Malcolm Turnbull And Bill Shorten Have Borrowed Donald Trump’s Rhetoric And It’s Super Weird
Our millionaire banker Prime Minister has railed against "media elites".
Over the past 24 hours our political leaders have decided, for some reason, that the best way to respond to a Trump presidency is by adopting chunks of his campaign strategy.
It’s a peculiar move since polling during the US election showed nearly 80 percent of Australians were concerned about the idea of Donald Trump as President. But both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are clearly freaked out enough by the wave of populist anger that washed across the US that they’re trying to channel it for themselves.
On last night’s 7.30 the Prime Minister ripped into the “elite media” for not focusing on the real stories, while Bill Shorten has taken aim at foreign workers. It could just be a massive coincidence that this kind of language, eerily similar to Trump’s campaign rhetoric, is being used by our leaders just days after the US election.
People say politicians don't listen, but both Turnbull and Shorten have been very quick to respond to the concerns of Michigan voters
— David Donaldson (@davidadonaldson) November 15, 2016
Or it could be a really awkward attempt at trying to tap into the frustration many Australian’s feel towards politics.
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Malcolm Turnbull Attacks The “Elite Media”
Last night on 7.30 Turnbull was interviewed by Leigh Sales on a range of topics, including the recent debate around Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Sales asked the PM why the government was so invested in this one issue when most Australians were more concerned about things like healthcare and education costs.
“This is a question that you should address to your editors at the ABC, very seriously,” Turnbull answered. “18C is talked about constantly on the ABC. It’s talked about constantly in what’s often called the ‘elite media’.”
He went on to deride the ABC as “elite media” a few more times and even directly referenced the US election as an example of how “elite media” outlets were out of touch. This is incredibly funny for a few reasons.
Firstly, Turnbull pronounces the word ‘elite’ as “ay-leet”. Which is hilarious because literally no one else in the world says it that way.
One way of picking the A-Leet. Malcolm, is that they speak differently #abc730
— Darryl Snow (@lapuntadelfin) November 14, 2016
But the best part has to be the fact that the bloke railing against the ay-leets is a millionaire former merchant banker who lives in a waterfront mansion worth around $50 million. Before being elected to Parliament Turnbull worked as Kerry Packer’s in-house lawyer and was a managing director of Goldman Sachs.
So yeah, this guy knows a thing or two about being elite.
Back in 2014 Turnbull actually launched the Parliamentary Friends of the ABC group and defended the organisation from conservative attacks. But all of a sudden we’re expected to sign up to his argument that it’s elite and out of touch?
The attacks on “elite media” are straight out of the Trump playbook. Trump’s closest supporters regularly launched attacks on pretty much every news outlet aside from Fox News, criticising them as “elite” and “out of touch”. Trump himself lashed out against “media elites” during the campaign.
It didn’t make a lot of sense when Trump did it either. After all, he’s a billionaire who lives in a skyscraper (that he owns) in Manhattan. But just because one rich guy railed against the media doesn’t mean it makes sense for another one to do it. Especially when the second rich guy is the Prime Minister!
It’s hard to know what Turnbull’s strategy was here, if in fact there was one at all.
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Bill Shorten Is All About “Aussie Jobs” Now
Sadly it’s not just Malcolm Turnbull talking a leaf out of Trump’s campaign playbook. Labor leader Bill Shorten has starting ramping up his rhetoric on “Australian jobs” being threatened by “foreign workers”.
Trump made “American jobs” a massive part of his successful election campaign. And now it looks like Shorten wants to tap into a similar sense of economic anxiety. While you might be thinking that it’s normal for the Labor party to tackle the issue of Aussie jobs, Shorten’s latest announcement is actually a big shift from his previous positions.
Shorten is proposing a crackdown on 457 visas which allow businesses to hire foreign workers. He thinks that too many jobs are going to workers from overseas instead of locals. The Greens have accused Shorten of kicking off “a post-Trump attempt to chase Pauline Hanson’s One Nation vote” and pointed out only a small proportion of 457 visas are granted in the industries Labor is worried about.
The government has accused Shorten of hypocrisy by releasing figures showing that the highest numbers of 457 visas were issued when he was Employment Minister in 2012. So Shorten’s pivot to economic protectionism is pretty out of character.
Pauline Hanson is more than happy to take credit for Labor’s new policies, however.
When you look at Bill Shorten's recent rhetoric it seems Labor is now taking its cues from Pauline Hanson's One Nation. Good to see #auspol
— Pauline Hanson (@PaulineHansonOz) November 14, 2016
It’s understandable that Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten would be feeling under pressure following the rise of One Nation and the dramatic results in the US. But by parroting some of Donald Trump’s key talking points they’re coming across as pretty desperate, not to mention hypocritical.
No matter how much he rails against the “media elite” the Prime Minister is not going to able to shake the fact that he’s a millionaire banker. And if Bill Shorten wants to build a serious progressive alternative to One Nation he needs to do a lot more than just demonise foreign workers and say “Australian jobs” a bunch of times.