Why Trump’s a term-long problem for the Coalition

The federal election cast Australia against the spectre of Donald Trump. It was a resounding victory for Australia. Peter Dutton was associated with Trump so he was punished. And because the Liberals were associated with Dutton, they were punished, too. The tangerine taint proved toxic.

The smartest, most successful Liberals were the ones who most distanced themselves from Trump, and Dutton.

Illustration by Joe BenkeCredit:

Against the force of the nationwide landslide that buried the Liberals, just one Liberal managed to fight uphill to seize a seat from an opponent. That was Tim Wilson. On Friday, he was on the cusp of recovering the Melbourne seat of Goldstein, a blue-ribbon Liberal stronghold until teal independent Zoe Daniel took it from him in 2022. Wilson now has taken it back by the slimmest of margins (his lead was 206 votes on Friday evening).

A Wilson win would be remarkable, and not only because it would be the sole Liberal gain of 2025. It would also show that it is possible for the Liberals – for the first and only time – to recover a seat from a teal.

Wilson did many things right. One of them was avoiding any association with Trump: “I always had the view that the US president was the easiest thing to anchor Peter Dutton with,” Wilson says.

“Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before someone did something that added weight to the anchor,” he tells me. He declines to specify, but appears to be referring to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her “make Australia great again” moment.

It was probably too late; Dutton himself had been a little too happy to associate himself with the man he called “a big thinker”. And when Trump aimed his “Liberation Day” tariff cannon at Australia, the effect on voters was immediate.

“A hammer blow” was the way Tony Barry of Redbridge, formerly a Liberal campaign director, described the effect at the time, based on his research. “I don’t think people realise what a massive impact that has had.”

So how did Wilson handle this in the campaign? “My opponent constantly wanted me to talk about Donald Trump.” Naturally. Whenever it was raised by a voter, Wilson says he responded with: “She is obsessed with Donald Trump, that’s why she wrote a book about him” – Daniel’s 2021 Greetings from Trumpland. “I am obsessed with getting people into homes, and that’s why I wrote a book about that” – his 2020 The New Social Contract.

On the other hand, Labor merely had to strike a pose of calm defiance in the face of Trump’s assault on Australia’s interests. Anthony Albanese’s government appeared to be stable, sane and safe. It reaped a major dividend at the exact moment that voters sought security.

Yet this is not the end of the era of Australia v Trump. To rework the Bunnings slogan, higher tariffs are just the beginning.

Trump’s administration already plans to assail important Australian interests. Starting with the cherished Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. America’s big pharma firms complain that it’s a restraint on their ability to charge Australians full freight for their drugs. Which is the whole point.

And Trump plans to fight Australia on behalf of Elon Musk’s X and the other big US “social” media and tech corporations. Wherever Australia tries to exert any sovereignty over local internet content – to protect kids, for instance – Trump, Musk & Co. will demand that American profits prevail.

Then there are Australia’s biosecurity laws. The laws quarantine Australia’s beef, pork, apple and pear sectors from imported disease, but their US competitors demand entry, claiming the biosecurity laws are trade protectionism by another name. Trump’s America will try to break all of this and more.

A problem for the Albanese government to manage diplomatically? Yes. But Trump’s hostility is also a gift that will keep giving for Albanese politically. All he need do is maintain his calm defiance in the face of Trump’s bellicosity and bluster. And Albanese will be a local hero.

Peter Dutton’s association with Donald Trump hurt him and benefited Anthony Albanese.Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong

And what will the Coalition be doing? The Liberal Party will try to distance itself from Trump. Dutton is gone now, but it is vulnerable nonetheless. Why? Because of a little detail – the Gina Rinehart faction, the local franchise of Trump’s MAGA, and its love of fossil fuels, nuclear reactors and climate denialism.

The Rinehart faction is mostly concentrated in the Nationals. But Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is one of the staunchest Rinehart reactionaries. She has moved from the Nationals party room to sit with the Liberals.

How is this a problem for the Liberals? Because the Liberals, if they hope to continue as the alternative party of government, need to dump the climate wars. But the Nationals and Price don’t want to dump the climate wars. They want to escalate the conflict.

At her first press conference after her election as the new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley was asked: “Moderates have been damning about a lack of climate ambition. Can you really afford another climate war to start off your tenure?”

Ley answered: “There isn’t going to be a climate war [within the Coalition]. There is going to be sound, sensible consultation.” She’s been careful to say that all policy is up for review.

Specifically, she’s been non-committal on the two frontline Coalition climate policies – the plan to build seven taxpayer-funded nuclear reactors, and the commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But the Gina Rinehart faction is very committed, regardless of what Ley thinks. Committed to forging ahead with the nuclear reactors. And committed to dumping the net zero commitment.

The climate war inside the Coalition is already afoot. It was the Coalition under Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce that started the climate wars as a way to wreck Labor. And, for a while, it worked. But now the climate war is a civil war within the Coalition. So the victim of the war will be the Coalition.

Joyce was the Nationals’ leader who struck the Coalition deal with Scott Morrison to support net zero. But on Friday, Joyce, recovering from cancer surgery, tells me: “It’s obvious in the sobriety of the post-election analysis, it’s incontestable in my view – we can’t go forward with net zero. There is no love out there for net zero.”

He cites his electorate of New England. While there was an overall swing towards him of 2 per cent, he enjoyed a swing in his favour of 15 per cent in part of the electorate, an area of the town of Muswellbrook that previously had been in a Labor-held seat but recently was included in his electorate as a result of redistribution.

“In the past, people didn’t know what net zero was, but they went along with it because it sounded harmless. But now they realise it does mean something – and it hurts. We have to have a reality check,” Joyce says.

Other Nationals – including senator Matt Canavan and Colin Boyce, the MP for the seat of Flynn in Queensland – want to dump net zero. These Nats also hope to retain the nuclear energy policy they took to the election.

The Nats’ leader, David Littleproud, publicly has been evasive on these policies as he entered coalition negotiations for the new parliament with Ley.

The Nationals’ leader in the Senate, Bridget McKenzie, hasn’t been evasive at all. She told my colleague Paul Sakkal this week that it would be “against the national interest” to drop nuclear power “if we are serious about staying an industrial economy and reducing emissions”.

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has said it would be “against the national interest” to drop nuclear power as policy.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

She implied that it could be a dealbreaker for the Coalition: “Obviously, our country is best served by a strong Nationals-and-Liberals Coalition government, but the establishment of a coalition between the Liberal and National parties is never a foregone conclusion.” And the net zero policy was up for review because regional Australia was “absolutely up in arms about [Labor] carpeting their farmland, their communities with transmission lines and solar panels and wind farms”.

Yet the Liberals know that if they want to have any chance of forming government again, they need to appeal to the cities and to voters under the age of 60. Without a credible climate policy, they can’t do either.

The Coalition won’t break entirely because the Liberals and Nationals are merged into one – the Liberal National Party – in their stronghold state of Queensland. Besides, the Nats want to be in a coalition so they keep their positions as shadow ministers, and the salary allowances that go with them. But it’ll look more like a sullen cohabitation than a coalition.

And this civil war is not a clear-cut Nats v Libs conflict. There are Liberals, notably Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who agree with the idea of dumping net zero and keeping the nuclear policy. This roiling internal argument will probably dog the Coalition all the way to the next election.

And every time it surfaces, it will remind the electorate that the Coalition simply isn’t credible on energy and climate policy. And that it shares its climate-denying, fossil-fuel-loving recidivism with Gina Rinehart and Donald Trump.

The state of the Coalition today is reminiscent of philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s famous line: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

Peter Hartcher is political editor.

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