This might seem familiar from the SMH and Age today: Worse than Russia? Voters fear Trump’s America.

David Crowe has written up the paper’s Resolve poll which has found “Australians have scaled up their concerns about United States President Donald Trump after his first six weeks in office, with 60 per cent saying his election victory has been bad for Australia – up from only 40 per cent who said the same last November.”

If it sounds familiar it is because Australia Institute polling released 4 March found:

The results show that:

• Three in 10 Australians (31%) think Donald Trump is the greatest threat to world peace, more than chose Vladimir Putin (27%) or Xi Jinping (27%).
• Most women (56%) feel less secure in Australia since the election of Donald Trump; only 13% of women feel more secure.
• More Australians prefer a more independent foreign policy than prefer a closer alliance with the United States (44% v 35%).
• Half of Australians (48%) are not at all confident that Donald Trump would defend Australia’s interests if Australia were threatened, compared to only 16% who are very confident that he would do so.
• Half of Australians (51%) think Donald Trump’s election is a bad thing for the world, twice as many as think it is a good thing (25%).

So there is obviously a trend, which has been identified early by those who are looking. But as the SMH’s Peter Hartcher has pointed out in today’s paper: “As the pincers of Australia’s geopolitical position continue to close in on the Complacent Country, our leadership would rather not talk about it.”

But that too, is not new: