Latest news with #PerthUSAsiaCentre
West Australian
31-07-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Questions raised on Australia's baseline tariff rate as Donald Trump's deadline looms
With just hours to go until new US tariffs take effect, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has taken a swipe at Donald Trump, saying slugging import penalties on countries like Australia would be 'bad for the American economy'. In a last ditch effort, Dr Chalmers said imposing higher tariffs with nations — especially trade surplus-clad countries like Australia — would be an 'act of economic self-harm' with the US economy already hit with rising inflation. 'We think these tariffs are bad for the American economy, certainly bad for the global economy,' he said. 'We're better placed and better prepared than most countries to deal with that, but we won't be immune. We'll continue to engage with the Americans on it.' Dr Chalmers said his 'working assumption' was that Australia would continue to have a 10 per cent baseline tariff after the August 1 deadline — which falls early-afternoon on Friday in Australia. That is despite the US President hinting during his recent Scotland trip, that countries yet to strike a deal would be slapped with a 15 to 20 per cent rate. 'Our understanding and our working assumption is that we get the 10 per cent,' he said during a breakfast TV blitz on Thursday. 'From our point of view, the 10 per cent is too high. 'We think it should be zero because these tariffs are an act of economic self-harm.' Dr Chalmers went on to claim that the Albanese Government was engaging with the Americans 'all the time' when asked about the yet-to-be rescheduled first face-to-face between Mr Albanese and Mr Trump. National's leader David Littleproud, however, slammed the Albanese Government for running on assumptions and failing to engage with the US President ahead of the deadline. 'I don't think we should be sitting here thinking there's a certainty that we don't be sitting at 10 per cent,' he said. Since the tariffs were first proposed in April — their implementation has been delayed several times. It has prompted the nickname 'TACO' — Trump Always Chickens Out. The US president first announced the tariff regime on 'Liberation Day' at the White House on April 2 but it was swiftly postponed for 90 days. Perth USAsia Centre chief executive Professor Gordon Flake said Donald Trump's unpredictability makes it difficult to take his statements or deadlines at face value. He also suggested the deadline may not materialise tomorrow since Trump hasn't repeated it and therefore might not follow through. 'Even for his supporters and his administration, his words don't mean anything,' he said. 'Because you set the deadline, it doesn't mean that there will be an across the board application… unless he specifically reemphasizes or restates that. We haven't seen a repetition. 'It's just ongoing capriciousness, Mad King whims, masquerading as strategy. It's the whims and the emotions of a Mad King on a daily basis.' Mr Littleproud also accused the Government of lifting the restrictions on US beef imports — potentially exposing Australia to mad cow disease and tuberculosis — as a concession made to appease Mr Trump. 'This is all because of a diplomatic failure by Prime Minister Albanese to be able to meet with President Trump,' he said. 'If you want to know about how you're going to come and deal with Trump, you actually have to sit down with him.' It comes after an independent inquiry proposed into Australia's recent decision to allow further US beef import has been denied. Put forward by Nationals Matt Canavan in the Senate on Thursday but voted down 33-27. Nationals, Liberals, Independents Fatima Payman and David Pocock, and One Nation Senators had voted for an inquiry while Labor and Greens opposed it. WA Senator and shadow assistant trade minister Dean Smith said Australia's biosecurity wasn't a bargaining chip and labelled any weakening of Australia's good track record as 'a dangerous and unnecessary risk'. 'The Prime Minister cannot get a meeting with President Trump, but has managed to give away access to our beef market without securing a trade deal for Australian producers,' he said. 'It is particularly disappointing that Labor and the Greens conspired today to block a Senate Inquiry into the biosecurity risk associated with this US beef imports decision.' The Government said the decision to lift the import ban on US beef was based on science. While Australia has allowed beef imports from the US since 2019, there has been a long-standing ban on US beef imports—specifically meat from cattle born in Canada or Mexico but slaughtered in America. Agriculture Minister Julie Collins, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Trade Minister Don Farrell had said it came after a science-based biosecurity review and strict standards remained in place. They argued the decision's timing amid tariff threats wasn't suspicious. Professor Flake said he didn't believe changes to beef imports would get Australia a better deal but perhaps shelter it from a worse one. 'We're just trying to remove an irritant before it attracts the Eye of Sauron,' he said.
