our live edition, our Australia post-election special. We are brought to you by IEJ Media and our sponsor, Bauer Group Asia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific. I'm Ray Powell. I am the co-host. I am also relevant to this discussion. I was once the defense attache to Australia.

My former boss, Jim Caruso, he was the acting ambassador to Australia while I was there. He is now, of course, a senior advisor to Bauer Group Asia, and he is the chairman of the advisory council to the Australia chair for the Center for Strategic International Studies. Jim, how are you? Well, you know, another election, another day, but it's always fun to watch what's going on in Australia, Ray. Well, I think we have two excellent guests who can help clarify it for us, and of course,

I am going to be, as the military guy, I will be asking the basic questions. I'm going to lean on you to ask all the really smart ones. I don't know if they'll be smart, but they'll be detailed and annoying, which is what we diplomats do. So speaking of annoying, let me introduce our guests. That's a segue. First guest, Michael Rowland,

Senior journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, long time based in Washington, I think during the election period there as well. Host of News Breakfast, which I watched religiously for three years. And I'm looking forward to some of your puns, Michael. Welcome.

Good day, Jim. And with us also is Mick McNeil. Mick, I worked with at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra for a few years. He is a political tragic who knows everyone in Canberra, Canberra-based. So he was a political advisor for us at the U.S. Embassy, and now he's Managing Director of Bound Group Asia in Australia. Mick, good day. How's it going, Mike? It's all good. So...

Overnight, we had the elections. Everyone seemed surprised. Maybe you can explain to us. I'll start with you, Michael. What happened last night and why should matter to us in the U.S. or anywhere else?

And g'day, Ray and Mick as well. It was a night for the ages for election watchers, not just in Australia, but around the world. An historic win, a landslide win for the Labor government, solidly re-elected. There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives here in Australia, the magic number to get a majority vote.

It was 76, later went into the election with 78 seats. As the count stands this morning, and the count will continue for some days potentially, Labor has gained anywhere between seven and possibly up to 15 seats. So a thumping...

thumping win by the Labor Party. It's the first time in several decades that, in fact, possibly in history in Australia, that a first-time Prime Minister has actually gained the

majority for his or her government at their first election up for re-election. So a stunning win. Labor did well across Australia in all the states and territories. On the flip side, it was nothing short of a catastrophic loss for the Liberal Party. The party lost seats around the country. It could lose up to 20 seats. And of course, one of the

Headlines of the Knives, opposition leader, Liberal leader Peter Dutton lost his seat of Dixon in Brisbane, in suburban Brisbane. One of the cavalcade of shock results last night and there is going to be an incredible amount of soul-searching.

within the Liberal Party as to what went wrong. I think I'd summarise the results as the centre holding in Australia. This reinforces my view that Australia is a centrist country. We reject...

Fringes, we reject extreme positions on both sides of the spectrum. And on that front, I should also say it was a very bad night for the Greens, very much a left-leaning party here in Australia, voters repudiating some of the more extremist views of some of that party's members as well. So we can talk about the impact of Donald Trump and what's been going on in the United States as the conversation goes on because there was an impact.

but an election of absolutely historic proportions for Australia. So, Mick, maybe you can help set the stage for some of our international audience, those who aren't familiar with Australian politics. So you have Labour, which in Australia is to the left, and Liberal, which may be disorienting to Americans. Liberal is actually on the right. And then the Liberals are often referred to as part of, quote, the coalition.

and then at the other minor parties. So can you maybe just help set the stage for who are the players on the field? Who are the major parties? Who are the minor parties? Yeah, so the Labor Party in Australia was formed by the trade union movement in about 1891. So they're the centre-left party. And we've had various coalition parties, sorry, various conservative parties over the last 100 years or so, 120 years since Federation,

The Liberal Party in Australia came into being in 1944. They're the major conservative party in Australia, and they're generally in a coalition with the Nationals. So they started out as the country party in the 1920s.

So going forward, on the... I guess further to the left, we have the Greens. In Australia, they've been around since the 70s. It really hit the ground running in the 1990s. And they polled this election around 12%, which is similar to what they polled the last election. As Michael said, they've gone backwards somewhat in the seat count. The...

I just want to go to what Michael said at the start. It was a stunning result last night. This is sort of a record-breaking result for the Labor Party, probably their best result since World War II. I mean, we're looking at a two-party preferred vote here of 55 Labor, 45 Coalition. Now, even though the

the primary votes are low by historical standards. The preference flows are going very heavily towards Labor. Yeah, this is stunning. And I think the Liberal Party is going to go into an existential crisis here. They're

They're going to have to work out whether they continue to push back against the left and continue to engage in these, you know, culture wars and anti-woke sort of agendas or...

or whether push that to the side and focus more on economics. But what do they do on the economic front? Because free trade and deregulation and open markets, that's sort of on the back foot in this era, especially with what's happening geostrategically in supply chain. So the centre-right in Australia have got a lot of thinking to do.

