\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been called the Trump playbook, the Trump card, the Trumpist approach, campaigning as \u201cDonald Trump lite\u201d and even \u201cgoing full Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Election season is heating up in Australia, where the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has been sounding a lot like President Trump. He has lashed out at a \u201cwoke brigade\u201d of banks, grocery stores and a chain of pubs for addressing environmental and Indigenous issues. He has lamented about young men being \u201cdisenfranchised and ostracized\u201d<\/a> by diversity initiatives. And he\u2019s set up a shadow minister for government efficiency.<\/p>\n Mr. Dutton, the head of Australia\u2019s main center-right political party, hopes to oust Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in an election that must be held by May 17. Mr. Albanese has been under pressure to rein in post-pandemic inflation, and Mr. Dutton has accused him of being too distracted by \u201cwoke\u201d issues, like Indigenous rights, to address high prices and unaffordable housing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But last week, a widely followed poll had Mr. Albanese\u2019s approval rating at its lowest point<\/a> since he came to power in 2022. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in the NewsPoll survey said they disapproved of his performance. A head-to-head comparison showed Mr. Dutton closing in on Mr. Albanese, a sign that his political messaging was getting at least some traction.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I like about Dutton is he doesn\u2019t sit on the fence,\u201d said Louise Pridham, 57, a retired nurse who lives in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla. She and her husband, Nigel Pridham, a 57-year-old builder, said they were not Trump fans but felt validated by some of Mr. Dutton\u2019s messaging, which Mr. Pridham acknowledged had a Trump-like quality.<\/p>\n Ms. Pridham said more people she knew seemed to be appreciating Mr. Dutton\u2019s bluntness. \u201cHe says as it is. There\u2019s no wokeness in it.\u201d<\/p>\n The parallels between Mr. Trump and Mr. Dutton, a 57-year-old former policeman known for his tough stances on immigration<\/a> and asylum seekers<\/a>, are drawn by both supporters<\/a> and critics<\/a>. Mr. Dutton has not shied away from the allusion; on Friday, he railed about the government\u2019s diversity and inclusion efforts, hours after Mr. Trump, without offering evidence, blamed D.E.I. policies for a deadly plane-helicopter collision outside Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPositions advertised have included culture, diversity and inclusion advisers, change managers and internal communication specialists,\u201d Mr. Dutton said<\/a>, referring to job openings in the government. \u201cSuch positions, as I say, do nothing to improve the lives of everyday Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Dutton\u2019s office did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s return to office has emboldened<\/a> a range of right-wing politicians across Europe to harden their rhetoric, solidify their bases and expand their ambitions.<\/p>\n But in Australia, the influences are more muddled. In 2019, a survey found<\/a> that the conservative base in Australia was far more ideologically aligned with Hillary Clinton backers in the United States than with Trump supporters. Last year, barely a fifth of Australian voters said<\/a> in a survey that they would have chosen Mr. Trump over then-Vice President Kamala Harris if the U.S. election were up to them.<\/p>\n Mr. Dutton made clear his distaste for \u201cwokeness\u201d as early as 2021, when as defense minister he banned events<\/a> where staff members wore rainbow-colored clothing to support L.G.B.T.Q. awareness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Two years later, conservatives were energized by a watershed moment in Australia\u2019s culture wars. In 2023, a proposal to give Indigenous Australians a voice in Parliament in the form of an advisory body was rejected soundly by voters<\/a> in a referendum. It had been a landmark effort for Mr. Albanese, and its defeat, his opponents argued, meant a majority of Australians felt that placing too much emphasis on the country\u2019s colonial sins was divisive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One of Mr. Dutton\u2019s rallying cries has been his defense of Australia Day, the annual Jan. 26 holiday marking the day British settlers first landed in the Sydney area. In recent years, people who see it as a celebration of brutal colonial oppression of the Aboriginal population have called for abolishing the holiday or moving it to a different date.<\/p>\n But a survey conducted last month by The Sydney Morning Herald found that 61 percent of Australians supported keeping Australia Day as it is, up from 47 percent a year earlier.<\/p>\n Mark Kenny, the director of the Australian Studies Institute at the Australian National University, said Mr. Dutton\u2019s rhetoric appealed to a working-class base, which, like its American counterpart, sees itself as having been abandoned by economic shifts, including the decline of manufacturing. Those voters felt let down by their traditional political leadership on the left, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhat you\u2019ve got there is a kind of long-simmering sense of dissatisfaction, of being ignored, of not heard, being left behind,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen Dutton says \u2018woke,\u2019 it\u2019s lazy and imprecise, but that doesn\u2019t matter. People can attach to it what they think.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It is unlikely that Mr. Dutton can win just by mobilizing single-issue voters. That\u2019s because voting is compulsory in Australia, with the threat of a fine for noncompliance, and turnout typically exceeds 90 percent.<\/p>\n As readily as he has adopted some of Mr. Trump\u2019s language and priorities, Mr. Dutton has drawn the line at others, resisting pressure<\/a> from a coalition partner to campaign on transgender issues. He has also indicated that he would not consider withdrawing Australia from the Paris Agreement, the international climate accord.<\/p>\n To Graeme Turner, emeritus professor of cultural studies at the University of Queensland, Mr. Dutton\u2019s use of Mr. Trump\u2019s words and rhetoric seem a lot more opportunistic than substantive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI doubt you could find a politician who could define the word \u2018woke,\u2019\u201d Mr. Turner said. \u201cIt\u2019s become a really handy slogan as a way of smearing any idea they don\u2019t like, as a way of pre-empting it from serious analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n The sniping over Australia Day continued last week. Sussan Ley, the deputy leader of Mr. Dutton\u2019s party, marked the holiday by likening the arrival of British colonizers to Elon Musk\u2019s ambitions to settle Mars. \u201cThey did not come to destroy or to pillage,\u201d she said<\/a>, in comments that were promptly criticized and lampooned.<\/p>\n The day before, at the spot where Captain James Cook first landed in Australia in 1770 \u2014 now a national park \u2014 a smattering of families sprawled out on grassy knolls and enjoyed a leisurely, sunny afternoon.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t matter to me if you change the date because it\u2019s not that big a deal,\u201d John Gallop said of the holiday that was causing so much fuss among politicians. He said it was his first visit to the site in more than 50 years of living in Sydney, and that he had only come at the urging of his wife, who is from the Philippines.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much more we need to change in Australia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n