New Straits Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Straits Times
Australian voters tuned out online politics this time
When Australian podcast host Nigel Marsh booked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for an interview on his show, Five of My Life, he expected a surge of listeners due to his guest's high profile and the fact that an election was looming. Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level. "I was expecting a bump in the figures," said Marsh, who first posted the 35-minute sit-down in the lead-up to the last election in 2022, and again three weeks before last Saturday's vote which returned Albanese to power. "Truth be told, I was surprised that the listener downloads for the prime minister were noticeably lower than for other popular culture figures." A campaign dominated by podcasts, TikTok and other non-mainstream media was widely credited with US President Donald Trump's win last year. But an attempt by Australian politicians to do the same fell flat this year, according to publicly available data and an analysis of social media activity conducted exclusively for Reuters. Australia's 2025 election was its first where all major party leaders went on podcasts and ran personal TikTok accounts. But voters largely tuned out of online political discussions, particularly since Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing sweeping tariffs on April 2, the analysis shows. "While there is no question that social media and podcasts do play an important role, I think in this particular election, that has to be viewed as secondary to the most dominant political trend in the world, and that is Trump," said Gordon Flake, chief executive officer of the Perth USAsia Centre, a foreign policy think tank. After Albanese's March 26 appearance on lifestyle podcast Happy Hour with Lucy and Nikki, "comments per 100 likes" for the show's TikTok account — a closely watched measure of audience engagement — fell by two-thirds by late April. A 48-minute interview with Albanese on popular YouTube channel "Ozzy Man Reviews" ranked 18th out of the channel's last 20 videos. It had just over half the views of a post called Why Sheilas Live Longer Than Blokes and about one-third the views of a video about Olympic breakdancer Raygun, according to data published on the streaming website. "Ozzy Man" presenter Ethan Marrell said the decline was due to fewer overseas viewers and his Albanese interview reached the same number of Australians as his other content. The opposition conservative coalition generated one-third more likes on its heavily meme-driven TikTok page than the governing Labor Party, according to published data, but still lost Australia's first election where most voters were aged 44 and under — the platform's main demographic. The left-wing Greens party also performed poorly despite some high-profile influencer support, losing at least two of their four House of Representatives members, including TikTok's most-followed Australian lawmaker, Max Chandler-Mather. "Often social media is a useful way of setting the agenda in mainstream media," said Jill Sheppard, a political scientist who works on the Australian Election Study, the country's biggest research project on voting behaviour. "That does not seem to have happened in this election." Plus Australian influencers were typically inexperienced political interviewers and candidate campaigns had become "so risk-averse and so scripted that the audiences can't be really enjoying it", she said. After the conservative opposition led most polls for nearly a year against a government accused of failing to fix a cost-of-living crisis, an abrupt turn-around coincided with the start of the campaign and Trump's constantly changing tariff regime which roiled markets — and pension fund balances. Engagement with politics on social media plummeted around the same time, according to US disinformation tracker Cyabra. Analysis conducted for Reuters showed an 84 per cent decline in Australian election-related posts, likes and comments from the start of April, compared with the month before — from 13,000 posts across 6,000 accounts on Facebook and X. The downturn suggested "a deeper behavioural disengagement from political discourse in Australia's online ecosystem", the company said. Decisions by social media giants to cut content moderation had enabled more misinformation, "creating voters that are sceptical and, frankly, exhausted by the deluge of political messaging being aimed in their direction", said Adam Marre, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf.