Well, before we get into a discussion with preferences and rank choice and how that works, let's go back to why we're all so surprised. And I think part of it is because three months ago, the expectation was the coalition was going to win. They were ahead in the polls at that moment, right? So what happened in three months to change things so dramatically, Michael?

There are a few factors and Labor figures were being very candid. There's nothing like election nights in Australia. It's similar in the United States. We finally get honest answers from politicians across the spectrum and we had quite a few senior Labor Party figures on the various election night TV broadcasts saying just that, Jim, that at the end of last year, Labor was deeply, deeply worried about its election prospects or

All signs were pointing to a strong win by the Peter Darkin League.

What happened was we get into this election year, we get into the election campaign, and as it became pretty clear as the election campaign, we have a five-week election campaign here in Australia, not the decades that you have for electoral cycles in America. We have a short, sharp five-week campaign. I have been longer, but it's usually five weeks. What became clear in the campaign was that

The opposition, the Liberal National Party, as Mick said, the conservative grouping in Australia, was unprepared. It was rolling out policies seemingly on the run.

A couple of really embarrassing instances that had to actually do a bat flip on policies during the campaign, which is absolutely political poison for any political party. One big embarrassment for the coalition was they promised to, if elected, end work from home arrangements for Australian public servants.

And this sank like a stone. It was unpopular with obviously not just public servants, but other Australians who thought, hang on, if they're going to end work from home arrangements for the public service, what's to stop them doing it for those in the private sector?

It polled very badly with female voters. The Liberal Party was very keen to win back women after losing them comprehensively at the last election. So Peter Dutton had to actually ditch that promise mid-campaign. That's just one example of what most people agree was a very badly run campaign. Peter Dutton, it's fair to say, wasn't match ready for this election campaign. He was

He had a tendency to limit his media appearances as opposition leader to a select number of, on a regular basis, select number of conservative media outlets. He didn't really stump up on a regular basis to widespread questioning from the Canberra political

political core. And I think that showed up in his media strategy during the election campaign as well. And on the other side, we had a laser-like focus from the Labor Party. It got its act together. It rolled out voter-friendly policies. Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, ran a disciplined campaign. He had a shocker last time, and one regardless, but this time around, he stayed on message.

And a combination of those two factors, a well-run labor machine and a poorly run liberal machine, got the result we saw last night. And I guess just to follow up with that on Michael, you know, Peter Dutton is not new to the political scene. I mean, I remember he was trying to become prime minister when I was there back when Malcolm Turnbull was turned out. What I mean, is it how is it that he was not prepared for primetime?

That's a very good question, man. And that is the question. Yes, go ahead. I think an element of complacency set into the coalition campaign, I think, and it probably goes back to the rejection of the Indigenous voice in the referendum in October 2023. And, you know, most Labor electorates voted no in that election. And I thought...

I think Dutton thought and a few others thought they could just cruise, cruise by, you know, on the culture wars. And Dutton kept,

I think he also thought, well, you know, if I just keep saying, are you better off than you were three years ago that, you know, you could get over the line. And as Michael said, he wasn't match fit. And as Michael also said, the work from home was a debacle. It was just emblematic of the campaign. They rolled it out before the election. They should have known it was a dud. And then he had to backtrack during the campaign and he apologised, which...

which, you know, looked bad and amateurish. I guess that's all he could do. But that work from home, I think that was critical in him losing the votes from families, sorry, in the outer suburbs, because Labor was just able to say, well, this is the thin end of the wedge. If you're going to do this to public servants, you know, what are you going to do next? Are you going to apply this to the broader economy? And they were able to tie that and the public service cuts with,

with what Trump and the Doge folks were doing in the US. So at the end of the campaign, you had the Labor Party saying, or referring to Dutton as Dogey, Dogey Dutton. And similarly, the more toxic Trump became, the more Labor tried to tie Dutton to Trump. And at the end, you had Health Minister Butler warning about the Americanization of

of healthcare, notwithstanding that Dutton had matched the government's promises on health. So yeah, it was, I mean, probably, I have to say the Trump-Zelensky White House meeting February 28, that was a massive juncture in the campaign. But why was Dutton and Liberals tied to that? Why are they so tied to Trump in the Australian electorate's mind?

