Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I was fortunate enough to spend some time in the States back in the 1990s, when I did a shared service implementation down in Sarasota in the great state of Florida. I was invited to go fishing one afternoon with the husband of one of the female staff who worked for me at the time. His name was Woody, and he had a mullet down to his shoulders. He had a big mo, and he drove an F-150. I said to Woody: 'What's the go with guns in this place? Why are you guys so mad about guns?' He just came back at me with one line straight off the tip of his tongue. He said, 'We don't trust the government.' I often reflect on that statement, because back in the 1990s the biggest political scandal in the US was Bill Clinton engaging in improper sexual relations with a female half his age, and somehow I don't recall the Left having too much of an issue with that.

That spirit of Woody reflects the spirit of the American Revolution in 1776, and that spirit is very important because it was the manifestation of the European Enlightenment, the ideal that power will no longer belong to those above us but will come from the grassroots movement. That's what the American Revolution was all about in 1776, when they sought to overthrow the tyranny of the Currency Act of 1763, where the British and King George III stopped the American colonies from printing their own currency. There was also, of course, the principle of no taxation without representation, with the Boston Tea Party.

It's very important to understand that what Trump represents, regardless of whether or not you like the person, is the fact that people wanted to drain the swamp. They are sick and tired of the deep state. The great American people are sick and tired of seeing billions of dollars get wasted on foreign wars and on protecting other countries and not their own. So I welcome Donald Trump and wish him all the best.