If Australians distrust government as much as Americans clearly do, basic pillars of health rights may be in trouble.
Well, that was a knuckle-dragging arseclown of a week, wasn’t it?
Whichever side of politics you reside on, it’s been extraordinary to behold the goings-on over the Pacific.
It’s either the comeback of the century or the biggest disappointment since, well, since the last time a woman tried to hold any power in America.
The question is what does it mean, if anything, for health policy in Australia?
That depends on whether you believe politicians in this country take their cues from other nations, in particular the US.
There’s no question some do. You only have to look at the reactions post Trump’s election from the likes of Senator Matt Canavan:
Or Senator Ralph Babet:
Or Senator Alex Antic:
But do any politicians who actually matter take any cues from the strategies that clearly worked for MAGA? Peter Dutton, for example.
Abortion was supposedly a big issue in the US election. And there’s no question that for college educated, and/or non-white women, it was. But exit polls showed that, in the end, only about 14% of voters felt reproductive rights were a game-changer for them.
Disappointing? Yes, if you’re a woman or an ally. If I was slightly more paranoid than I am and took in the response on social media of some Australians to the US election result, I’d be very concerned about what may happen here. Here’s an example:
Recently of course, despite being decriminalised all over the country, abortion rights and access have been on the table … in South Australia where a late-abortion ban was quashed by one vote, and in Queensland where Robbie Katter went in hard, then not so hard, then hard again in the run up to the state election there.
But Mr Dutton has this week chastised his party members in what is believed to be a quite spectacular backroom rant in which he told them to shut up about the issue because it was costing them votes.
That didn’t stop Senator Canavan, of course, who has doubled down.
And this week we’ve had a regional NSW hospital admit that it’s been banning non-medically essential abortions all year. (They’ve walked that back in the last 24 hours).
Abortion aside, what can we expect to see out of the US on the health front?
If the president-elect holds to his promise to hand health to Robert “Brainworm” Kennedy, all bets are off. He’s anti-vax – they cause autism, he says; anti-fluoride; anti-pharmaceutical advertising – can’t argue with that if you’ve ever watched US television; he’s been banned from YouTube for spreading misinformation.
If you believe the pundits this week, Mr Trump got re-elected because even those he has maligned so publicly – Latinos, white non-college educated young men, and white suburban women – do not trust governments, experts or authorities and believe Mr Trump will smash the institutions they think don’t care about them, or listen to them.
Is there an element of that in Australian society? If the authors of the Covid-19 Response Inquiry’s final report are to be believed, the answer to that is a very loud yes. Trust is gone, and will take some work to rebuild.
Anything, sadly, is possible.
