When you change the USA, you change the world

I never ask people how they vote, except in surveys, but I know that amongst our members are those who vote LNP, but also Libertarian, One Nation, Katter, even some Labor voters.

And as it seems compulsory these days for everyone to have a stand on US politics, while I think most on this list probably would have voted for Donald Trump, if that were an option, there are a number who would be “Never Trumpers” or Democrats, who would have voted for Kamala Harris.

This email is for everyone. No matter what your position on Trump, he is the 47th president-elect of the United States and that matters, in particular to those of us in the Western alliance.

The re-election of Donald Trump resets the world. Last time he came to power it was almost whimsical. He was a rank outsider with a very narrow path to victory, which he only just navigated.

He was also a naif. As he says himself, after election he had to make 10,000 appointments to various roles, and he knew no one in Washington. He’d never even “slept over” before becoming president.

So his first term started-off a little chaotically with staff streaming in and out of employment, some of them, like Whitehouse Director of Communications, Anthony Scaramucci, for only a few days.

Then there was the first impeachment and the Russia hoax – the latter based on a security dossier fabricated from false information and  illegally funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign; the BLM riots; and then finally COVID hysteria; making it feel like America was out of control.

It’s amazing he got anything done, but he did. He lowered corporate taxes and regulations leading to an economic boom; achieved a breakthrough in the Middle East with the Abrahamic accords; called China’s bluff and started a defensive trade war with them; bullied NATO countries into increasing defence expenditure; stemmed the flood of immigrants at the border; and appointed three black letter lawyers to the Supreme Court.

Now he is back with an historic win, taking the electoral college, the popular vote, the senate, and the congress, despite a multiplicity of prosecutions in kangaroo courts and two assassination attempts.

A lot of people question Trump’s character. I don’t. He can be boorish, is certainly more than a little narcissistic, but in a dangerous world he’s just the sort of Henry VIII character you want at the head of the free world. He’s got character, and he’s got temperament, while a bit of inspired unpredictability doesn’t go astray.

His election was mainly due to the economy, and a little to do with border security. Then there was the political poverty of both Biden and Harris. It was also a lot to do with cultural issues.

We tend to split the political world into Leftwing and Rightwing, but I’ve started splitting it into Team Reality and Team Fantasy. I think it is more useful, and it provides a larger tent to pull together a coalition under. Many on the left are in Team Reality, they just don't recognise it yet, as are most on the right.

Team Fantasy is the one that will promulgate truly bizarre theories, like that a man can just choose to identify as a woman and that makes him a real woman, as well as less-obviously bizarre theories, like catastrophic climate change, virus elimination theories of pandemic control, modern monetary theory, renewable-only electricity grids, defunding the police, whole-word in education, words being violence, anti-racism.

If you want to know why Team Fantasy is increasingly attracting people with a university education it is because there is a certain intellectual virtuosity in convincing yourself, and others, that any of these things have merit. It’s an intellectual highwire act, suspended above reality, and it is fun, and empowering, and elevating, to be able to thread the needle in ways “less-gifted” people can’t.

Not all of Team Reality lacks university degrees, they’re just less prone to be blown away by fashion.  Maybe they are too busy, or perhaps their success in life is measured by how well they do butting-up against reality.

If they are pure knowledge workers, then they’re likely to be dissident knowledge workers, but they’re more likely to be in the business of manifesting ideas in the real world. That could mean being an engineer, or a tradie, hairdresser, businessperson.

That so many rich people in the US fund Team Fantasy is a reflection of how rich you can get through intangibles that scale up fantasies almost infinitely, like social media platforms, search engines, online marketplaces. Hollywood has bought into Team Fantasy in a big way, and where else would they buy in? Talking animals was only the beginning.

Trump’s win is like Reagan’s win in that it signals a change in the world. It’s not the cause of the change, but it provides a template whereby the change can be spread and secured.

While the result is being talked about as though it is all about Trump (Trump would like that) it is actually part of wider trends.

There was Brexit, then New Zealand turned decisively against Jacinda Ardern’s long winter. The UK may have seemed to have turned back, but in fact it was punishing the Conservatives for not being conservative (check Starmer’s popularity rating, it does not look like that of a man who actually won an election).

In Argentina, the most consistent poster child for economic profligacy in my whole lifetime, Javier Milei, a classical liberal economics professor, has won the presidency and is taking a metaphorical chainsaw to the fantasy fence restraining the Argentinians from the wealthy inheritance that should be theirs in such a resource-rich country.

Then there is Canada, where Pierre Poilievre, an articulate culture warrior, seems poised to dethrone Justin Trudeau in elections next year.   

Which puts our Queensland election in context. If my analysis that there was an international trend is correct then the win was definitely assisted by it but it doesn’t stop there. These waves are there to be ridden to successive election victories, reshaping society for the better along the way.

