RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, welcome back to 7am.

For the past four years one story has dominated global headlines…

Archival Tape -- Reporter:

“President Trump… has tweeted... Trump.”

RUBY:

The Presidency of Donald Trump.

Archival Tape -- Reporter:

“The Donald is still hogging the headlines…”

RUBY:

Despite losing last November’s election, there were serious concerns that Trump would attempt to retain power through violent and undemocratic means.

Archival Tape -- Trump:

“We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen, you don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”

RUBY:

His words did fan the flames of anger and hate, leading to violence at the centre of the US political system: Washington DC.

Archival Tape -- Rioters:

“Stop the steal, stop the steal.”

RUBY:

Trump was rebuked by senior US Republicans, and conservative leaders from all over the globe.

Archival Tape -- Boris Johnson:

“What President Trump has been saying about that has been completely wrong and I unreservedly condemn…”

RUBY:

But in Australia the response from our government to his last attempt to cling onto power was much more muted...

Archival Tape -- Michael McCormack:

“You know any form of protest whether over racial riots or capitol hill in recent days is condemned and abhorred…”

RUBY:

And our Prime Minister hasn’t shied away from declaring his affinity for President Trump.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“If people are going to have a crack at me because I worked with the president of the United States, I think that reflects more on them than me.”

RUBY:

Today on 7am, as Joe Biden draws a line under the Trump era, we talk to Richard Cooke about Trump’s legacy, and how the ideas and policies that came to define him have found a welcome home right here in Australia.

Richard, on Thursday Joe Biden was inaugurated as the forty sixth president of the United States. Can you tell me a bit about what he said at that inauguration about his priorities?

RICHARD:

So he listed his priorities, first of all, as the pandemic, which has now killed more than 400,000 Americans. And on the day of his inauguration, killed over 4000 on that single day.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“Once in a century virus that silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as Americans lost in all of WWII.”

RICHARD:

The economic destruction wrought by that virus as well with the jobs lost and businesses closed. And then immediately into two areas that we haven't heard spoken of by a US leader for a while.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us.”

RICHARD:

The first of those is racial justice.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer…”

RICHARD:

And the second is climate change.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear than now…”

RICHARD:

These are immediately back on the agenda and in the executive orders that Biden signed upon taking office.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities.”

RICHARD:

What struck me, first of all, was how dissonant these are from Australian priorities at the moment. To hear a leader sort of speak to themes of climate change and social justice like that was refreshing and not something that we are very used to over here.

The Morrison government occasionally speaks to the issue of climate change, but it does so without urgency and without real investment. Literally without real investment and that sort of language on racial justice is nearly inconceivable coming from an Australian leader.

RUBY:

Right - so some clear differences then between the direction Biden is signalling the US is headed, and where we’re at here in Australia. But is it fair to say that the Morrison government was aligned with Trump in a way that went beyond policy? I’m thinking here about Scott Morrison’s response to the recent Capitol riots - the way that he didn't directly blame Trump.

RICHARD:

Yeah, so, you know, Trump had a plan, it was in part a rehearsed plan to claim that he had won the election, that Democrats were relying on fraudulent votes in an effort to steal it. I mean, this drumbeat started many months ago and increased in volume and tempo as we got closer to the election.

This created a poisonous atmosphere where the president's most ardent supporters thought that they had to physically intervene to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. And that's what they attempted to do.

So naturally, these, you know, very well worn patterns of authoritarian behaviour. We know what they are, other world leaders know what they are. And they were roundly condemned almost immediately. You know, Trudeau condemned them in Canada.

Archival Tape -- Justin Trudeau:

“What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters incited by the current President and other politicians.”

RICHARD:

Johnson condemned them in the U.K.

Archival Tape -- Boris Johnson:

“The president consistently cast doubt on the outcome of a free and fair election, I think that was completely wrong.”

RICHARD:

Australia was much less vocal. Both Scott Morrison and the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, seem to be very reluctant to make a distinction between this and other kinds of political ructions or violence.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“It was disappointing, very disappointing that things were allowed to get to that stage...”

RICHARD:

And that was part of an effort to soft pedal on Trump and Trumpism.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“And this is a difficult time for the US clearly, they’re a great friend of Australia and they’re one of the world’s greatest democracies.”

RICHARD:

Part of that is just rhetorical, that Scott Morrison has taken a kind of easy listening approach to all sorts of things politically, but especially diplomatically, to soft pedalling criticism of Trump. That is partly to placate Trump, but it's also partly to placate elements in the coalition, especially on the backbench, which feel an affinity with Trump and his style.

RUBY:

Mmm okay, lets talk some more about that. There are individual politicians - those on the Coalition backbench - who have adopted some more Trump like tactics. But what kind of influence do you think his four years in power has had on our political system, in a more broad sense?

RICHARD:

Trump certainly innovated in speaking outside or around or against the media in having a fast and loose relationship with the truth. The kind of, you know, classic model of media accountability for democratically elected leaders pretty much broke down. He just found a constituency that didn't care or didn't believe that he lied all the time or refused to listen to the people whose job it was to say that he was lying. And I think that that breakdown in accountability is in some ways the lasting legacy of Trump and Trumpism here.