Well, I think it goes back to soon after Trump being elected because, you know, the Conservatives, the Coalition, they kept criticising our Benizi and Ambassador Rudd for, you know, for stuff they'd said, you know, before Labor was elected. You know, they kept rolling out, you know, footage of Trump, banging out Trump, banging out Trump. And, you know, they even roll out footage of,

of Albanese when he was, you know, in opposition, you know, saying critical things about Trump. So in the public's mind, in some of the public's mind, it was like the coalition were encouraging Labor to ingratiate themselves with Trump. And when, you know, when the steel tariffs were announced, you know, the coalition ripped into Albanese saying, you know, basically, oh, well, you know, we would have done better. Same with the 10% tariffs.

So in the public mind, the public mind, the coalition were trying to say, well, we're Trump's besties. We can do this better. But post Zelensky, I think even conservatives in Australia, they thought it was a jump of sharks at a moment. A lot of Australians before thought, oh, you know, it's Trump. You know, we can, you know, he'll,

It would be somewhat reliable, but after the Zelensky debacle in the White House, Australians started thinking, well, if they can do that to Zelensky, what can you do to us? So that's really interesting that you bring up the Zelensky meeting and the word tariffs. Well, you did mention it with the steel tariffs, but the Zelensky meeting, at least to listen to what you're saying, seems like it had even a greater impact on the Australian electorate than perhaps even the tariffs.

Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the polls, that was sort of, I mean, there's a strong correlation. Yeah, it was, it really created this sense of uncertainty amongst the Australian public. This is our key ally and people, the public was thinking, oh God, what, you know, could he do this to us? And as you know, there's, you know, around the world is the Trump bump, you know, Trump's erraticism has called people to sort of,

back the incumbent and Yeah Not that that's what happened here. Well, I know this is supposed to be the cost of living election, right? Everyone's complaining about they can't keep up They can't buy a house everything so expensive and the coalition theoretically should have been the ones who say We can take advantage of that and then they run up to the campaign because we're the economic team, right? historically

And just one other thing. And with China being more active around Australian waters, sailing around the coast with live fire exercises off of Sydney, coalitions should have been able to say we're also the defense party and Labor's mucked up defense. And yet it's as if they ignored these things. Michael, can you explain this?

Yeah, that's a very good point. Historically in Australia, the coalition has been the go-to party for an economic management election after election cycle. It has polled better on the basic question, who would you trust more to manage the Australian economy? It's been the coalition, not Labor. Cost of living was by far, and each and every poll said this, the most important issue in this election by a country mile.

There was also health care, housing. We have a housing crisis in Australia as well. But cost of living, and it's tied into both of those factors as well, cost of living was by far the biggest issue. The coalition did have a range of measures to try to ameliorate cost of living issues. It offered a temporary cost in petrol, gasoline taxes.

which had hoped to be pretty popular in the outer suburban seats that contain a lot of working families. It also offered a temporary tax rebate as well, as well as various other issues as well, help for first home buyers to get access to the housing market. So it actually identified the problem and had policies to identify the problem and

But it was out-campaigned on that front by the Labor Party, who also had a suite of what turned out to be more popular cost-of-living measures aimed at improving the lives of Australians as well. And also what didn't help the coalition was some of the messaging from the coalition was lost in its focus regularly during the campaign on those culture war issues that Mick was talking

talking about. It's promised to get public servants back from home into the office with the implicit assumption that public servants are lazy, they need to work harder. There was a promise to, if elected, pretty much get rid of tens of thousands of public servant jobs.

That, in the end, proved very unpopular as well. We had Peter Dutton in a very Trump-like fashion going after what he described as the hate media.

in Australia, very much along the lines of fake media, media being the enemy of the people, channeling Donald Trump. And that sort of stuff got through as well and really distracted the coalition from what should have been its key message on the cost of living. Just on defence, which we can talk about in greater depth as well as this conversation goes on, you raise a very important point. Defence as well has been a strong point for the coalition historically. And in one of the

several own goals of the campaign. The coalition did not release its defence policy until the dying days of the campaign. On paper, a very good defence policy for all of those in the defence and strategic community who say Australia needs to spend much more on defence. The coalition promised to increase defence

the share of defence spending in GDP to 2.5%. It's roughly around 2% at the moment at a cost of $21 billion with an aspiration to increase it to 3% over 10 years. But...

did not provide any further details on where that money would go. It was, I think, four or five pages at most on the day. And that promise was lost in the mix because it was released so late. So that's just an example of just how, I guess, poorly run the campaign was on two of those key issues that historically should have been very, very favourable to the coalition.

