Some of Australia’s most outspoken Trump supporters have exercised restraint in responding to fresh recommendations made by the congressional committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol.
On Tuesday morning, the January 6 committee announced it had referred former US president Donald Trump to the US Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution. This marks the first time in American history that Congress has done so against a former president.
The January 6 committee, a bipartisan panel of nine, unanimously accused Trump of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress, and knowingly making false statements to authorities, bringing to an end an 18-month-long probe — as well as putting a dint in the unwavering support for Trump that accompanied it.
In Australia, key figures in conservative politics remained notably tight-lipped, except for a couple of outliers. So far, only the newly elected United Australia Party senator for Victoria, Ralph Babet, has been drawn on the outcome.
He told Crikey he thought the panel was “politically driven” and the referral of criminal charges “largely symbolic in nature”. The outcome, he suggested, could be shrugged off by conservatives in Australia, who he said should “return to their traditional values”.
On whether Trump still has his support: “Trump has not been found guilty of any crime from the [January 6] protest.”
Other key figures in conservative circles across Australia, however, have been less forthcoming. Among them is Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, who just last month was pictured at Trump’s 2024 campaign launch at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
The billionaire mining magnate has a long public record of support for Trump. During a speech to guests of Mount Isa’s “National Mining & Related Industries Day” in 2016, Rinehart said the former president’s election win showed promise for America, and urged Australian leaders to follow in his footsteps.
It’s unclear whether her position has changed. She couldn’t be reached by Crikey in time for publication.
The former Liberal National Party senator and ardent Trump fan, Cory Bernardi, was quiet on the news, too. In the weeks after US President Joe Biden’s election win in November 2020, Bernardi hammered down on Trump’s claims of election fraud, following years of support for the former president. He couldn’t be reached by Crikey in time for publication, either.
Several other current and former conservative officeholders with a history of supporting Trump couldn’t be drawn on the January 6 committee’s verdict.
Most notable among them was NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, whose support for Trump on various occasions has been the source of discomfort for his colleagues in NSW Parliament. The premier couldn’t be reached by Crikey in time for publication.
Does anyone else remember a time when one could assume with confidence that the traditional values of a conservative would include upholding the constitution and respecting the rule of law? What are these modern ‘conservatives’ conserving, and how long has it been a tradition to give mindless adulation to scofflaws and seditionists?
What are these modern ‘conservatives’ conserving? – their wealth and power
Ditto!
That fits very well with the ones who are wealthy and powerful. Not so much for all of the 75 million or so Americans who voted for Trump last time, and the similar hordes elsewhere.
More of a damning indictment on the IQ of the average American, I’d think………….
Hillary was right!
I have a real problem with the American constitutionally entrenched – misinterpreted over the centuries, may-be? – understanding of [total] “free speech”. It seems to me that this today enables not just reasonable and fact/evidence-grounded expression of ideas, knowledge, facts, critique and argumentation across all issues, strong personal opinions and oppositional voices. All of this and more is to be encouraged in a richly diverse world. Dangerously, though, in my thinking, to the very fabric of a civil and safe society, and to democracy, America’s conceptualisation of free speech seems generally to include Musk-style “free speech absolutism” that can involve hate speech that incites violence towards individuals or “Others”, facts-denial and undermining of democracy, as we saw over four years of Trump’s lies culminating in his incitement of the armed attack on the Capitol. Security police defending this symbol of the US Constitution and democracy died, as did some in the violent mob. A hangman’s noose was erected, with Trump encouraging his mob by deadly weasel words “It doesn’t look good for Mike Pence”. Morrison never called Trump out – nor did his mentor Howard – and his “Australians have had a gutful of governments telling them what to do” was followed by the violence of the Melbourne anti-mandate protest where a gallows was similarly erected for Dan Andrews. The quietness of Australian media in response to this QAnon-style deliberate anger-inciting call to the unhinged conspiracy theorists has remained as shocking to me as the statement from Australia’s Prime Minister who had overseen and continues to take credit for “saving the lives of Australians in the pandemic”=mandates to keep ourselves, family and our fellow Aussies safe.
Let’s face it, we’ve been relying on progressives to respect the law and protect our democratic conventions for quite some time now.
Trump? No.. never heard of the fellow.
Look! Over there! A union thug!
Would be nice if media could interrogate John Howard more on his positive and anodyne comments about Brexit and Trump, as cited in Guardian article ‘John Howard: Trump and Brexit symbolise cry for ‘national sovereignty‘ (March 2017).
Babet claims the bipartisan committee is ‘politically driven’. Surely upholding the US Constitution is unavoidably political… in the name of democracy.
Babet is both a shill and a dill…his opinion is worth aproximately zilch.
No doubt he follows Trump’s position that you he US Constitution should be overthrown.
What I find astonishing about that is that all those Republican hands on hearts, protect the Constitution twits are not up in arms about such an idea. Has Pavlov been brought back from the dead?
Democrats wanted to setup an 911 style commission, rather than have a Select Committee. GOP thwarted that . So many journalists completely omit the history of this. GOP deliberately opposed a more independent model so they could make this argument now.
What about Joe Hockey? He was sure the election was fraudulent.
Why did you have to bring him up? We had happily forgotten that he exists….
I’m pouring another beer right now in an attempt to go back to forgetting the Joe Hockey exists.
Dancing on a table enjoying a cigar?
Yet another example of Hockey’s poor judgment.
Thank heavens, at long last, Australia will soon have an intelligent ambassador in Washington rather than a golfing companion for the Donald.
Was he using the eleventy calculator to come to that conclusion?
Trumpeters all hiding in plain sight!