Media release – Jaqui Lambie, JLN Senator for Tasmania, 12 March 2025
Standing up to Trump
Today we found out that President Trump is putting tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium.
And no I don’t think that the Prime Minister jumping on a plane to Washington would have helped.
Last time Trump threatened tariffs Prime Minister Turnbull managed to talk him out of it.
Malcolm Turnbull is spot on, telling the ABC over the last few days “He’s a bully, he seeks to achieve dominance and he gets dominance by intimidating people… what every nation needs to do is to stand up to him, because otherwise it’s a slippery slope.”
I couldn’t agree more. Australia needs to be strong and we need to be working with the other like-minded countries. We need to stand by Ukraine. I don’t support sending peacekeepers – that’s more appropriate a task for the Europeans – but we could speed up the delivery of the Abrams tanks and get more Bushmasters to them.
Since he was first elected to the presidency in 2016, Trump has never, publicly, said anything bad about Dictator Putin.
Since he got back in the White House the Trump administration has moved quickly to make it easy for his Russian mate and he is drawing up plans get rid of US sanctions against Russia as I write this.
On her first day in the job Trump’s Attorney General disbanded the FBI’s taskforce designed to detect and disrupt Russia’s interference in US politics – something Putin has also done in the UK and France.
Trump has also turned off the program that helps Ukraine keep its electricity grid up and running – leaving everyday Ukrainians without power.
Trump wants Russia back in the G7 and is already preparing an in-person summit with Putin.
Instead of playing nice, Australia needs to stand its ground. We could take a leaf from Canada’s book and remind America what Australia already does for the US.
It’s time to put our assets on the table.
We host Pine Gap, outside of America it is one of their most valuable assets, and the NW Cape antenna enables the US to talk to its submarines in the Indian Ocean. We could give him seven days to remove the marines on Darwin off Australian soil.
America is no longer a reliable ally – hopefully that will change, but in the meantime we can’t keep assuming that America has our back, Trump clearly doesn’t have anyone’s back except his own.
We need not just to be thinking about how much we need to spend on defence – we need to think carefully about what alliances and weapons we need in the future to protect our country. Trade and national security cannot be easily separated. They go hand in hand – you’re either a partner or you’re not.
Making Australia make again means using our resources to make our own products. This is crucial for our future prosperity.
