How Trump Decimated the Australian Right
Trump’s re-election was supposed to help Australia’s Right. Instead, it blew them to pieces
Will Vanman
Yesterday, Australia’s main right-wing party completely imploded. Imagine the Republican Party suddenly splitting into two separate MAGA and center-right parties, and you’d start to grasp the scale of this momentous event. For over 80 years, Australia’s right-wing party has operated as a coalition between the urban Liberal Party and the rural National Party—a political marriage of convenience that, until now, held firm through decades of elections. That is, until Donald Trump smashed it to pieces from across the Pacific. The consequences of this spectacular collapse offer a cautionary tale for not only Australia, but for the US and the rest of the world.
To understand how this happened, let’s rewind to mid-2023.
The dominant issue at the heart of Australian politics was the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, a proposal to enshrine an indigenous advisory board into the Constitution. Backed by the left-wing Labor party and prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, it was seen as a long-overdue step to restorative justice. In a country with a history of paternalistic policies (google the 2007 Intervention for an example), The Voice promised Indigenous people a say in decisions that affected them. In early 2023, voters agreed this legislation was needed: The Voice had around 70% approval.
But as a constitutional amendment, it needed a majority of voters and states to pass.
The Coalition, still sore from losing the 2022 election, saw an opportunity to claw their way back into relevance. Conservative money poured into PR groups like Advance Australia, which launched the aggressive “If You Don’t Know, Vote No” campaign. Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp, with an almost monopoly on print and news media (think Succession), pumped out anti-Voice messaging nonstop.
Shockingly, relentless misinformation campaigns from the biggest media monopoly in the country worked. Public support tanked. On October 14, 2023, 60% of voters voted No to The Voice.
Wiping the dust from his cheeks and astonishingly smooth scalp, leader of the Coalition and Voldemort cosplayer Peter Dutton wielded a wide smirk. He pinned The Voice’s failure as the Labor Party’s failure. Before the referendum, Labor led the Coalition by 10 points in national polling. The Coalition now left Labor in the dust by 10 points.
Moving into 2024, the Coalition swept local and state elections across the country. The narrative was set: a conservative comeback was inevitable. The Labor government was stumbling, and the Right had found its voice—just not The Voice. It was surely impossible to fumble this guaranteed victory.
Then came November 5th, 2024. The day the people of the United States of America decided to re-elect Donald Trump as their President, again. Trump’s victory signalled a global resurgence of a new populist, far-right inspired by the MAGA movement. You might assume this would be good news for Australia’s Right. Right?
Salivating from across the Pacific, the Coalition certainly thought it was. Dutton announced his new election platform that read like Trump fanfiction. Like the US, Australia too needed a Department of Government Efficiency. He proposed tackling ‘wasteful spending’, sacking 41,000 federal workers, and banning work-from-home for government employees. Of course, this demanded an Elon Musk-equivalent overseer, a role filled by ultra-conservative mining-billionaire Gina Reinhardt. Following in MAGA’s footsteps, Dutton promised to de-woke education, overhauling the school curriculums to prevent teachers from “indoctrinating” students.
And for a brief moment, it looked like this political platform might actually work. Trump’s popularity soared. Polls showed him at 54% approval. His sweeping “mandate” seemed untouchable.
Like a bottle of milk left in the Queensland sun, things turned sour. By March, Americans had turned on Trump’s reckless policies, dropping below 50% support. His economy-wrecking tariffs, DOGE cuts, and deranged foreign policy—from withdrawing support in Ukraine to literally threatening to invade Canada—caused widespread chaos.
Like the rest of the world, anti-Trump resentment in Australia escalated. Trump announced a 10% tariff on Australian goods, with an even steeper tariff on Australian beef. Trump’s beef with Australia (no pun intended) was justified on its longstanding ban on US beef imports. However, the rationale for this is tenuous at best. The ban, in place since 2003, stems from the US repeatedly failing shared biosecurity standards on Mad Cow Disease.
Trump was a slap to the face. Just a few years earlier, Australia signed the $90 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and ditched its previous agreement with France. Now, a supposed “ally” was ditching its relationship with Australia. News stories about the domestic political turmoil in the US reached Australian shores, terrifying voters.
Trump appeared as an immediate threat to the Coalition. Originally embracing a Trump-adjacent platform, the Coalition now desperately attempted to distance itself from him. On April 6th, Dutton labelled its previous endorsement of proposed DOGE cuts as “a mistake.” Just two days before the election, Dutton announced he would drop his promise to end wokeness in schools. All that remained of the right’s platform was an unpopular nuclear energy policy.
And just like that, what was before an inevitable victory for the Coalition turned into a whopping defeat. On the 3rd of May, Australians voted decisively to turn away from the Coalition. The Coalition lost 10 seats in the House of Representatives. Labor now had 77 seats to just 53 Coalition seats: an overwhelming landslide. Party leader and professional egg-head Peter Dutton even lost his own seat—Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and no amount of Gina Reinhardt’s money could put him back together again.
Interestingly, this landslide was less of a Labor victory than it was a Coalition loss. Only a third of voters put Labor first, but thanks to Australia’s preferential voting system and massive anti-Coalition backlash, Labor absolutely cleaned the floor.
The damage was done. After Dutton exited the Coalition, the new leaders of the MAGA-aligned National Party, David Littleproud, and the traditional-right Liberal Party, Susan Ley, pointed fingers at each other. Ultimately, the Coalition that was so entrenched in Australian politics fell apart on May 20 after Littleproud announced that the Nationals needed to go on a “journey of rediscovery.” It's giving college breakup: they just need some “time apart” to “focus on themselves.”
So what lessons can be learned from the dramatic Trump-fueled downfall of the Australian right?
First of all, Trump’s radical foreign policy shifts and backstabbing of allies are deeply resented internationally. Long-time US allies, like Australia, are now rethinking those ties in light of Trump’s erratic behavior. America First means everyone else last. The political backlash in Australia demonstrates that when the US abandons its allies, conservative parties in those countries—especially those aligning with Trump—pay the price at the polls.
Secondly, contrary to media narratives, Trump style-populism is not universally appealing. While right-wing populists in Europe, like Nigel Farage’s Reform party in the UK have gained traction, attempts to mimic MAGA policies in Australia and Canada have been thoroughly extinguished. In both countries, recent elections saw voters dismissing culture-war obsessions and authoritarian promises that define far-right populism.
Finally, we are entering an unprecedented global political era. Traditional party coalitions, norms, and stability are fracturing around the world. In Australia, a third of voters voted outside the two-party system. MAGA may have sparked the global far-right populist wave, but ironically, Trump’s own influence could be what ultimately unravels it. Is Trump now undoing the very movement he helped ignite?
Image Credit: Will Vanman, “Australian hero Trump fuels breakup between right-wing leaders”, May 2025.