Extract from The Guardian
Donald Trump, the “big thinker” as Peter Dutton has described him, is day by day demonstrating the reverse, showing just how shortsighted he is.
Or is he?
In his latest assault, he has removed longstanding news organisations from the Pentagon, restricted access to news events for storied news agency Associated Press, seized control of the White House press pool from news organisations, and moved to shut outlets broadcasting Voice of America and Radio Free Asia across our own region.
Staff have been furloughed and silenced. Chinese state media has celebrated with glee and will no doubt seek to fill the void.
It is an undisguised war on information and evidence; retribution for the objective reporting of Trump over the past decade and a naked attempt to replace it with slavish sycophancy from supportive outlets.
This reduces truth, frighteningly, at a time when the capacity to influence public opinion with lies and propaganda is outsized.
It is a relief to see that initiatives with Trumpian overtones, like bans on public servants working from home and a referendum on deportation of criminal dual citizens, appear to be met with little support in Australia.
However, it is clear that Trump will continue to have an impact on Australian politics and our economy, with the tariffs on Australian aluminium and steel exports just the beginning.
US companies seeking to benefit from Trumpism are eyeing Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and government laws reining in the harms of social media.
US interference in these spheres is not only a breach of our long-term relationship, it starts to hint at a breach of sovereignty.
For decades, any Australian with an interest in freedom of expression has looked on with admiration at the benefits to American democracy of the first amendment, not just in relation to the vitality of its media.
Freedom of expression is an essential underpinning of academic research.
Yet already, Robert F Kennedy Jr as health and human services secretary has been wielding his anti-vaccine axe around his department and the renowned medical research capabilities of the US National Institutes of Health.
His most recent foray has been to suggest that poultry farmers should let bird flu spread naturally through their flocks in the hope of identifying those hens with natural immunity.
It has emerged that the Trump administration is also pre-emptively acting to end or suspend US funding for research at Australian universities.
At least six Australian universities have had US funding for research projects paused or cancelled. In total, US support accounted for $400m last year.
Apart from the grave consequences of withdrawing financial support, the Trump administration is also attacking academic independence with a detailed questionnaire demanding that researchers confirm that their programs are not a “DEI project”, not a “climate or ‘environmental justice’ project”, do “defend against gender ideology” and combat “Christian prosecution”.
Australian universities are rightly alarmed that this will undermine the breadth and quality of research with significant costs to advances in medical treatment and technology.
Shutting down truth in the form of education, information and research is a dark path. It’s been used by regimes across history, including the Khmer Rouge whose trials I covered as a journalist in Cambodia.
Nearly a century ago Australia turned to the United States “free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom”, when Britain could no longer protect our shores.
Trump is now threatening that relationship of great mutual benefit.
He
is extending that to freedom of speech, one of the very principles on
which this enduring democratic relationship has been founded.
And if the opposition leader is right that this is the intentional
product of deep thinking, rather than shortsightedness, that’s even more
worrying.
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Zoe Daniel is the independent member for Goldstein and a member of the joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade. She is also a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and Washington bureau chief
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