What were once offences that a politician would resign for or apologise for

Archival Tape -- Angus Taylor:

“I reject absolutely the suggestion that I or any members of my staff altered the documents in question…”

RICHARD:

are now just things which can be posted through, as it were. They can just keep going and the media are forced to move on.

Archival Tape

“This entire scandal is rotten to the core."

RICHARD:

People are bombarded by information or have given up listening or believing that accountability is possible or matters. We've seen that in the sports rort affair.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“So what I’ve said consistently on this matter, my office provided information based on the representations made to us…”

RICHARD:

We've seen that with the New South Wales premier who had probably an improper relationship that would have resulted in a resignation not long ago. She's now very likely to continue in office unmarred by that.

Archival Tape -- Inquirer:

“And so you’d have to accept Mr Mcguire’s financial position would have some impact on you…”

Archival Tape -- Gladys Berejiklian:

“Never. I never considered that”.

RICHARD:

I think Trump has without slating everything to him, rolled out a bit of a red carpet for that.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

RUBY:

Richard, we’re talking about Trump’s influence on politics here in Australia. Do you think it's the case of a few individual politicians seeing something that's worked for someone and trying to take advantage of that? Or do you think that Trump has been a more broad change to our system in terms of accountability?

RICHARD:

I think it's both, I think that accountability is weaker overall, but there are particular individuals, Craig Kelly as an example here, who have generated a kind of social media support base, which is quite distinct from what politicians had in the past. There have always been eccentric and populist politicians, but their support bases were quite diffuse. They had no way to speak to each other. They had no way to meet. And interaction with these figures between their supporters was very slow. That's no longer the case. So in August, Craig Kelly was just pestering the TGA and other senior governmental figures over the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a kind of miracle cure.

Archival Tape -- Craig Kelly:

“If we were able to make sure doctors have the freedom to prescribe hydroxychloroquine, we wouldn’t need all the lockdowns.”

RICHARD:

This came from Trump, among other people. And, you know, you have these very senior health bureaucrats having to tell former furniture salesmen, we’re across this. You know, we've read these studies. We have many experts reviewing them and crankily sort of running this this DIY do the research yourself approach

Archival Tape -- Craig Kelly:

“Anyone that tells you that hydroxychloroquine, there’s no evidence for it, they’re either lying or they’re a fool and this has to stop now..”

RICHARD:

which chimes with many people who have lost trust in experts and feel that they can do as good a job. That's very new.

RUBY:

Mmm and as you say - there has always been a populist thread amongst politicians in Australia. So I wonder: how much of this type of politics can be linked to Trump, and how much of it is a feature of our system?

RICHARD:

Well, I mean, it's partly a long lineage of just nationalist and occasionally white nationalist thinking around what it means for Australia to be a Western Anglophone nation. You know, this has a long lineage and a constituency beyond votes. You know, there are obviously people in places who believe in this, sometimes quietly, who are not trying to garner votes from it. But that sort of darker side of the colonial experience, if you like, is something that Australia and the United States and the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent, Canada all share.

I think, as well there's something that we haven't seen for a while from senior coalition figures, but we might expect more of it in the future. Possibility is what Scott Morrison talked about when he talked about negative globalism. It's in some ways probably retired Coalition figures who are more invested in this. So Alexander Downer and Tony Abbott have both spent time in Eastern Europe, I guess sort of invested in an idea of what you could call Western chauvinism, this idea of Western superiority that Trump spoke to as well. I think that that is an affinity which hasn't been explored very much.

RUBY:

And so. So do you think, then that the politicians here in Australia, the ones that we've been speaking about, do you expect a shift in gear to be more in line with a Biden presidency? Or do you think that this alignment with Trumpism is here to stay?

RICHARD:

I think in some of the people we're talking about, it's not going anywhere, partly because it's generated by and echoed by the Australian media in a way that it's not elsewhere. Those people behave in that way because they are guaranteed a wider audience, not just on social media, but on television and in newspapers and on radio as well. I think that we will see slight change tonally more than anything else in more senior coalition figures.

Aspects of it will absolutely be permanent and the international experience with authoritarianism and proto authoritarianism is that if you flirt with it, you almost always consummate it. The number of democracies who got a bit wobbly and then pulled out is not very high. And in many ways, Trump is not even especially good at channelling it. The people who have watched him and learn from his mistakes may be significantly more dangerous.

RUBY:

Richard, thank you so much for your time today.

RICHARD:

Thank you so much.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has said the rollout of Australia’s Covid-19 vaccine program is on track to begin in mid-to-late February.

On Sunday Frydenberg said the Therapeutic Goods Administration was still going through its approval process for the vaccine, but that the program was scheduled to start in a few weeks.

And NSW has gone a week without any locally transmitted cases of Covid-19, after a cluster in the Northern Beaches just before Christmas raised fears of a larger outbreak.

7am is a daily news show, and we’ll be back again tomorrow, so make sure to subscribe in your favourite podcast app so you don’t miss out.

I’m Ruby Jones, see ya then.