AsiaOne
05-05-2025
- Business
- AsiaOne
The influencer election that wasn't: Amid Trump trauma, Australian voters logged off, World News
SYDNEY — When Australian podcast host Nigel Marsh booked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for an interview on his show, Five of My Life, he expected a surge of listeners due to his guest's high profile and the fact that an election was looming. Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level. "I was expecting a bump in the figures," said Marsh, who first posted the 35-minute sitdown in the lead-up to the last election, in 2022, and again three weeks before Saturday's (May 3) vote which returned Albanese to power. "Truth be told, I was surprised that the listener downloads for the prime minister were noticeably lower than for other popular culture figures." A campaign dominated by podcasts, TikTok and other non-mainstream media was widely credited with US President Donald Trump's win last year. But an attempt by Australian politicians to do the same fell flat in 2025, according to publicly available data and an analysis of social media activity conducted exclusively for Reuters. Australia's 2025 election was its first where all major party leaders went on podcasts and ran personal TikTok accounts. But voters largely tuned out of online political discussions after the campaign began in March and particularly since Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing sweeping tariffs on April 2, the analysis shows. "While there is no question that social media and podcasts do play an important role, I think in this particular election, that has to be viewed as secondary to the most dominant political trend in the world, and that is Trump," said Gordon Flake, CEO of foreign policy think tank, the Perth USAsia Centre. [[nid:717662]] After Albanese's March 26 appearance on lifestyle podcast Happy Hour with Lucy and Nikki, "comments per 100 likes" for the show's TikTok account — a closely watched measure of audience engagement — fell by two-thirds by late April. A 48-minute interview with Albanese on popular YouTube channel Ozzy Man Reviews ranked 18th out of the channel's last 20 videos. It had just over half the views of a post called Why Sheilas Live Longer Than Blokes and about one-third the views of a video about Olympic breakdancer Raygun, according to data published on the streaming website. Ozzy Man presenter Ethan Marrell said the decline was due to fewer overseas viewers and his Albanese interview reached the same number of Australians as his other content. "I'm pleased with how it performed," he said by phone. Likes are not votes The opposition conservative coalition generated one-third more likes on its heavily meme-driven TikTok page than the governing Labor Party, according to published data, but still lost Australia's first election where most voters were aged 44 and under, the platform's main demographic. The left-wing Greens party also performed poorly despite some high-profile influencer support, losing at least two of their four House of Representatives members, including TikTok's most-followed Australian lawmaker, Max Chandler-Mather. "Often social media is a useful way of setting the agenda in mainstream media," said Jill Sheppard, a political scientist who works on the Australian Election Study, the country's biggest research project on voting behaviour. "That doesn't seem to have happened in this election." Australia's compulsory voting system effectively overrides the need to encourage non-voters to the ballot box, as Trump's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience and other podcasts was credited with doing, Sheppard said. Plus Australian influencers were typically inexperienced political interviewers and candidate campaigns had become "so risk-averse and so scripted that the audiences can't be really enjoying it", she said. 'Behavioural disengagement' After the conservative opposition led most polls for nearly a year against a government accused of failing to fix a living cost crisis, an abrupt turnaround coincided with the start of the campaign and Trump's constantly changing tariff regime which roiled markets — and pension fund balances. [[nid:716874]] Engagement with politics on social media plummeted around the same time, according to US disinformation tracker Cyabra. Analysis conducted for Reuters showed an 84 per cent decline in Australian election-related posts, likes and comments from the start of April, compared to the month before, from 13,000 posts across 6,000 accounts on Facebook and X. The downturn suggested "a deeper behavioural disengagement from political discourse in Australia's online ecosystem", the company said. Decisions by social media giants including Facebook and Instagram owner Meta and X to cut content moderation had enabled more misinformation, "creating voters that are sceptical and, frankly, exhausted by the deluge of political messaging being aimed in their direction", said Adam Marre, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf. On Reddit, concern about Trump was "strongly observable" across 20 Australian political forums analysed by Queensland University of Technology's Digital Observatory. Users frequently drew parallels between opposition conservative leader Peter Dutton and Trump, particularly in the campaign's early stages, said data scientist Mat Bettinson. "Trump is probably having more of an impact than any single influencer online at the moment," said Finley Watson, a researcher of social media and politics at La Trobe University. "Economic uncertainty tends to favour the incumbent and Trump has been probably one of the more dominant salient aspects of this election." [[nid:717407]]
