Every morning, I wake up and scan hopefully the opinion pages of The Australian for any sign of a sympathetic or proper understanding of the ‘new right’ – the dynamic intellectual movement that powered Trump to the White House and is upending governments across Europe.
Every morning, I am inevitably disappointed.
I say this as a fan of our nation’s leading broadsheet. Overall, the journalism is high quality. It often covers issues that are not touched elsewhere. Generally, the paper has been a force for good since its establishment. You certainly won’t see me in any Grace Tame-style ‘F- Murdoch’ t-shirt anytime soon.
But in recent times some serious blind spots have developed which desperately need to be corrected.
Simply put, many key figures at the paper remain stuck in a Hawke-Keating-Howard era ideological bubble. Their attitude resembles the #NeverTrump disgruntled ex-Republicans in the US who similarly have not moved on from the post-Cold War 1990s. Many over the last 12 months often sounded like Liz Cheney with unhinged talk about the new American President being a ‘threat to democracy’. It is hard to think of any columnist from the Oz who was explicitly and consistently pro-Trump at any of the many elections he contested.
This matters because The Australian is uniquely influential among the centre-right in our country. But its current editorial stance has had the effect of cementing a stale out-of-date consensus. It has retarded the development of conservative politics in a way that has occurred in other Western countries.
The article, Donald Trump’s Agenda Won’t Work for Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton, by Editor-At-Large Paul Kelly last weekend was a classic example of this. The piece did two things that are so predictable and frustrating to those of us who wish to see the core policies of the new right at least debated in Australia.
First, there is a mindless obsession about Trump’s ‘persona’. He is a businessman, a ‘showman’, and a dealmaker we are told repeatedly as if that provides some sort of great insight. We are assured has no real interest in policy but is transactional and just likes the art of the deal. Trump is presented as a sort of American ideology-free Clive Palmer which is wrong and completely misses the point.
Secondly, there is a focus on policies that are not different to what any standard Republican would have agreed with, while ignoring the areas that made Trump different.
To be sure, many of these traditional policies are welcome. Significantly, in his new term, he appears to be implementing these, rather than just saying he would, as is so often the case with other centre-right politicians around the world.
But while welcome, many of these are not new.
‘Drill baby, drill!’ is a John McCain era slogan popularised by Sarah Palin. Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is not something Dick Cheney would have disagreed with. Cutting taxes and government waste and regulation is something Jeb! would have loved. ‘Diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies are just a more aggressive version of ‘affirmative action’ that Republicans have been fighting through the courts and legislatures since the 1990s. Stressing patriotism and flag-waving is as old as Ronald Reagan.
But what made Trump different was not these. Rather they were primarily his positions on trade, immigration, and foreign policy. That was what made him distinctive from other Republicans and the existing bipartisan consensus. That is why he won the Presidency at least twice.
Anyone who thinks that these issues are not the core of the Trump agenda should read Marco Rubio’s speech to the Senate at his nomination to be confirmed Secretary of State where he clearly and succinctly spells out this out.
Sadly, there remains little difference between the major parties in Australia on these issues – both are in favour of free trade, mass immigration, and a neoconservative/interventionist foreign policy. The Australian editorial line remains vehemently opposed to any significant change to these policies or even a proper discussion of them. They simply want to ignore these and go back to a pre-Trump world. ‘Howard, not Trump, is the model’, Kelly concludes his column.
On a Joe Rogan podcast just prior to the November 5 poll, JD Vance expressed the frustration of how many of us on the new right feel about The Australian and current centre-right consensus here:
‘There are three issues where you are not allowed to challenge the establishment. One is trade. You, you know, you have to be pro free trade. Everything is good. Let as many Chinese slave labour made products into your country as possible, even if it destroys native industries. That is number one, the most important issue to our establishment. The number two most important issue is immigration. And the number three most important issue is foreign policy. And maybe actually foreign policy is the biggest. Because if you criticise the wars and you criticise American foreign entanglements, that is where people get really fired up.’
All the way from Australia – we hear you, buddy. We hear you.
First published in The Spectator 5 February 2025 as “How the “Normiecons” Still Don’t Get The New Right”. © Dan Ryan 2025. All Rights Reserved.