So I want to talk to you at the top, Michael, about this phenomenon of Australia being centrally a centrist country. But one of the things that plays into that, it would seem to me, is this whole system of preferential voting or what we in the United States might call ranked choice voting. Can one of you explain how that works and then what it does to the outcomes of these elections, particularly in terms of centrism versus extremism?

Well, originally in Australia we had first-past-the-post voting,

until the 1920s. And at that point, you know, the major conservative party in Australia was the United Australia Party. But then around that time, the country party came on the scene and that had the effect of just splitting the conservative vote under the first-past-the-post system. And so the conservatives thought, OK, well, we better bring in, you know, this preferential voting because it's, you know, benefiting the Labor Party.

And so, you know, that's how it started. And so how it works is, I mean, if a candidate gets, you know, more than 50% of the first preference votes, they're elected. If they don't, then...

the lowest number of votes on the ballot paper is eliminated and their second preference votes are distributed. So you vote for your first party, second, third, like that? You have to fill in all the boxes. So I did today in the seat of Canberra, filling all six boxes. And yeah, look, the cycle just repeats until someone gets over 50%.

But I also have to say that, you know, in the 1920s, we also introduced compulsory voting. And that was a result of a drop off in voting since the First World War. Now, what compulsory voting does, it means that the parties don't, well, the major parties don't have to appeal to the fringes and, you know, the fanatics and the, you know, the political obsessives to vote. It means they have to appeal to the middle in Australia. And that's

That's where, you know, elections are won in Australia, in the centre, as Michael was saying. So, yeah, unlike other countries, yeah, you have to appeal to the centre to win in Australia. And I think sort of Albanese sort of alluded to this, you know, late in the campaign when he said, I'm a reformist, not a revolutionary. So, you know, the safe change is what Australians like.

I like bringing up compulsory voting and I'm a bit like a broken record in most, if not all, conversations I have with my many American friends. I wish compulsory voting was something we could export to America. It is one of the...

attractive features of our election system, along with an independent federally run election commission. But compulsory voting hits all those points, as Mick said. It just discourages extremism. It discourages parties taking too much to the left, too much to the right, and they get out the vote operations to encourage people, to bus people physically to the polls. And

And we get a much more descriptive result of indication of where the Australian electorate is. So I'd like it to be one of our key exports to the US. I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, but it is something we hold very dear here in Australia. We don't like people telling us we have to do that. You go to a polling booth every...

Saturday, there's a lot of pre-polling, but your election day is a Saturday. Not only you get to vote, you exercise your democratic right, you get what we call a democracy sausage. That's the key. As you gents would know, having lived here for a period, that is one of the best features as well of our election days. Although you use white bread instead of a hot dog roll, which I don't understand.

Oh, Jim, Jim, Jim, you should know by now. It needs to be just a slice of white bread. We've had this conversation before. I know, and you're still wrong. I'm sorry. Jim's still waiting for his woman onion. But I must say, I echo what Michael says about our electoral system. And look, I think what transpired was...

credit to australian democracy again i mean maybe the you know the the policies and the campaign didn't sort of reach the lofty intellectual heights some wanted but you know the election was was free and fair um there's no no irregularities you know foreign interference was sort of you know kept to a minimum by the agencies there's no allegations of you know the election being rigged and if you i think the high point of the campaign last night was the um

with the speeches by Albanese in Dunn, I thought they were very magnanimous and gracious, unlike other countries. I agree. And isn't it great, Mick, and I'm sorry to our American friends, we had this thing called a peaceful transition of power in Australia. And echoing your thought, I reckon... We usually have one of those. Usually have, yes. You had one aberration back in 2020, which we won't talk about. The Prime Minister gave a great speech, but I think

The speech by Peter Dutton was the most gracious concession speech by an opposition leader in Australia I have ever seen. He was gracious to the Prime Minister. He spoke of how the Prime Minister's late mother would be proud of him. He was gracious to the woman who beat him, the Labor candidates who beat him. There was no bitterness there.

There was nothing nasty. And I think Peter Dutton will be remembered very fondly for those five minutes or so on stage last night in that concession speech. But, you know, this gets into some weird things about elections is Peter Dutton in person actually is a funny, clever guy. Why he has to put on the mean cop persona whenever he's in public, I'd never understood. And clearly it didn't work.