So here are some of the themes the dynamics of the Trump win help the LNP with in state parliament.

Free speech was implicit in Trump's victory. If it were not for podcasters, the blogosphere and social media, not to mention Musk's ownership of X, he would not have been able to get his message out. When you saw the unlikely coalition he brought together, including former Democrats, they were all people you would be most familiar with through seeing them interviewed on alternative media, like John Anderson's Conversations. This alternative news ecosystem is the reaction to the monolithic mainstream one.

There are free speech issues in Queensland, and the Crisafulli government shouldn't be shy in tackling them. We have unwarranted restrictions on free speech in various hate speech and anti-discrimination laws, as well as more subtly in the way professionals like doctors are being controlled in what they can say.

Immigration is not a state issue, but it is the first place Crisafulli should go. The federal government benefits from high immigration – it keeps their budget artificially afloat as they reap taxes from the immigrants and the population growth simulates economic growth.

There is not a lot for state governments in immigration - they wear the costs without the tax revenue. As the son of poor immigrants, David Crisafulli is well-placed to put the argument that the flood needs to be stemmed.

Deregulation is already a theme of the Crisafulli government, but it will be able to be pushed harder and faster than he might have thought. When Elon Musk is touting heroic reductions in the cost of bureaucracy of 30%, and Javier Milie is running around with a chainsaw, anything less is going to look anaemic.

This doesn’t have to mean sackings or cuts. The public service can be right-sized using natural attrition and the expected population growth. It can even mean higher salaries in return for even higher productivity.

Tax cuts will also be fashionable again. There is plenty the state government can do here, although as discussed in a number of our papers, that will require reform of Commonwealth State financial relations.

The major challenge to the Crisafulli government is actually economic. He and his finance team of David Janetzki and Ros Bates have to not just stabilise the patient but pull it back from the disaster Labor has set up with government debt rising from $109 billion now to $172 billion in just 4 years’ time.

Doing this without cutting and without increasing taxes is going to be very difficult.

Trump will be out of the Paris Accord which means the largest three emitting nations - India, China and the USA – are committed to increasing, not decreasing, emissions. That should shift Queensland’s focus from abatement of CO2 emissions to adaptation. Coal-fired power stations will have to stay open much longer (already conceded by Crisafulli), and there will be continuing  and expanding markets for our coal and gas, so we need to extract and export more of them.

Irrational bans on exploration for natural gas in the Eyre Basin, for example, should be scrapped, and development of more coal mines in Queensland encouraged.

In a world where people, rationally or not, expect temperatures and natural disasters to increase, Queensland will also be able to exploit its expertise in dry- and wetland farming, disaster recovery, strong and efficient sub-tropical and tropical architecture and so on.

Security is also a strong theme for the future. Queensland is already a defence manufacturing hub and home to the 3rd and 7th Army Brigades, as well as the largest operational RAAF base in Australia at Amberley. Australia needs to increase its defence expenditure, so the generating infrastructure needs to be available in Queensland to do that.

Security is also a lot more than the defence forces, with non-Chinese owned strategic minerals to become even more valuable in a Trumpian world.

Crisafulli’s law and order theme fits right into this realistic world, and while adult time adult crime is a reasonable starting point, there will be many ideas from around the world that can be copied and adapted.

Another theme will be preventative health with Robert Kennedy Junior’s Make America Healthy Again campaign bound to be a global theme. With some few adjustments like decentralising hospital management, increasing the number of contract surgical staff, and focussing on treating as many patients as possible as outpatients, Queensland’s hospital system is more than adequate for our current population.

It would become even more adequate if we can fix the chronic disease epidemics that clog our hospital beds. State health systems have an incentive to do just that, although few have made the investment.

And if the new USA administration goes looking for the truth on COVID we might start to get some here as well.

Then there is education. Trump has said he will abolish the federal Department of Education. This doesn’t mean that education is out of favour, but that decentralisation of education is in favour. It’s an attempt to get the Teachers’ Union out of the classroom and allow the states freer rein to set curricula and how children are taught. Last time the LNP was in power they made a few administrative changes, but left curricula untouched. The wave to turn back to education and away from indoctrination is there, and states like New South Wales are already further ahead. This is an area that can definitely be fixed.

And lastly there is the woke nonsense that is handicapping social interactions, public discourse, education, health, the public service, and private commerce, amongst others, and fracturing society. Quotas should be gone from the public service, and also from contracts the government imposes on those doing business with it. Legal instruments establishing human rights commissions, discrimination laws and the Human Rights Act should be reviewed, as should some of the laws around minors and transgenderism, where avoidable harm is being done.

I am not predicting that any of this will be inevitable, or even easy, but I can see the wave opening out in front of us. It’s beholden on all of us to take what is offered and make the most of it. If I’m right, there’s probably 20 years ahead of us where we can get our society back onto the path of progress.

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR