AUSTRALIA. — There’s a number in the 2026 Lowy Institute Poll that every staffer in the West Wing should have stapled to their forehead. 79.
Seventy-nine per cent of Australians do not have confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing in world affairs.
In the 22-year history of the Lowy Poll, no American president has ever been distrusted like this. Not Dubya at peak Iraq. Not Trump Mark I, which we all assumed was rock bottom. Turns out rock bottom had a trapdoor, and the trapdoor opens straight into the grease trap behind the Mar-a-Lago kitchen.
It gets better. 60 per cent of Australians didn’t just tick “not much confidence.” They ticked “no confidence at all.” The strongest option on the form. The polling equivalent of writing “get fucked” in the comments box, with a Sharpie, underlined twice.
Seventy nine percent of Australians wouldn’t trust Trump to watch their beer while they went to the dunny.
Seventy nine percent of Australians wouldn’t invite Mango Mussolini to a shithouse backyard BBQ if he brought his own seppo screw-worm-riddled American steaks and a slab.
Given the US cattle industry is currently fighting off actual flesh-eating screw worms while ours is clean, that joke writes itself, sends itself, and does its own bloody encore.
To put 79 per cent in perspective: you cannot get 79 per cent of Australians to agree on anything. Not the date of Australia Day. Not rugby league versus AFL. Not whether Sydney or Melbourne is more insufferable. But the convicted felon united 4 out of 5 Australians in the shared, settled conviction that he cannot be trusted to do the right thing. That’s not a polling result. That’s a bloody referendum.
Before some flog cries “fake news”
The Lowy Institute is not some inner-city latte-sipping collective. It’s the most establishment, sandstone-and-cufflinks foreign policy shop in the country, and it has asked Australians the same questions for 22 consecutive years. It has receipts going back to 2005. And the receipts say:
Sixty-nine per cent of Australians no longer trust the United States to act responsibly in the world. Sixty-nine per cent.
The worst result ever recorded. In 2022, only 35% of us felt that way. The gap between trust in America and trust in China was 53 points four years ago. It is now 3 points. THREE. One decent news cycle from parity with the Chinese Communist Party. That is where 8 decades of mateship now sits: a bee’s dick above Beijing.
And Pew Research backs it with a sledgehammer: 76% of Australians now view the United States unfavourably. Across 36 countries and 42,151 people surveyed, 76 per cent of the planet has no confidence in Trump, and there is not one single country on Earth where opinion of him improved. Not one.
He is the first president in the history of modern polling to achieve unanimous global depreciation, like a Cybertruck rolling off the lot directly into a tree.
“In 2026, the liberal international order has been replaced by something illiberal, nationalistic, and disorderly.” – Michael Fullilove, Executive Director, Lowy Institute
That’s the polite, footnoted version. The Bligh Street translation is: the arsehole burned the house down, and he’s now charging the fire brigade parking fees.
Now let’s talk about the betrayal, because that’s what this is
Australians are not fair-weather friends. We are, historically, the most pathologically loyal ally the United States has ever had, and I mean that as both a compliment and a diagnosis.
Every war. Every single one. Korea. Vietnam, when half your own allies told you to jam it. The Gulf. Afghanistan for 20 years. Iraq, on intelligence flimsier than a servo sausage roll. We are the only country on Earth to invoke ANZUS, and we did it for America, after September 11.
We buried 41 of our kids in Afghan dirt for your war. We host Pine Gap. We park your marines in Darwin, the same Darwin the Japanese bombed 64 times, while we held the line in the Pacific together. When America whistled, Australia turned up. Every. Single. Time. No other nation on the planet has that record. Not Britain. Not Canada. Nobody.
And what did 80 years of blood-signed American loyalty buy Australia?
Tariffs. Slapped on a mate running a trade deficit with you, you economically illiterate mongrel.
Threats against Denmark, another ally, over Greenland, which 9 in 10 Australians disapprove of, and when 90% of this country agrees on something, you should check the sky for the Four Horsemen.
A war with Iran that sent our petrol prices through the roof, handled so catastrophically that 8 in 10 Australians disapprove of the campaign, including our own Defence Force personnel dragged along on an AUKUS training rotation into Trump’s shooting war. And through all of it, not one syllable of respect. Just a jaundiced karaoke dictator standing on the world stage, telling the countries that bled for America that they’re freeloaders.
We showed up to every fight you Yank seppos ever picked, and you treated us like a bin chicken at a wedding.
Australians aren’t drifting away from America. Australians are pissed off, and rightfully so. There’s a difference, and every word of this poll screams it. 51 per cent of Australians now say Australia should actively distance itself from the United States under this president. From the country whose wars our grandfathers died in.
Do Americans have the faintest bloody idea what it takes to move that number in Australia? It takes betrayal. Nothing else does.
The bit the numpties will get wrong
Every drongo with a podcast will read this as “Australia goes soft, cosies up to China.” Bollocks. Read the data.
73 per cent of Australians still back the alliance. 68 per cent back the nuclear submarines. Half of us would spend more on defence.
Majorities would sanction China over Taiwan (69%), arm Taiwan (61%), even send the Royal Australian Navy to help break a blockade (60%). And 62% of us still reckon China is likely to be a military threat within 20 years. Nobody in Australia is writing love letters to Beijing. Xi Jinping polls at 20 per cent confidence in Australia, which brings us to the single most humiliating statistic in the entire poll:
Donald Trump: 21%. Xi Jinping: 20%. JD Vance: 20%.