But that's another... No, I agree. And you've all would have had interactions with Peter Dutton, as I have, over the years and in person. He is very warm. He's funny. He's very engaging. He's got a lovely dry sense of humour. And for whatever reason, he has, as you said, turned on this hard cop message for many years now and many Liberal Party people have

have told me over the years that if, if, if the Australian voter had seen more of that side of Peter Dutton, more of the Peter Dutton we saw giving that concession speech last night, perhaps people would have been more welcoming towards him and, and considering, would consider voting for him. But for whatever reason, that was the image you wanted to get across. Yeah. I think Labor, Labor did a, you know, a,

a lethal job sort of reminding people why they didn't like Dutton in the first place. And I think in the end, Dutton played very poorly with professional women, young people and multicultural communities. And I think that, I think that sort of goes, you know, back to sort of his,

over the years, you know, polarising comments on various issues. I mean, he's a former Home Affairs Minister, former Defence Minister, but, you know, he has had a tendency to, you know, thrive, you know, in engaging in, you know, culture wars and, you know, especially in the national security space as well. And I think we saw, I mean, going back to the Chinese vessel, the live fire exercises, I mean, Dutton was jumped straight onto that when it happened.

And in response, you had Penny Wong saying, oh, you know, Dutton's beating the drums of war and being very irresponsible in his comments. I mean, that said, Richard Miles said that the... The Defence Minister. Yeah, Richard Miles, the Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, he said that, you know, the actions of the Chinese were unprecedented. But, I mean, you know, the Chinese in that case, they, you know, they hadn't broken any rules.

international sea laws and I suspect it was probably retaliation for an Australian surveillance craft a few weeks earlier in the South China Sea. I think at the time the US Indo-Pacific Commander was in Australia but I think that was just a coincidence. But what that live fire exercise did, I think it sort of

more broadly, you know, stirred debate about Australia's defence budget and our, you know, maritime preparedness. And I think, you know, the coalition, maybe the coalition at that point should have, you know, thrown out their defence policy then rather than, as people on this call have said, you know, wait till, you know, a week out from the election. So that brings us to the question of, you know, will the Labor Party government

pick up the mantle of any of that going forward? In other words, will they sort of respond to the imperative presented by the Chinese task group and say, we also are interested in increasing the defense budget in addressing our defense requirements?

They're going to have to. And Labor has made the point that it has increased defence spending, which it has. But everybody in, as I said, the defence strategic community agrees that the current 2% level is just...

woefully inadequate. Given the times we live in, the Prime Minister, Richard Miles, the Defence Minister, have repeatedly said that we live in the most challenging strategic times since the end of World War II.

And that was driven home, of course, by the Chinese Navy live fire exercises off the New South Wales coast just before the election. We're all seeing what China's up to more broadly in the region. The problem that the government will have is that at the moment, there isn't, for want of a better term, in my view, social licence for an increase in defence spending.

And what I mean in saying that is the Labor Party, and I think to some extent the coalition as well, have not properly explained why defence spending needs to go up. Because if defence spending goes up, it's a whack of money. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars that is going to have to come at the expense of other parties.

sections of the budgets. Other government spending, potentially politically popular government spending in the health welfare space, and that's going to be politically challenging. I just don't think at this stage, and this may change in this term of government, particularly if it's fast-tracked by further aggressive moves by China, I just don't think the government has made the point for

an increase in defence spending at this stage. Mick, you might have a view on that as well. Just very quickly, I just want to introduce from the chat here, John Godden points out that the live fire exercise actually did have an effect on New Zealand, which doubled its defence budget. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, look, I think if we're going to boost defence spending in Australia, there needs to be some bipartisanship involved.

And I think Linda Reynolds a few years ago was talking about, you know, maybe having more bipartisanship by virtue of a special committee. But look, it was interesting, the campaign, he had Wayne Swan, the former Labor treasurer, he was asked...

about defence spending, and he said, oh, well, the current trajectory is fine. So that raised a few eyebrows. It's interesting. I mean, 15 years ago, 2% of GDP was the magic number. Now it's apparently 3%. As Michael said, you know, the coalition had promised, you know, 3%.

within a decade, you know, 2.5% within the next five years. But what I think might happen is that Labor brings forward some of their 10-year spend, because a lot of it's back-ended at the moment. So maybe they bring some of that into the forward estimates. I mean, another issue is, of course, AUKUS. And I think Hastie said this during the camp, Andrew Hastie, the Shadow...

has said this during the campaign, that AUKUS is sucking up a lot of the planned defence spend. And, of course, AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US agreement, most of the big banana there, of course, is the submarine program, but there's also another track that's focused in on technology. And we talk about social licence for defence spending. I think, you know,

There's going to have to be renewed efforts for social licence for AUKUS. And you would have seen, I think it was the day before the election was called, we had former Prime Minister Turnbull hosting his Security and Sovereignty Conference in Canberra, which was basically, it was critical of the AUKUS submarine program. It's pretty obvious that the

