Some analysts see a West Australian politician’s name change to Austin “Aussie” Trump as an early signal that Trump-style strategies could be creeping into Australia’s dual election year.
"It's not exactly novel for one of the politicians here to be adopting what the US has done," says USSC Director of Research Jared Mondschein.
"In the wake of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act and Green New Deal initiatives, [the Albanese government] launched their own Made in Australia initiative, which in many ways looked like a direct response."
Thanks largely though to the country's Westminster political system and compulsory voting, Mondschein says he cannot see a Trump-style politician coming to power in Australia anytime soon.