Last week Scott Morrison appeared alongside Donald Trump and Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt at the Pratt paper plant in Wapakoneta, Ohio. Pratt described Morrison as “the Don Bradman of Australian job creation”, quickly telling a befuddled Trump that Bradman was “our Babe Ruth”. “In cricket,” added Morrison. “Oh, wow,” replied the president, “sounds pretty good”.
This morning, news has broken that, shortly before this trip, Trump asked Morrison to help in an investigation to discredit the Mueller inquiry into Russian interference. The official Australian government response: “[we have] always been ready to assist”.
It’s fair to say there hasn’t been a close relationship between a US president and an Australian prime minister since George W. Bush let John Howard sit at the cool kids’ table. Obama and Rudd were amicable, but both men were shackled to the disastrous policies of the Bush era and the burdensome obligations therein. Since then, our revolving door of prime ministers has made it difficult for a real relationship to blossom. The heady romance sparked by Curtin and MacArthur has degenerated into a Tinder-like loop of matching and unmatching.
Turnbull was infamously bagged out by Trump over the phone, after our US ambassador Joe Hockey requested Trump’s phone number from golf legend and Trump buddy Greg Norman. There was always a tragi-farce element to the Turnbull-Trump relationship; Trump being anathema to Turnbull’s brand of hepcat neoliberalism. But with Trump and ScoMo, we may finally have a pairing as grimly suitable as Axl Rose fronting AC/DC. These two things together just make sense — for better or worse.
Morrison and Trump overlap in many uncomfortable ways. Their love of the private sector, and nationalistic and racist political agendas are nothing new for two conservative leaders. Both take pride in policies that see asylum seekers and their children locked up in detention facilities, and both take further pride in the fact that their base absolutely adores said policies. They are men continuing narratives that they did not begin, but are happy to revel in, and even happier to take credit for.
What binds these two men together in an essential way is their status as flukes or, as they’ve branded it, outsiders.
Both their critics and their fans agree that these men should not be where they are, but there they are, being there. If you’re a critic, both appear as abominations within systems designed to keep said abominations out. Neither were expected to win their respective elections, but they did, comfortably. Both set off varying degrees of hand-wringing — be it as existential dread, or Pentecostal praise. Both, somehow, miraculously, obscured the fact that they were inevitabilities in their respective countries.
Our nations’ unique brands of neo-conservatism have been winding steadily down a road of far-right discourse and politicking. Trump is formed by 50 years of GOP radicalism and American decline, a corpulent cartoon character with a fistful of fillet-o-fish and a headful of Fox News. Morrison is a puppet in the mould of Rattus the Rat, stitched together by white Australia’s unchecked bigotry and malformed jingoism. They are both, in essence, hollow men, containing only the collected scraps of their nation’s dark hearts.
This is not, however, the key to making the relationship “work”, so to speak. Like his role model, Howard, Morrison has proven that he understands the base nature of his relationship with the US president. The Australian self-image often prevents us for seeing this for what it truly is. Our pride won’t allow us to frame the US-Aus relationship as anything other than a buddy-cop film. But, since Bush, the buddy cop bonanza has made way for the escaped con caper: we aren’t so much joined at the hip to America as we are shackled at the ankle. It’s keep up or lose a foot, as ScoMo knows.
What Howard and now ScoMo both instinctively understand is that Australia’s relationship with America, and thus the prime minister’s to the president, is one of subservience. It is a pantomime of bowing and scraping that reflects both our self-assuredness as to where we stand in the world, and our indecisiveness. Trump, like Bush, enjoys the company of lesser men, and ScoMo, like Howard, is all too willing to oblige him.
And so the prime minister assure the president Australia is “ready to assist” and he flies to Wapakoneta, Ohio, to tour a box factory. No one in the crowd but the Auspol wonks has ever heard of Prime Minister Scott Morrison or Don Bradman, but if Trump likes him, they like him. It doesn’t matter if the boxes get filled with candy, it doesn’t matter if they get filled with nails, it doesn’t matter if they’re assembled in Flint, Michigan. What matters is the box Trump and ScoMo are in, and their tacit agreement to never think outside it.
I like what you did with the box thing…but you could have used the surname of the factory owner as a descriptor for either man as well.
Indeed. Bradman of jobs my arse.