But some of the independents, the Teals, are going to make AUKUS an issue during the next term of parliament. Jackie Lambie, Senator from Tasmania, she's going to push for a Senate inquiry into all aspects of the Australia-US relationship. And I'll also say that the Labor rank and file are very left-leaning and they're not exactly supporters of AUKUS and

I mean, they'd be expecting Albanese, who used to be a hard man of the left. His mentors were hard men of the left. They'd be expecting him with this huge majority to sort of go back to the old Albo fighting Tories. And there'd be a lot of pressure on Albanese from the rank and file to just maybe take another look at AUKUS because...

It was not a Labor initiative. It was a Scott Morrison initiative.

And yeah, you guys already gave us $500 million as a down payment. It seems like a good time to renegotiate. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But so very quickly, before we move on, I do want to grab onto a word that you brought up there, Mick. You used the word teals and we haven't really introduced that already in this discussion yet. Who are the teals? Where did they come from and why do they matter? Well, that the teals, the teals are...

They came on the scene in the 2022 election, so there were six of them elected, all highly credentialed women, backed by a rich guy in Australia called Simon Holmes, a court... He has a fundraising body called Climate 200, a lot of renewable energy interests behind him. And those teals snatched...

snatched Liberal blue ribbon seats at the 2022 election in very highly affluent, socially progressive areas. So, you know, basically areas where the people are rich enough to focus on post-material issues. And, you know, the Liberals are very keen to win those seats back at this election and they failed. And it sort of goes to why Dutton...

Dutton had the strategy he did at this election, to sort of just make this path of victory through the outer suburbs and the regions, which, as we know, flopped. But I guess the strategy was right in the outer suburbs, but just the tactics didn't resonate. But those teal seats, it looks like the teals have a lock on them for a while, because a few of them ran into some

some controversies during the campaign, but that just seems to have been overlooked by their constituents. Let's talk about an amazing parallel with another Commonwealth country that had the elections recently, which is Canada. So they had elections, same thing. The incumbent left-leaning party was expected to lose. Suddenly,

They get basically demolished by a resurgent liberal, in this case, left-leaning party in Canada, in which the incumbent prime minister basically ran against Trump and for Australian Canadian sovereignty. Were there any parallels in Australia and how is Australia different?

politically going to manage this contradiction, it seems, between the U.S. being the security partner and China being the trade partner? How are they going to navigate this going forward in the age of Trump?

With great difficulty. And we are enmeshed irrevocably with America as our key security partner. As you, General, would know, very strong ties in the defence and intelligence areas, longstanding ties. That will continue. At the same time, we've got China as our key partner.

and the Labor government has improved economic relations with China over this last term of government, resulting in the Chinese regime dropping various trade boycotts on Australian goods. So the government won't want to unsettle the horses there in terms of China being our key economic trading partner. As to how they manage that dichotomy,

gee, it's going to be one of the most challenging areas for the newly re-elected Labor government. On Canada, the overarching, there are differences between what happened in Australia last night and what we saw happen in Canada. Yes, there was the overarching common factor of Donald Trump being toxic.

And any politician tied to Donald Trump, it seems, is going to suffer badly at the hand of voters. We saw that with the Canadian conservative leader. We saw that to some extent with Peter Dutton last night.

We're different, though. We don't in Australia suffer the existential threat the Canadians are suffering with Donald Trump repeatedly talking about wanting to make Canada the 51st state. He hasn't at this stage threatened to make Australia the 52nd state. Give him time. Who knows? So there's that. And of course, Canada...

was hit much harder by the Liberation Day tariff regime as well. We got off relatively lightly. So there were those two key differences, but the overarching commonality, in my view, was that it is now going to be a successful tactic for any

leader of any political party to tie their opponent to Donald Trump. If they succeed in that, that opponent is going to suffer very badly at the hand of voters. So I was grinning through that because while I was in Canberra, when we would have military delegations come,

I would often, during my remarks to them as they got there, remind them that, quote, Australia is not the 51st state. And the reason I would say that was not because anybody wanted to take over Australia, but because the U.S. and Australian militaries work so closely together, sometimes our

Our own folks could be surprised that Australia actually had different policies. You know, they just assumed that everything was the same. But in that light, we have a question in the chat about the Pacific issue.

