LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Australia heads to the polls on Saturday in an election that's being influenced by the way U.S. President Trump is performing, days after a similar scenario played out in Canada. Kristina Kukolja reports on echoes of U.S. politics in Australia.
KRISTINA KUKOLJA, BYLINE: Echoes of familiar rhetoric heard thousands of miles away.
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JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE: We can make Australia right again. We can bring Australia back to its former glory.
KUKOLJA: Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, campaigning for Australia's conservative opposition, which early polling predicted looks set to oust the center-left Labor government. Only weeks later, after the U.S. announced import tariffs on countries including Australia, public support for the bloc has collapsed, putting Labor ahead according to numerous polls. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton both say they're keen to work with the Trump administration, each arguing they're more capable of doing so than the other. But the opposition's language and policies have drawn comparisons to President Trump. And polling from the Ipsos agency, says director Jessica Elgood, shows many Australian voters are troubled by what's been happening in Washington since January.
JESSICA ELGOOD: More people are concerned about Trump as an issue facing Australia than mention immigration, health care, environment, defense, crime. They're more worried about Trump than they are about those key domestic issues.
KUKOLJA: A separate survey by another polling agency, Resolve, found that one-third of respondents would be less likely to vote for the conservatives due to perceived associations with President Trump. Jessica Elgood again.
ELGOOD: He is almost like an atmospheric issue. It's in the background.
KUKOLJA: Whoever leads Australia's next government will have to navigate a changing alliance with the U.S., with implications for the AUKUS security agreement that also includes the U.K. That's according to Philipp Ivanov, the founder of consultancy Geopolitical Risks & Strategy Practice, based in South Australia. He says both Labor and the opposition are planning for uncertainty.
PHILIPP IVANOV: There will be no signaling that Australia is rethinking the alliance. But internally, I think there will be quite a lot of work to plan for the scenarios in which the United States is no longer a reliable security guarantor.
KUKOLJA: Philipp Ivanov says Australia faces a difficult balancing act as trade and geopolitical tensions worsen between the U.S. and China, its largest trading partner.
IVANOV: But it's just got much harder under Trump, who wants U.S. allies to be a part of its sort of economic competition agenda.
KUKOLJA: He would like to see Australia diversify economic and security ties with a stronger focus on Asia.
For NPR News, I'm Kristina Kukolja in Melbourne. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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