Anthony Miller officially takes the chief executive seat at Westpac on Monday. But he neatly captured the mood of Australia’s top chief executives as they look ahead to next year’s federal election – and the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

“Initiatives such as the Department of Government Efficiency in the USA may be the start of a focus on reducing regulation and bureaucracy,” Mr Miller says of Trump’s plan to make billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy the heads of a new US government agency aimed at stripping out red tape and government waste.