And or as we might think of it in the United States, the South Pacific, the Pacific Islands and China's competition in the South Pacific and specifically Australia's concern over those Pacific Islands, which from an American perspective or even other places might seem disproportionate to their size. What role does China's competition with the in the Pacific have?

play in labor's mind in liberals mind do you see any any any changes going forward oh i i think um i think labor will continue um yeah to engage strongly with the pacific i mean they they're very proud of um very proud of their their record in the pacific um

The coalition in the campaign actually, I think, promised to cut aid funding, which I don't think went down very well in the Pacific. I mean, further, you know, looking north, Papua New Guinea, you know, Australia's promised to, well, the government's promised to fund a rugby league team there. But, like, more seriously, though, I think, you know,

The government strongly believes that climate change is sort of the ticket to entry in diplomacy with the Pacific Islands. But look, Australia's aid is going to continue to be orientated to the Pacific. And was there any discussion about the cuts in US aid and what role Australia might play during the election? No.

Not really, no. I don't recall that, but Australia was once referred to as the deputy sheriff in the region. Well, maybe we become the sheriff. And I expect we'll be doing a lot more work with our New Zealand friends and our Japanese friends if the US pull back.

But look, Australia's doing a good job forging policing agreements with various Pacific Island countries, training their police, economic empowerment, technical assistance on issues such as cyber. But if America is going to sort of withdraw from that space, we'll be expected to step up. So no ambassador has yet been named for Australia by Donald Trump.

We know what that's like. Some of us know very personally what's like. You know what that's like, Jim. Jim Caruso was the acting ambassador for two and a half years. And when he stepped down finally and an ambassador was finally named, the foreign minister at the time, Julie Bishop, called him the best ambassador Australia never had. Because I was a pushover. But seriously, the question is,

Is it worse this time not having an ambassador because Donald Trump is more aggressive? Does it make a difference? Would it make a difference having an ambassador now? Well, firstly, can I echo Julie Bishop's thought? I think, Jim Caruso, you were the best ambassador Australia never had. I do have you on my level. But yes, listen, I...

I don't know when we'll get an ambassador from America. There's no prospect of one being named anytime soon in the roiling chaos that we see every single day in Washington. Will an ambassador matter? Perhaps not, given that Donald Trump

rule supreme and leaders want to directly deal with him, even though Anthony Albanese has been trying to get a phone call with Donald Trump ever since Liberation Day and that hasn't happened. Probably will happen now that as protocol dictates, world leaders will call the newly elected prime minister, so perhaps Donald Trump will be hopefully

hopefully on the top of that list. But I don't think having an ambassador or not, really, in the age of Donald Trump, will make a huge amount of difference at all because all the action will be in Washington. Kevin Rudd has been a very effective Australian ambassador over there. He'll be redoubling efforts to...

get access to the president and various other figures in the West Wing. I really don't think having a person in the

palatial U.S. Embassy in Canberra will make a difference. Can I say to all those I'm sure watching from the U.S. Embassy, they all do a fantastic job at keeping the embassy ticking over anyway, as you did, Jim. And if you've seen the miniseries Pine Gap, you know that the U.S. Ambassador can actually control the movement of ships around Sydney Harbor from his office there. It's pretty exciting. Yes, of course. So, yeah,

I would like to ask what happens now to the Liberal Party and who leads it? Yeah, well, there's already manoeuvres in play, and apparently there were manoeuvres in play last week. But I think that the three frontrunners will be the current deputy leader, Susan Lay, Dan Tehan, who's shadow immigration, and...

Maybe Andrew Hastie, the shadow defence, although it's probably not his time. But yeah, definitely Angus Taylor as well, the shadow treasurer. Although he's copping a bit of internal criticism for not being as fiscally conservative as some would have liked and not rolling out policies as early as some would have liked. So there's going to be a lot of undermining and blame shifting and

They've got some soul-searching to do. I mean, I can see the appeal of Susan Lay because she's moderate and she might be able to win some of those teal seats back. So, yeah, I think she'll remain part of the leadership group. Just a question of whether she gets the number one spot. But, yeah, look, more broadly, a lot of coalition frontbenchers were wiped out.

Not just Dutton, but, you know, folks like Luke Howarth, David Coleman, you know, the shadow foreign minister, he's gone. And, you know, he's quite well regarded, very cerebral, experienced MP. So, yeah, who have they got left? And again, you know, it goes to sort of this existential crisis that the Liberals are facing. And, you know, maybe, you know, like,

They got smashed during World War II. Maybe, again, they called a conference of the conservative political parties in Australia and try some sort of reformation and just recast their image because at the moment it's just not working. As you say, it's certainly a personnel issue. The current and potential future Liberal Party leadership was decapitated

in the election, from Peter Dutton down a range of well-regarded future Liberal leaders, potential leaders lost their seats as well. So there's a personnel issue, but also a direction issue. Christopher Pyne, who you all know and who most people watching this will know as well, former Defence Minister, now still works in the defence space, was on one of the TV panels last night.

