Federal election: Don’t believe the rusted-ons – Australian politics is not an American-style cage fight | David Penberthy

If your mate rocked up wearing a Peter Dutton shirt and a red cap saying Make Australia Great Again, how would you react, writes David Penberthy. Have your say.

Here’s a challenge for any columnist who occupies themselves writing about news and current affairs. Try to write a column at the moment that isn’t about Donald Trump.

When Covid started hitting its straps in early 2020, the virus had the effect of not just taking lives.

It also sucked the life out of all forms of human interaction and conversation.

I remember talking with a newspaper editor at the time who said she was finding it difficult to get anyone to write columns about anything other than Covid.

With every news story in the front of the paper dominated by the virus, the editor said that any ideas that didn’t involve lockdowns, social distancing or the flattening of curves would be more than welcome.

The same thing is happening with Donald Trump. Trump has become such an all-consuming figure that it is impossible to open any newspaper or turn on any TV news bulletin without wall-to-wall coverage of his presidency.

It would be weird and illogical to write a column about Donald Trump framed around the assertion that there are too many columns about Donald Trump.

This column isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about exhaustion, civility, and the need for people to be able to switch off.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump drive in a golf cart after arriving in Marine One on the ninth hole during previews for LIV Golf Miami at Trump National Doral Miami. Picture: Lauren Sopourn/Getty Images

I have written enough about the President, especially over the past few chaotic weeks with tariffs and Ukraine, and do not intend to add any further observations about him today.

What I do want to talk about instead is our way of life, particularly in the backdrop of the current election campaign, and the way we conduct ourselves and relate to each other.

A couple of times a week I stay up and spend an hour or so watching the breakfast news shows out of the US. I spend 30-odd minutes watching CNN and the same amount of time watching Fox and Friends. Combined, these programs deliver a picture of a nation which is no longer capable of agreeing on what day of the week it is.

The defining feature of the audiences for these two networks is that they hate each other’s guts.

What a country to live in. No wonder that many quieter Americans say they no longer discuss politics with family and friends for fear of destroying cherished relationships forever more.

I’m not sure if you caught that thriller that came out last year entitled Civil War, set in a not-too-distant dystopian US where several states have seceded and their militias are heading towards Washington.

It was a strange film with little dialogue and a limited plot, and while I wouldn’t describe it as entertaining, it had at its centre an unnerving plausibility.

And just to stress, I am not taking sides or apportioning blame here, especially as I would argue that the Trump phenomenon is as much the creation of left-wing elitism as right-wing extremism.

PM Anthony Albanese speaks at the Future Western Sydney event at Blacktown Workers Club in Sydney. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Opposition leader Peter Dutton visits Wallis Drilling in Midvale Western Australia on the campaign trail for the 2025 federal election. Picture: Thomas Lisson / NewsWire

In contrast, we remain largely blessed in Australia politically in that we occupy a sweet spot between apathy and obsessiveness.

There is a mainstream conviction that we have some serious problems, tempered by general agreement that there’s no place on earth you’d rather be.

Perhaps this is why our politics is less volatile than in the US.

Here, everyone is compelled to vote, meaning the detached but sensible people in the centre also head to the ballot box. In the US, it’s the rusted-ons and the dementedly passionate who hold sway, meaning politics has come to feel like a life and death proposition, if not quite a civil war.

Back in 2019 when my dad and I were in New Orleans an intense young fellow wearing rainbow hot pants approached us in the French Quarter and asked if we’d sign a petition protesting what he called the illegal occupation of the White House by Donald Trump.

We declined, explaining apologetically that we were mainly here for the oysters and cocktails.

In Australia, if one of your mates rocked up at the pub wearing a Peter Dutton T-shirt and a red baseball hat saying Make Australia Great Again, you’d sneak out the back door to avoid being seen in public with the weirdo.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets kids at Cabramatta Public School in Fowler, Sydney. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

If one of your friends turned up at a barbecue and spent the whole night talking about the climate emergency and how they were going to glue their bum to the road in defence of Chris Bowen’s renewable policies, you’d vet the guest list more carefully next time.

Let’s celebrate the noble Australian quality of not really giving too much of a s**t.

And as Dutts and Albo slug it out, and we are bombarded with attack ads on television where they paint each other in the least possible flattering light, it’s worth reflecting on how slight the difference really is between the two men.

There is less at stake than they want us to think.

On almost every major issue – even historically contested areas such as Medicare and industrial relations – there’s a cigarette paper separating the pair.

There are major challenges facing Australia.

Personally, I would like to see more big-picture thinking on some of them, like productivity and energy policy and budget repair.

But the idea that we are in some American-style ideological cage fight is blessedly not part of our make-up.

And let’s keep it that way. If you’re after a rule to live by, ‘We’re here for the oysters and cocktails’ will do me.

Originally published as Federal election: Don’t believe the rusted-ons – Australian politics is not an American-style cage fight | David Penberthy