Peta Credlin: Trump’s second coming has lessons for woke Australia
Donald Trump’s return is a game-changer in the US but, here for Labor, it is yet another sign that the silent majority have found their voice, writes Peta Credlin.
Peta Credlin
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The second coming of Donald Trump is a massive defeat for identity politics, climate alarmism, uncontrolled migration and big government, at least in America, but there’s lessons and consequences for Australia and the wider world.
Maybe, just maybe, we might finally have passed the point of Peak Woke.
As Trump kept telling voters during the campaign: “I’m for you, Kamala is for they/them”. That play on pronoun-politics was no accident.
He said that the way to get energy prices down was to “drill baby, drill” so there was no pretence from him that the so-called green transition means more jobs and cheaper electricity. He kept saying in the campaign that illegal migration cut wages, stole jobs, and lowered the living standards for Americans, including for those migrants who came the right way (which played out in his big gains in the Latino vote), so there was none of this nonsense that low skill workers flooding across the border was somehow good for the economy.
Many pundits, wise after the event, have noted the continuing shift to the political right of poor but aspirational voters, and how Trump scored much better than expected among unionists, blacks and Latinos. The reasons for this should never have been a mystery: More jobs, higher wages, and greater prosperity are normally associated with less red tape, lower taxes, and a government that understands that it’s the private sector that creates wealth.
Why would poor but aspirational people keep voting for green-left parties that take their votes for granted, encourage victimhood and connive to keep them down?
As well, migrants especially, didn’t leave their countries of birth only to be lectured by elites about how horrible their chosen homeland is. They also don’t want to be treated like minorities; most migrants yearn to be accepted as part of the mainstream. Put simply, “Making America Great Again” (or Britain or Australia) resonates with them because they always thought it was.
There are huge lessons here for Australia. Trump’s most telling challenge was to ask voters whether they were better off than four years ago. For most, the answer was a resounding “no”, due to the Biden-Harris administration’s reckless spending driving up inflation. Everything now costs more, a point Joe Biden himself highlighted with his social media post about “shrink-flation”, that Anthony Albanese foolishly copied.
And for all Trump’s trash talk about opponents, voters remembered that few presidents had adhered more closely to his pledge of “promises made, promises kept”.
He did cut tax and regulation, brought back jobs to the US, quit the Paris Agreement, boosted domestic energy production, moved the embassy to Jerusalem, and built (much of) the wall.
Australia has now had six successive quarters of negative growth per person, a household recession, in other words. GDP per person is down 2 per cent, per capita household disposable income is down by almost 10 per cent, and “employee household” living costs have gone up some 17 per cent since the election.
Of course, not all of this is within government’s control but that which is, such as immigration numbers, workplace rules, and project approvals, the Albanese government has driven the wrong way.
Then there’s the fact that, far from falling by the promised $275 per household per year, power bills have risen by about $1000 on average; largely thanks to the government’s obsession with electricity that only works when the wind blows and the sun shines.
Far from being the gracious acknowledgment of the First Australians that the PM insisted it was, most Australians saw his signature Indigenous Voice as yet another attempt to divide the country. Likewise flying three flags instead of just the one national flag. Plus, the fact that government officials can’t open their mouths without first acknowledging that the country belongs to some more than others.
Then there’s the fact that “Albo the Houso” can’t wait to move to a clifftop mansion on the Central Coast, loves the pointy end of the plane, and would rather be at the tennis than sorting out things like out-of-control crime in Alice Springs.
Sure, Trump often behaves like a crass billionaire but at least he doesn’t pretend to be anything else. He loves his country and its people, and who couldn’t admire his courage under fire?
Two years back, Albanese fell into the trap of many newly-installed national leaders, namely thinking that people voted positively for him rather than merely against the previous incumbent. He really believes that a substantial majority of the Australian people are as committed as he and his colleagues are on climate and identity.
But the public perception is increasingly that he’s weak, out of his depth; traits the voters rarely forgive.
It’s clear that Trump’s return is a game-changer in the US but, here for Labor, yet another sign that the silent majority have found their voice.
HOW TO STOP HIGH COURT FROM MAKING US KEEP FOREIGN CRIMINALS
Last week, the High Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to require released foreign criminals to wear ankle bracelets and be subject to curfews.
It was the court’s response, to the government’s response, to the earlier decision: That foreign criminals could not be kept in immigration detention, pending an unlikely deportation, because that amounted to indefinite imprisonment.
Hence over 200 foreign criminals are loose on our streets, who have no right to be in Australia, because all their claims for asylum have been rejected and yet they can’t be deported. That includes 12 murderers, 66 sex offenders, 97 violent offenders, and 15 drug traffickers.
We have this problem because the Rudd-Gillard government lost control of our borders and 50,000 people came here illegally by boat, of whom about 30,000 remain in Australia, mostly still on bridging visas appealing for refugee status. But it’s not just people who come ILLEGALLY and claim asylum; it’s also people who come LEGALLY on tourist or student visas and then claim asylum.
Thanks to activist lawyers, often with legal aid, they can stay for years clogging up the court system. And often, they then can’t return, even when found not to be refugees, because their home country won’t take them back.
So, we are stuck forever with people who have no right to be here, some of whom commit crimes, and many of whom are a burden on taxpayers.
It’s just not right and it needs to be fixed. Unless there’s an agreement with a country that its citizens CAN be deported if they breach their visa conditions, we should NOT allow people from that country to enter Australia, even as visitors. Only those countries willing to take back their people should that be required should be on our visa approval list.
With some 117,000 asylum claims currently in the pipeline, we can’t be stuck with foreign criminals forever, because their countries refuse to take them back. So let’s fix it by not letting them in, in the first place!
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Originally published as Peta Credlin: Trump’s second coming has lessons for woke Australia
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