The President of the United States is polling one point above the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party with the most loyal ally America has ever had, Australia.
One point. That’s not a lead, that’s a margin of error with a comb-over. The leader of the free world and the bloke running a one-party surveillance state are, to Australian eyes, functionally the same amount of untrustworthy. Eighty years of shared blood, and he pissed it down to a coin flip against an actual autocrat.
“Support for Australia’s alliance with the United States has held up, even though confidence in President Trump has cratered.” – Charles Lyons-Jones, Lowy Institute
“Australians are highly capable of holding two conflicting truths in their heads at the same time.” – Charles Lyons-Jones, Bloomberg, June 2026
That second quote is the most quietly savage thing said on financial television this year, because the unspoken back half is: unlike the President of the United States, who’s flat out holding one.
Australians can separate the institution from the imbecile. We honour the alliance while despising its current custodian, the way you’d still love the family home even after some squatter filled the pool with grievances and set the shed on fire for insurance.
But patience is not permanence, and for the first time in the history of the poll, 51 per cent of Australians say the relationship with China matters more than the relationship with the US. Not because Aussies love China. Because over $300 billion in two-way trade doesn’t slap tariffs on us and then demand a thank-you card.
Meanwhile, in our own backyard
Here’s the strategic own-goal that should have Foggy Bottom’s remaining six adults drinking at their desks: for the first time, more Australians say China holds the most influence in the Pacific (39%) than say Australia does (33%). Our backyard.
Where we’ve stumped 38% of all regional aid over 15 years to China’s 9%. Beijing is winning the perception war without lifting a finger, because why would they bother? Every time Xi needs a win, the human tariff walks to a podium and hands him one gift-wrapped. Xi’s confidence rating with Australians went up four points this year, and the man did precisely bugger all to earn it except stand quietly next to the bin fire.
You know who Australians actually trust? Canadian PM Mark Carney at 66 per cent, top of the table. Luxon at 65 per cent. Japan: trusted by 89 per cent of Australians. Germany: 83 per cent. The UK, our old ‘mother country’ 81 per cent.
See the pattern, plain as a dog’s proverbials? Australians didn’t stop trusting the world. The world’s grown-ups are doing fine. We stopped trusting Trump and America. This is a single-occupant trust recession, and the occupant has a spray tan with gaudy White House and shitty reflecting pool.
The Tally: What Four Years of This Prick Bought
2022: Australians who distrust the US: 35 per cent. Trust gap over China: 53 points, America’s way. Pacific influence: ours. Wanting distance from America: fringe position. The alliance: bedrock, no questions asked.
2026: Australians who distrust the US: 69 per cent, worst ever. Australians with no confidence in the president: 79 per cent, the worst of any US President in 22 years. Viewing America unfavourably: 76 per cent. Disapproving of his Iran campaign: 80 per cent. Disapproving of the Greenland shakedown: 90 per cent.
Trust gap over China: 3 points. Pacific influence: China 39, Australia 33. Wanting distance from the US: 51 per cent, a majority. Trump versus Xi on trust: 21 to 20, a photo finish with a communist dictator.
One column took 80 years, two oceans of shared blood, and 103,000 Australian war dead to build. The other took one bitter old conman with a Sharpie, a grudge, and 18 months of his second term.
The alliance survives, for now, because Australians know the difference between a nation and its temporary tenant. But hear this clearly, Washington, because your most loyal mate on Earth is saying it through gritted teeth: we turned up to every fight you ever had. Every single one. And 79 per cent of Australians have now looked at the man you chose, twice, and concluded we wouldn’t trust him to hold the tongs.
America used to ask what Australia would ever do without them.
The 2026 Lowy Poll just answered with the better question: what the fuck does America do when even Australia, the mate who never once left early, quietly starts checking the planet for other friends?
After all, former US President George W. Bush called Australia America’s “deputy sheriff” on worldwide television after 9/11.
Happy 250th on July 4, seppos.
Translations of Aussie slang for Americans.
Shithouse: adjective meaning terrible, and noun meaning an outdoor toilet. A shithouse BBQ is therefore either a bad barbecue or a barbecue held at a toilet, and in Trump’s case we mean both, simultaneously, with catering by the man himself.
Slab: a case of 24 beers. The minimum entry fee to any Australian gathering. No, your screw worm steaks do not count as a contribution, Donald.
Seppo: Ryming slang from Yank (an American) to septic tank. It’s shortened in Aussie slang to “seppo”. Referring to someone as a “seppo” means you are calling them an American.
Dunny: toilet. As in “wouldn’t trust him to watch my beer while I went to the dunny,” the lowest bar of trust known to Australian science, and he’s under it.
Texta: a marker pen. What 60% of Australians metaphorically used to tick “no confidence at all.”
Bin chicken: the Australian white ibis, a once-noble wetlands bird now famous for headfirst dumpster diving. A majestic creature reduced to scavenging through rubbish, which is also a serviceable summary of American foreign policy since January 2025.
Weapons: idiots of unusual calibre. Paradoxically an insult. “You absolute weapons” is reserved for those whose stupidity achieves ballistic velocity.
A bee’s dick: the smallest measurable distance in the Australian imperial system. Currently the gap between trust in America and trust in China. Congratulations.
Tongs: the sacred instrument of BBQ authority. Trusting someone to hold the tongs is the highest honour Australia bestows. 79% of us have voted no.
Checking the fixture: looking at the schedule to see who else is playing. What allies do when their so-called best mate keeps no-showing and sending invoices.
