LATIKA M BOURKE: Donald Trump is the third wheel in the Australian Federal election campaign

Donald Trump is the third wheel in the Australian Federal election campaign.

Both sides want to use a Trump-sized stick to beat each other with, but neither appear capable or willing to step outside the political battleground and tell the Australian people what the fallout from a global trade war means for our future and place in this dangerous and increasingly violent world.

Mr Albanese’s response to a voter who had not been pre-arranged to meet him as part of the carefully stage-managed stunts that constitute modern electioneering these days was a case in point.

“Protect us from Temu Trump,” Sebastian Judd-Mole, a 36-year-old left-leaning voter in the seat of Wills urged the Prime Minister during their random encounter at the Bell Street Pharmacy in Pascoe Vale on Thursday morning.

Mr Albanese stiffened and immediately left the conversation. He knows there is a fine line between inviting Mr Trump front-and-centre into the election campaign and being seen to be insulting the temperamental President who sees red when criticised and regularly rails against allies harder than he does his foes.

All things considered, Australia got off lightly with just the minimum 10 per cent tariffs imposed on all goods. But as the government has been warning, the real damage is the huge costs imposed on our major trading partners, especially our largest – China which faces 54 per cent tariffs. It used to be the case that when America sneezed the rest of the world caught a cold but Australia’s ailments could be far more serious in this context.

Beijing’s Commerce Ministry promised “resolute countermeasures” as did the European Union.

Australia will not retaliate.

“There’s no country that has received a better outcome than Australia,” Mr Albanese said.

“Australia has been presenting our case to the United States very strongly across the board.”

The visit to the pharmacy, timed to take place after Trump’s tariffs announcement, was deliberate. Mr Albanese has been fashioning himself as the guardian of Medicare which faces dual threats — Americanisation and Peter Dutton.

Trump has been a constant backdrop to this federal election and the effect has been two-fold for Labor.

The first has been the rallying around the flag mood that the US President’s brutal methods have sparked.

The morning of high drama that ensued when the President appeared to suggest a ban on all Australian beef imports, worth $4 billion to the Australian economy, was just another example of the heedless way Trump’s America treats its allies.

“Australia bans, and they’re wonderful people and wonderful everything, but they ban American beef and we imported (US)$3 billion of Australian beef from them just last year alone, they won’t take any of our beef, they don’t want it because they don’t want it to affect their farmers,” the President said.

“And you know what? I don’t blame them. But we’re doing the same thing. Right now, starting at midnight tonight, I would say.”

These words sparked a frenzy as they seemed to suggest the Trump Administration was going to kill an industry overnight. No one could immediately say if these comments meant a ban was coming into effect, and because the Administration only finalised the tariff agenda in the last 36 hours, this might have been a late-hour wildcard inclusion.

Frantic phone calls were made, and it turned out this was one of those cases where the President, who increasingly means the inconceivable things he says, was just musing aloud.

“We have received confirmation on what we thought was the case, it is just the 10 per cent tariff,” Mr Albanese said.

The second benefit for Labor has been its ability to badge Mr Dutton as a lookalike Trump. This was an easy attack that the Opposition Leader left himself open to by announcing a Work from Home ban, an Australian DOGE to be headed by Jacinta Price, the darling of the Voice campaign, and sweeping cuts to the public service.

Tackling government waste, slashing the size of the bureaucracy and having a whinge about the shift to remote working have long been conservative causes that haven’t necessarily equated to Trumpism.

But the Elon Musk’s gleeful heartlessness at carrying out mass sackings has made these ideas toxic for now.

But it’s not all one-way.

Trump provides the opposition with opportunities, too. While careful to now try and put some distance between the tone of the Coalition and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, the collapse of the world post-world order leaves Australians anxious about its place and direction in a world where its security and economic partners are both behaving like predators.

This is not Mr Albanese’s natural territory. This first week, he has spent his time visiting Medicare clinics and childcare centres, not defence bases or businesses and exporters trying to navigate a global trade war.

The opposition would prefer an election on national security and foreign affairs for this reason, as was reiterated when a Chinese ‘research vessel’ sailed into Australia’s exclusive economic zone near underwater cables that transmit data around the country.

It senses an opportunity to use the global turmoil to paint the Prime Minister as a weak vassal, being thrown around by the waves of uncertainty, unable to anchor and find a direction for the country.

There is some truth to this. The Prime Minister points to his time as Transport Minister working on aviation agreements as examples of his depth in the international arena.

By contrast, Mr Dutton is a former Home Affairs and Defence Minister who has built himself up as a strongman of Australian politics.

Polling suggests voters think Mr Dutton, who has been stronger in his criticisms of the US President over the Oval Office dressing down of Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky and steel tariffs, is better placed to manage Mr Trump but only just.

According to RedBridge polling, 33 per cent of voters thought he was better placed compared to 22 per cent who nominated Mr Albanese while 21 per cent felt there was no difference.

This is why Mr Albanese has been gradually toughening his language on Trump in recent days, declaring that he would always stand up for Australia’s interests whilst claiming Mr Dutton wanted to be “hairy chested” when it came to foreign policy.

Labor is trying to argue that Mr Dutton wants to import MAGA and the Americanisation of the healthcare system into Australia, something Mr Dutton rejects and has gone out of his way to match health funding to demonstrate.

The ding-dong is depressing, banal and overshadowing the real conversation that Australia needs to be having, centered around our defence spending, which should and must certainly rise faster and swifter than Labor currently plans, and our national resilience.

Labor’s attempts have so far been to respond with a promise to diversify trade — a project that has been underway since China’s economic coercion with mixed results — a future critical minerals strategy and a $20 million Buy Australian campaign.

“There’s a reason why on Saturday the second place I went to after the electorate of Dickson was the electorate of Hinkler,” Mr Albanese said, referring to The Nightly’s article that quoted Labor strategists questioning his decision to campaign in safe LNP seats.

“I know some people said ‘why is he going to central Queensland?’

“Because nothing says Buy Australian like a Bundy ginger beer.

“And we will promote buying Australian as one way that we can respond.”

While the pictures of the PM cracking open a drink were wholesome enough, this is not going to cut it.

For Peter Dutton’s part, his promised increase of defence spending will provide the cornerstone of his approach. Australia should not have to wait to be asked or forced by this Administration to lift its game.

But his promise that he could cut a deal on the premise that the Coalition did during Trump’s first term is ambitious.

“As we demonstrated when President Trump was first elected, we were able to negotiate for an exemption for Australia,” Mr Dutton said.

“We did that as a government.

“This Prime Minister hasn’t been able to do it because he can’t get a phone call.

“The Ambassador can’t get in to see any of the staff, let alone the President.”

Mr Trump has spoken to Mr Albanese twice and given the fact that Australia’s treatment was best-case scenario, it is clear that those conversations did have some effect in impressing upon the President, as the prime minister did, that Australia does not impose any sort of tariff on the United States and continues to run a trade deficit.

It is obviously too much to ask for in the height of an election campaign that our political leaders see Trump as more than just an opportunity with which to whack each other.

But if they tried, they might find the public eager to listen.