Joe Hockey is wrong.
Moreover, his remarks this morning were alarming.
On Ben Fordham’s 2GB breakfast show, Australia former ambassador to Washington said there had “for sure” been electoral fraud in the US overnight.
This closely echoes Donald Trump’s words: “This is a fraud on the American public.”
Hockey added: “There’s plenty of good reason to have litigation.”
This is such a damaging and dangerous thing for Australia’s immediate past top official to say.
Where is the evidence?
Well, Hockey said, Washington DC had voted 93 per cent for Biden, and “I find it hard to believe”.
READ MORE: US election live blog | How did the bookies get it so wrong ... again? | No limbo as Biden team moves into President mode
“Even my best booth in Longueville (NSW) I got 83 per cent,” he added, all jocular. Asked if there must therefore have been fraud, he said: “For sure.”
This is just ignorant.
The vote in DC has always been heavily Democratic.
No Republican has ever won there.
In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton received 90.5 per cent of the vote.
In 2012, Barack Obama received 90.9 per cent of the vote.
In 2008, Obama got 92. 5 per cent.
It’s entirely plausible that Biden got 93 per cent.
How is it that Joe Hockey seems not to know this?
Haven’t we only just stopped paying him -handsomely – to represent our interests there?
But let’s put that aside for a moment.
Australian officials, and ex-officials, should not be making mischief of this kind.
The path to the presidency in the US is properly via the ballot box.
The US is as we speak a nation under immense stress, with half the votes going one way, and half the other way.
Australia’s role here isn’t to plant seeds of doubt, and disunity.
The last thing Australia as a nation needs is headlines across the world: “Australia’s former top official sides with Trump on allegations of fraud!”
We are not meant to have a dog in the fight.
We can get on with whomever they choose.
In the meantime, serious commentators, respectful of democracy, are urging the vote-counters to simply carry on.
Count every vote.
Keep going and do not stop and not be distracted. Give the people their US birthright, which is to decide.
Markets finding new ways to unlock Trump potential
The world’s capital markets are signalling that the US is setting a new pattern for world growth.
Ignorant ALP has missed the point of ‘disrupter’ Trump
One might dismiss the Trumpian rhetoric that insists the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza would have been averted under his watch. But if you speak to those tasked with managing affairs at the coalface of regional trouble, they’d likely think differently.