He's a moderate, liberal, very much centrist, and he was making that point on air, that the Liberal Party, in his view, needs to tap back to the centre. It has the right under the Peter Dutton and, to a lesser extent, Scott Morrison leadership regimes, in his view, and in the view of many Liberal Party moderates, that the party needs to come back to the centre because that is where the electorate is, as was shown so dramatically last night.

Just to play devil's advocate, the right-wing parties of One Nation, Pauline Hanson, and Clive Palmer's, what do you call it, the Trumpet Party, which is just- Trumpet of Patriots. I wonder how he came up with that name. They've got, I think between them, something like 2 million votes. That's pretty substantial. And if you include then coalition voters, the right wing still has something going for it, it seems. Yeah.

maybe that's what they're going to become. What do you think? I think if they're smart, they'll recognize that there is always going to be that right flank and the preferences that we talked about earlier will always flow to the Liberal and National Party in future elections. But as again was shown last night, that is not at the moment at least where the Australian electorate is.

Any pathway back to power for the coalition has to go through those so-called teal seats, those former blue ribbon, blue chip Liberal Party seats that were lost the election before last. And given the results last night, may be harder than ever for the Liberal Party to win back, but they need to win back those seats.

to get the numbers to form a government in the lower house, which goes back to what the likes of Christopher Pyne and other party elders have been saying in the wake of the defeat, that if they have any prospect of winning, the Liberal Party needs to recognise and support and welcome the support of right-leaning voters. But there are many more voters in the middle, including those key metropolitan seats the Liberal Party needs to get elected.

any shot of getting back into power anytime soon. All right, let's close on this thought. So labor obviously comes out of this looking very strong. Does labor have any, or would you think that labor would have any agenda for what it might do in its new stronger position? Would a more confident labor start to introduce any policies that are really significant?

Yeah, well, that's an interesting question. Albanese, during one of the debates in the campaign, was asked, you know, what would he want his political legacy to be? And he said universal childcare or something to that effect. So that'll be big in this term of government. I think, yeah, the net zero transition, that's core to Labor's economic reform agenda. And I think...

Given the flack they copped and yet they prevailed big time in the election, I think Labor's just going to pursue that. You know, their ambitious renewable energy target of 82% by 2030, that's a huge undertaking. It's going to cost a lot of money. Chris Bowen has copped a lot of... He's the current Energy and Climate Minister. He's copped a lot of flack for that.

They're going to have to roll out about 30,000 kilometres of new grid. So, yeah, that's going to be billions of this so-called off-budget spend on that. So, yeah, that's one part of it. A key part of this net zero transition, which is called an economic agenda, is this initiative called the Future Made in Australia. So that's all about sort of attracting investment

into these, you know, net zero industries. So things like renewable hydrogen, critical minerals, green metals, low carbon fuels and clean energy manufacturing, batteries and that sort of stuff. So Labor's keen to sort of streamline investment into energy

into those sectors. Just on critical minerals, I know we're short of time. I mean, during the campaign, Labor promised to establish a critical mineral stockpile, which I think is very significant. It sort of ties into this Future Made in Australia initiative. And the idea of that is to, is this stockpile to benefit local manufacturers and also the

those of our allies as well. So India, Japan, Korea, and the US. And there's talk of this critical stock, critical mineral stockpile, you know, being used as leverage in the, you know, the tariff negotiations with Trump. So yeah, watch this space. All right. Well, that was one of the questions that was in the chat was on to what extent we might see those critical minerals and rare earths used as leverage in the tariffs, especially given what we just saw in Ukraine. Yeah.

Well, so we do want to thank our guests for coming on today. It's been a fascinating discussion. I think I walked away smarter, which is pretty hard to do for me. So thank you very much. I want to thank my co-host, Jim Caruso, and of course, our sponsor, Bauer Group Asia, Bauer Group.

applies unmatched expertise and experience to help clients navigate the world's most complex and dynamic markets. And I don't know that Australia is one of the most complex, but I do think that it can be very dynamic. Of course, Mick McNeil is the managing director of Bauer Group Asia in Australia.

So, finally, we want to thank our producer, Ian Ellis Jones, and IEJ Media for doing all the work behind the scenes to make all of this happen. Of course, you can follow him on X, at Ian Ellis Jones, and you can follow us on YouTube, youtube.com at IP Podcast. We also do regular audio podcasts on all the places, whether it be Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any of those.

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