Morrison needs flogging. We have no business in attempting to solve Trump’s self inflicted problems. Trump is not the product of anything to do with the GOP, which was a reasonably sensible party 50 years ago: after all they would have helped punt Nixon. Trump is the product of a spoiled brat raising and a corrupt judicial system. Morrison is a zealot disaster, but not a career crook. Bush had some shreds of human decency, Trump has none and should be avoided. As to MacArthur, he was nothing more than an egotist whose generalship was highly questionable and who when it came to matters in PNG, was an unmitigated liar. Fortunately he was never able to be president and the relationship between him and Curtin was certainly not of the crawling kind, though Blamey was another matter.
You are perfectly right on Morrison…he’s not a career crook. He’s a two career crook.
Lol…. what a piece of writing, Go to the top of the class!
“ What binds these two men together in an essential way is their status as flukes or, as they’ve branded it, outsiders.”
Freaks is the word you’re looking for.
Creeps even. Think Radiohead – “… you’re so fucking special, I wish I was special”
Nonetheless, this is a serious and insightful suggestion. Trump is an outsider because, though representing Wall St in a broad sense, he did not come out of the extreme neoliberal rendition of the Republican Party so strongly shaped by the Koch brothers with their massive financial support. He brings together an erratic personality and a messiah cult attractive to people who see their world falling apart but do not know how to articulate this “falling apartness,” nor how to address it in terms that will bring a “smooth” transition to a more equitable society.
Morrison is less of an outsider than Trump, though in his self-certainty and his absence of any serious policies he mimics him exceptionally well. Arguably he may have outsider status in respect of his strong commitment to the prosperity gospel, but whilst the LNP has been moving to the religious right for the past two decades, the general population has not embraced this form of fundamentalism.
Both men are essentially advertisers committed to no ideology except self-advancement and this absence of ideology appeals to their bases who identify their present difficult situation with elites living in the Canberra and Washington DC bubbles. Those who negate these bubbles in their rhetoric will always be attractive to these people.
Again the use of the word “elites” used almost always as some form of a pejorative term.
The use of the word “bubble”, coined by Morrison and always used to infer that those inside the” bubble” would not have the worldly experience in order to understand what is happening outside the “bubble”.
Please give me you definition of “elites”.
Please give me your understanding of the use of the word “bubble” and its contextual application, for all I can understand of the usage, is that it is a way for Morrison to both dismiss relevant concerns and questions when he hasn’t got the inclination to answer an irritatingly inconvenient question regarding something he wishes would just disappear.
The way I read Gregory’s comment I suspect he has the same objection to the terms “elite” and “bubble” that you do Ratty. I thought he was referring to the rhetoric of others, not using the terms himself as pejoratives. Personally I have no problem with the term “bubble” as it relates to the remote, out-of-touch world of many of our politicians and many of their Press Corps stenographers. Our Prime Minister, so fond of using the term to escape answering hard questions, is firmly encased in the bubble himself.
“Press Corps stenographers”. Very nice Rais.
It is the outsider’s perception of elites that is important here. I am referring to the members of the large consultancy firms, business economists, lobbyists, CEOs, senior public servants, political apparatchiks, media owners and elected politicians. Of course, some of these retain their connections with people and groups not identified with these specific groups, but by and large there is a perception of a difference between those who manipulate knowledge for their living and the battlers.
Given that most of these elite groups are located in the inner city, it is easy to see how the idea of a bubble can develop, especially when the centre of legislative power is located in an area–as it is in Canberra and DC– somewhat isolated from where the majority of the population live.
I scrolled to the byline half way through to see if Atkins wrote this.
Not a compliment.
Stop picking on Dennis Atkins.
Just because he is a Queenslander, doesn’t mean he misses much, sometimes chooses to overlook things.
This happens to be a common trait in Queensland, it saves having to fight about something no one really cares about and conserves energy for things that matter.
Such as the Adani mine, according to the The Brisbane Times (SMH); the absolutely crap deal that was negotiated in 2017 regarding royalties and sole use rail lines and Adani being able to lay off its entire development cost off against the royalties owed, sounds terribly like the Queensland government needs a kick up the bum hard enough to make its nose bleed before it signs a deal whereby we pay Adani to take the coal away.
Dennis, time for action before we are forced to call for Greta Thunberg; we all know she knows how to make middle aged men blow their fuses.
Brilliant and funny to boot- God knows laughter is all we have left