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The influencer election that wasn't: amid Trump trauma, Australian voters logged off
By Byron Kaye and Christine Chen SYDNEY (Reuters) - When Australian podcast host Nigel Marsh booked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for an interview on his show, "Five of My Life", he expected a surge of listeners due to his guest's high profile and the fact that an election was looming. Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level. "I was expecting a bump in the figures," said Marsh, who first posted the 35-minute sitdown in the lead-up to the last election, in 2022, and again three weeks before Saturday's vote which returned Albanese to power. "Truth be told, I was surprised that the listener downloads for the prime minister were noticeably lower than for other popular culture figures." A campaign dominated by podcasts, TikTok and other non-mainstream media was widely credited with U.S. President Donald Trump's win last year. But an attempt by Australian politicians to do the same fell flat in 2025, according to publicly available data and an analysis of social media activity conducted exclusively for Reuters. Australia's 2025 election was its first where all major party leaders went on podcasts and ran personal TikTok accounts. But voters largely tuned out of online political discussions after the campaign began in March and particularly since Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing sweeping tariffs on April 2, the analysis shows. "While there is no question that social media and podcasts do play an important role, I think in this particular election, that has to be viewed as secondary to the most dominant political trend in the world, and that is Trump," said Gordon Flake, CEO of foreign policy think tank, the Perth USAsia Centre. After Albanese's March 26 appearance on lifestyle podcast "Happy Hour with Lucy and Nikki", "comments per 100 likes" for the show's TikTok account - a closely watched measure of audience engagement - fell by two-thirds by late April. A 48-minute interview with Albanese on popular YouTube channel Ozzy Man Reviews ranked 18th out of the channel's last 20 videos. It had just over half the views of a post called "Why Sheilas Live Longer Than Blokes" and about one-third the views of a video about Olympic breakdancer Raygun, according to data published on the streaming website. Ozzy Man presenter Ethan Marrell said the decline was due to fewer overseas viewers and his Albanese interview reached the same number of Australians as his other content. "I'm pleased with how it performed," he said by phone. LIKES ARE NOT VOTES The opposition conservative coalition generated one-third more likes on its heavily meme-driven TikTok page than the governing Labor Party, according to published data, but still lost Australia's first election where most voters were aged 44 and under, the platform's main demographic. The left-wing Greens party also performed poorly despite some high-profile influencer support, losing at least two of their four House of Representatives members, including TikTok's most-followed Australian lawmaker, Max Chandler-Mather. "Often social media is a useful way of setting the agenda in mainstream media," said Jill Sheppard, a political scientist who works on the Australian Election Study, the country's biggest research project on voting behaviour. "That doesn't seem to have happened in this election." Australia's compulsory voting system effectively overrides the need to encourage non-voters to the ballot box, as Trump's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience and other podcasts was credited with doing, Sheppard said. Plus Australian influencers were typically inexperienced political interviewers and candidate campaigns had become "so risk-averse and so scripted that the audiences can't be really enjoying it", she said. 'BEHAVIORAL DISENGAGEMENT' After the conservative opposition led most polls for nearly a year against a government accused of failing to fix a living cost crisis, an abrupt turnaround coincided with the start of the campaign and Trump's constantly changing tariff regime which roiled markets - and pension fund balances. Engagement with politics on social media plummeted around the same time, according to U.S. disinformation tracker Cyabra. Analysis conducted for Reuters showed an 84% decline in Australian election-related posts, likes and comments from the start of April, compared to the month before, from 13,000 posts across 6,000 accounts on Facebook and X. The downturn suggested "a deeper behavioral disengagement from political discourse in Australia's online ecosystem", the company said. Decisions by social media giants including Facebook and Instagram owner Meta and X to cut content moderation had enabled more misinformation, "creating voters that are sceptical and, frankly, exhausted by the deluge of political messaging being aimed in their direction", said Adam Marre, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf. On Reddit, concern about Trump was "strongly observable" across 20 Australian political forums analysed by Queensland University of Technology's Digital Observatory. Users frequently drew parallels between opposition conservative leader Peter Dutton and Trump, particularly in the campaign's early stages, said data scientist Mat Bettinson. "Trump is probably having more of an impact than any single influencer online at the moment," said Finley Watson, a researcher of social media and politics at La Trobe University. "Economic uncertainty tends to favour the incumbent and Trump has been probably one of the more dominant salient aspects of this election." (This story has been refiled to add the dateline)
The Star
05-05-2025
- Politics
- The Star
