- The Guardian
- Issue #2141
At time of writing, Trump’s imposition of tariffs around the world is getting a lot of attention. The tariffs are having a big effect on economies. We explain those tariffs and how they work – see ‘Tariffs blackmail will backfire’, ‘A tariff is a tax’, ‘Trump‘s existential threat’.
The tariffs are also shining a light on Peter Dutton. No surprise, they’re not making him look good. Tariffs are forcing Dutton to contort himself to explain how he’s going to stand up to someone he’s been busily copying. Trump isn’t good for Dutton overall, because the Opposition leader’s various attempts to impersonate Trump have been so transparent even the Australian media has noticed. Dutton’s attacks on the ABC and on educators have been blatantly copied from the Trump administration, as he demanded the ABC “show value” and threatened teachers who might “have an agenda,” meaning educators might not follow the Coalition’s agenda. Say what you like about Peter Dutton, he’s worked hard to earn the ‘Temu Trump’ nickname.
While the tariffs are big news, less attention has been given to Trump’s attacks on organised labour. He’s tried to remove collective bargaining rights for thousands of US government workers in one of his infamous executive orders, taking union contracts away from more than one million workers. Here, Dutton needs no inspiration from Trump – he can just carry on doing what a Liberal Party leader does, working for the people who own the economy, and attacking the people who make it work.
The overall effect Trump has had on Peter Dutton is to shine a light on how few of his own ideas the Liberal Party leader has, and how little work he’s prepared to put in on them. Not that ‘the Donald’ is needed for this insight – we can see it in Dutton’s back-of-the-envelope plan to use nuclear power as a way of prolonging fossil fuel use. The idea was always nonsense – nuclear is too expensive, too dangerous, and too slow to make any useful difference to our carbon emissions – but Dutton only started keeping quiet about it when it turned out to be unpopular.
Whatever else it tries as it seeks power, the Liberal Party always comes back to attacking the power of working people. We can see that in Dutton’s promises to bring back the ABCC and to deregister the CFMEU.
Dutton was using race as a political weapon way back when Trump was just a perennial joke candidate in US elections. The Liberal Party Leader walked out of the Apology to the Stolen Generation. More recently he’s spoken up about two groups of white people he thought should be exempted from the Coalition’s hostile attitude to refugees – white South African farmers and white Ukrainians. On that issue, it looks like Trump was inspired by Dutton – the US President has called for refugee status for white South Africans.
It’s not enough to just describe Trump as awful and ask our government to stand up to him. We’ve got our own brand of horrible right here at home. The right in Australia looks to Trump for inspiration, and in Dutton’s case, popularity, but the Coalition Dutton leads has its own agenda, always one which puts the interests of the rich ahead of the people who work and create the wealth.
The Communist Party of Australia encourages all members and supporters to put the Coalition last.
