Mushmouthing reality.

It’s always the most important election we’ve ever faced, isn't it? Your vote has never counted more than it will now, right?

The old and timeworn incantations, but this time, not a lie. Both Albanese and Dutton will mouth some variation on these themes today, and both men will speak the truth, as far as that goes - which isn't far at all.

Because neither of them can bring themselves to tell the truth this time.

This guy can, though.

This is Mark Carney, the guy running for Justin Trudeau’s old job.

Well, Carney’s not the only guy, but he’s the only one running like this because his main opponent, Pierre Poilievre, originally fashioned his offer to Canadian voters as a Trump-adjacent vengeance seeker. It worked well for him until, all of a sudden, it didn’t.

The TLDR of Carney’s message in the clip above is simple. He loaded it upfront. “The old relationship we had with the United States is over.”

Trump has done the Canadians the left-handed favour of making it impossible for them to ignore this, to deny it or even to wish it away. But the next few days in Australia will be all about ignorance, denial and wish-casting. Twenty-four hours after April Fool’s Day, however, that might come to an end.

That’s the day Trump has named as Tariff Liberation Day. On April 2, he’s promised to launch a massive pre-emptive strike on the global economy with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs imposed on everyone, everywhere, all at once. (The tariffs, of course, are actually levied on Americans, not foreigners, but… sigh… whatever.)

It will be the election story of the day, possibly even the next day.

Dutton will blame Albanese. Albanese will mushmouth his way through whatever yammering nonsense his crisis management flacks have already settled on as the least worst response, and both parties will lean into the urgent work of moving the discussion onto something less terrifying.

The corporate media, including the ABC, will lend their shoulders to the effort because they are incapable of leading the only discussion we should be having every day in this election, the subject of which was put so simply to Canadian voters by Mark Carney.

The old relationship we had with the United States is over.

Subtext: Because the United States is over.

That’s it. That’s the problem we are electing the next Australian government to deal with. Not climate change, unfortunately. Not marginal tax rates. Not the housing crisis. Not China. Not the NDIS. Not migration. Not indigenous affairs.

They are all important policy challenges. They all have to be addressed, and there are real differences in the policy offerings of the two main contenders for government. But each of those policy challenges is subordinate to the defining question the next Australian government must answer.

Not what are you going to do about America’s collapse into authoritarianism and chaos—because there is nothing we can do about it—but rather, how do you plan to hedge against that collapse?

That’s the question both Albanese and Dutton should be asked every day, at every stupid fucking photo-op their gormless handlers organise to fill the impossibly atomised media space in which this campaign will be fought.

Almost every question in every portfolio area eventually traces back to the source of the emergent crisis. In the course of a normal Australian election, for instance, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme would be a matter of contention because Labor would accuse the coalition of scheming to destroy it, and the coalition would accuse Labor of being incapable of reforming and thus securing it. This time, the PBS is a target for punitive US tariffs because the Trump regime has identified it as inimical to the interests of US pharmaceutical companies.

In a normal Australian election, the tax system would be a matter of contention because Labour would accuse the coalition of scheming to deliver a massive payoff to the wealthiest voters, and the coalition would accuse the ALP of profligate taxing and spending on waste, fraud, and abuse.

This time, the Australian tax system is a target for punitive US tariffs because the Trump regime has identified the GST levied on US imports as a de facto trade barrier and protectionist scam. Come April 2, Trump’s chief trade negotiator, the convicted felon Peter Navarro, is threatening to attack all Australian exports to the US with punitive tariffs in retaliation.

The last time Australia went to an election, Scott Morrison hoped to lure Albanese into an ‘alliance trap’, by presenting the AUKUS deal as a fait accompli, which the Labor Party could only oppose at the risk of being cast as anti-American and a danger to the ANZUS alliance.

Now, of course, it’s the leading member of that alliance, which is a clear and present danger to friend and…

Well, I was about to say foe, but the Trump regime is in the process of a rapid realignment to move its strategic goals and actions into much closer sympathy with America’s former foes and hostility to her one-time friends.

There is little to no prospect of Trump deciding he needs to acquire some Antipodean real estate in the manner of his increasingly threatening intent to annexe both Greenland and Canada, but if you think the ANZUS alliance is fit for purpose as the centrepiece of Australian national security planning, well, my guess is you’re running for Prime Minister and hoping, somewhat desperately, that nobody asks the obvious question.

The old relationship we had with the United States is over.

They are no longer our friends.

They are a hostile foreign power.

What are you gonna do about it?