Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We're living in a time where the truth isn't just distorted; it's drowned. Political leaders flood the media with so many outrageous claims that accountability becomes almost impossible. We're seeing what's happening in the US with the Trump-Musk dysfunction to the extent no-one can keep up with it, and I'm seeing that same playbook unfolding here in Australia.

As a foreign correspondent, I was in Singapore in 2018 among an international press pack as Donald Trump unloaded his idea of a deal to encourage Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear aspirations and exploit the beauty of North Korea's beaches to become a tourist attraction. He informed us that he'd told the one he called 'little rocket man':

… Boy, look at that view. Wouldn't that make a great condo? …

In his version of international diplomacy, he is, to his credit, consistent. Benjamin Netanyahu struggled to contain his surprise last week when the President pronounced that two million Palestinians could be shifted out of Gaza so it could become the 'riviera of the Middle East'.

No-one should imagine that these outrageous fantasies are spontaneous. They reflect Trump's conviction that the modern media can't cope with more than one initiative a day, and he's right. As New York Times journalist Ezra Klein noted in the days after Trump's second inauguration:

… speed and force is a strategy unto itself …

My observation after spending four years or so covering the first Trump administration is that, if you say something often enough, it becomes true and often more dangerous.

This week the President has pledged to impose a 25 per cent tariff on imports of iron, steel and aluminium to the United States without exception. Then he and our Prime Minister agreed that an exemption of Australia would be under consideration. Beyond the obvious question of how Australian diplomats do their work when the target changes not weekly but within minutes is the issue of whether we want this kind of behaviour to influence our own politics.

I can see it already has. In Australia, tolerance and respect are now being weaponised as 'woke'. An end to so-called diversity hires in the Australian Public Service, for example, was foreshadowed by the opposition should it win government. This week 18 of the 30 coalition senators supported a failed move by Senator Pauline Hanson—I repeat, Senator Pauline Hanson—for an inquiry into the human cost of child gender treatment, a callous, inflammatory political stunt, with a government sponsored inquiry into health care for trans children already underway. Yet the majority of the opposition Senate, the alternative government, bought in. Respected and long-time columnist Niki Savva, previously a long-time Liberal staffer, suggests the opposition leader is Trump's 'little sir echo'. This copycat behaviour includes enlisting Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as an Elon Musk lookalike with a signature offering of ending Commonwealth expenditure on welcomes to country—all $450,000 of it. Unity's great, I guess, unless it involves standing in front of Indigenous flags!

Culture wars are a condescending vote grab, a calculated distraction, and they're dangerous. We've seen this all before in the mid-20th century—you can guess the regime—and I'm very troubled that we're seeing it again. It may work for some but apparently not in my home state of Victoria, where the Werribee state by-election showed a massive swing away from Labor but not towards the Liberal Party. The old way of doing things is done.

On this likely last day of the 47th Parliament, I ask the constituents of Goldstein to consider everything I've said when they cast their votes in the next few weeks. Understand your power, weaponise your independence and choose hope.

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