What do Americans really think about Australia? What I found raises a big problem

Every new political poll usually achieves one of two outcomes. Sometimes it confirms something I already knew, such as recent polling which shows that leading a political party while being sabotaged is hard. Or it leaves me with the disturbing feeling that if this is the answer, then the wrong question is being asked, as with the poll that revealed the sexiest male UK politician is … Nigel Farage.

The publication this week of a poll by the United States Study Centre combined both of these trends. By providing Australian perspectives on the Trump 2.0 administration and our alliance with the US, it confirmed things I knew, while leaving me with the unsettling feeling that these are not the most pressing questions that need to be answered.

The poll of more than 1000 Australians provided a snapshot into our current state of confusion and anxiety regarding the US alliance. Consider the following contradictory findings: Nearly a third of Australians now believe the US alliance makes us less secure. This figure has almost doubled since the 2024 poll. However, only 17 per cent believe that we should end our alliance with the US, a figure that has dropped from 26 per cent since 2024. So almost a year into the second Trump administration, Australians are now stronger in their support of an alliance that they believe makes us less secure.

The confusion continues. While 47 per cent believe Australia needs the US alliance “more than ever”, 30 per cent agree with the statement that the US is a danger to Australia. Meanwhile, 73 per cent are worried about the future of US democracy. These figures reveal the source of tension in today’s Australia-US relationship: in a divided America, who exactly are we in an alliance with now? Is it the millions of Americans who marched in the nationwide No Kings protests on Sunday or is it the Americans who referred to them as “Hate America” rallies?

Australia’s security pivot towards the US was announced in 1941 by prime minister John Curtin. In “The Task Ahead” speech, Curtin said: “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America.” Cut to 2025 and Australia is still looking to America, only now with the same petrified inhibitions of a world leader trapped in a televised Trump ambush in the Oval Office. (Best of luck, Albo.)

Our alliance with the US was forged on the basis of mutual goals and shared values that are now sharply diverging. The Trump administration has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council, The World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Agreement, all of which Australia supports. The US retreat from democratic norms continues at a blistering pace, with attacks on press freedom, pressure campaigns on the US Justice Department to prosecute Trump’s political opponents and the sending of troops into Democrat-led cities.

What all of this means for our alliance is unclear but we know that Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly stated that the American left should be treated like foreign combatants. In his 2020 book, American Crusade, Hegseth wrote of the need to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”. An overwhelming majority of the Australian electorate voted resoundingly in the last federal election to reject Trumpism and maintain Australia’s status as a socially progressive, left-leaning country that supports a rules-based international order. At this critical juncture for the alliance, finding out whether the Pentagon chief views our country as an ideological enemy in need of crushing might prove a more useful data point than canvassing Australian views on US tariffs. Perhaps the next time Australia hands over a billion-dollar, non-refundable AUKUS cheque to Hegseth, someone could ask him.

The essential question we should therefore be asking is not what we think of the US, but what they think of us. There is no easy way to answer this, given the dearth of polls canvassing American opinions on Australia, so I turned to the comments sections of recent Australian content stories on major US news websites.

At the Washington Post, there are more than 500 comments in response to a report this week that Australia had denied a visa to right-wing influencer, Candace Owens, who had intended to conduct a speaking tour in Australia. Despite the fundamental American belief in the right to free speech, the vast majority of comments were supportive of Australia’s stance.

Turning to Fox News, I read an article about the booing of the American national anthem at a wrestling event in Perth last week. This report garnered over 800 comments. The overwhelming majority were hostile to Australia with the most common sentiment being “Cut Australia off from US military assistance and throw them to China”, only expressed in less polite terms. Similarly, a September Fox News report into Australia’s joint decision with the UK and Canada to recognise a Palestinian state elicited over 3000, predominantly furious, comments. Australian tourism ambassador to the US, Robert Irwin, might want to consider taking a taipan or two for protection, if he’s on the promotional trail in Trump heartland.

Australia’s censoring of a MAGA darling, the booing of the American national anthem at a sports event and Australia refusing to fall into line with one aspect of US foreign policy might not seem like critical threats to the alliance. But they are, arguably, early warning signs; flashpoints indicating that Australia is on an ideological collision course with the MAGA agenda. Likely areas of future discord include climate change, human rights, trade and how intelligence gathered from joint facilities such as Pine Gap will be deployed.

Twenty-one years ago, Australian foreign correspondent and diplomat, Bruce Grant, wrote a book, Fatal Attraction: Reflections on the Alliance with the United States, which contained the following prescient observation: “The United States does not regard itself as another nation-state in a global system. It regards itself as a model to be followed.”

If Grant was right, perhaps that unsettling feeling that the wrong questions are being asked is because the answers we most urgently need aren’t about the US at all. We may no longer recognise our long-time ally but it’s imperative that we start asking ourselves the hard questions, without following Trump’s America blindly, before we no longer recognise ourselves.

Melanie La’Brooy is an award-winning novelist who has lived in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East and writes on politics and social justice issues.

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