The influencer election that wasn't: amid Trump trauma, Australian voters logged off
(Adds dateline with no other change) SYDNEY (Reuters) -When Australian podcast host Nigel Marsh booked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for an interview on his show, "Five of My Life", he expected a surge of listeners due to his guest's high profile and the fact that an election was looming. Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level. "I was expecting a bump in the figures," said Marsh, who first posted the 35-minute sitdown in the lead-up to the last election, in 2022, and again three weeks before Saturday's vote which returned Albanese to power. "Truth be told, I was surprised that the listener downloads for the prime minister were noticeably lower than for other popular culture figures." A campaign dominated by podcasts, TikTok and other non-mainstream media was widely credited with U.S. President Donald Trump's win last year. But an attempt by Australian politicians to do the same fell flat in 2025, according to publicly available data and an analysis of social media activity conducted exclusively for Reuters. Australia's 2025 election was its first where all major party leaders went on podcasts and ran personal TikTok accounts. But voters largely tuned out of online political discussions after the campaign began in March and particularly since Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing sweeping tariffs on April 2, the analysis shows. "While there is no question that social media and podcasts do play an important role, I think in this particular election, that has to be viewed as secondary to the most dominant political trend in the world, and that is Trump," said Gordon Flake, CEO of foreign policy think tank, the Perth USAsia Centre. After Albanese's March 26 appearance on lifestyle podcast "Happy Hour with Lucy and Nikki", "comments per 100 likes" for the show's TikTok account - a closely watched measure of audience engagement - fell by two-thirds by late April. A 48-minute interview with Albanese on popular YouTube channel Ozzy Man Reviews ranked 18th out of the channel's last 20 videos. It had just over half the views of a post called "Why Sheilas Live Longer Than Blokes" and about one-third the views of a video about Olympic breakdancer Raygun, according to data published on the streaming website. Ozzy Man presenter Ethan Marrell said the decline was due to fewer overseas viewers and his Albanese interview reached the same number of Australians as his other content. "I'm pleased with how it performed," he said by phone. LIKES ARE NOT VOTES The opposition conservative coalition generated one-third more likes on its heavily meme-driven TikTok page than the governing Labor Party, according to published data, but still lost Australia's first election where most voters were aged 44 and under, the platform's main demographic. The left-wing Greens party also performed poorly despite some high-profile influencer support, losing at least two of their four House of Representatives members, including TikTok's most-followed Australian lawmaker, Max Chandler-Mather. "Often social media is a useful way of setting the agenda in mainstream media," said Jill Sheppard, a political scientist who works on the Australian Election Study, the country's biggest research project on voting behaviour. "That doesn't seem to have happened in this election." Australia's compulsory voting system effectively overrides the need to encourage non-voters to the ballot box, as Trump's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience and other podcasts was credited with doing, Sheppard said. Plus Australian influencers were typically inexperienced political interviewers and candidate campaigns had become "so risk-averse and so scripted that the audiences can't be really enjoying it", she said. 'BEHAVIORAL DISENGAGEMENT' After the conservative opposition led most polls for nearly a year against a government accused of failing to fix a living cost crisis, an abrupt turnaround coincided with the start of the campaign and Trump's constantly changing tariff regime which roiled markets - and pension fund balances. Engagement with politics on social media plummeted around the same time, according to U.S. disinformation tracker Cyabra. Analysis conducted for Reuters showed an 84% decline in Australian election-related posts, likes and comments from the start of April, compared to the month before, from 13,000 posts across 6,000 accounts on Facebook and X. The downturn suggested "a deeper behavioral disengagement from political discourse in Australia's online ecosystem", the company said. Decisions by social media giants including Facebook and Instagram owner Meta and X to cut content moderation had enabled more misinformation, "creating voters that are sceptical and, frankly, exhausted by the deluge of political messaging being aimed in their direction", said Adam Marre, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf. On Reddit, concern about Trump was "strongly observable" across 20 Australian political forums analysed by Queensland University of Technology's Digital Observatory. Users frequently drew parallels between opposition conservative leader Peter Dutton and Trump, particularly in the campaign's early stages, said data scientist Mat Bettinson. "Trump is probably having more of an impact than any single influencer online at the moment," said Finley Watson, a researcher of social media and politics at La Trobe University. "Economic uncertainty tends to favour the incumbent and Trump has been probably one of the more dominant salient aspects of this election." (Reporting by Byron Kaye and Christine Chen; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
