Bruce Wolpe’s diagnosis of how a returned Donald Trump might traumatise American democracy and the US-Australia alliance possesses a familiar fear and loathing.
Even if unintentional, this is an extraordinary and surely unnecessary denigration of an Australian political leader, as if Wolpe becomes Trump’s ventriloquist. And it is rendered as Wolpe argues for Australia to flaunt its wares in Washington as never before.
Yet the source of these very guardrails, namely Westminster-style democracy, occasionally puts Wolpe in a muddle. Early in the book he weeps for the dysfunction in American politics: it was as if “the Westminster culture of government and opposition had descended not only on the Capitol … but across the country as well”. This is a strange observation. The very system he holds up as an Australian bulwark against Trumpism has come like a corrosive force to his own native land.
These are serious questions. Wolpe quotes many observers who predict more economic coercion from China for Australia, given its closeness to the US. He even predicts that Trump might order Australia to stop selling iron ore to China. But what are the grounds for this claim? It is true that Hillary Clinton and Obama made comments openly critical of Australia’s iron ore trade with China, and Obama is alleged to have asked Tony Abbott to consider stopping it.
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