Joe Hockey has warned Australia against being 'constant critics' of the Trump administration in its early days.

The Australian ambassador to the United States was in Canberra this week to weigh in on the federal government's new foreign policy blueprint along with all other ambassadors and high commissioners.

The administration is only 69 days into the four-year tenure, Mr Hockey said in a speech to the Sydney Institute.

'If this was a five-day international Test cricket match, we would still be in the first session on the first day,' he said.'The new Trump administration is very focused on practical policy outcomes. It's not beholden to ideology or tradition. It's not in the DNA of the administration to procrastinate.'

Then he [Joe Hockey] made the most incredibly inane statement when he praised Mr Trump’s “very credible cabinet”, which he said fulfilled an election commitment to “drain the swamp”.

Drained the swamp he might have but created a lake of multi-billionaires with no experience and a hatred for the policy portfolios they were to undertake. I bet Joe loves rubbing shoulders with this lot. What odds he comes back with a Greg Norman accent.

Of the President’s failure to repeal Barack Obama’s healthcare regime – his core election promise – would have “little negative impact” among Republican voters.

“It will be seen as a failure of the system and will reflect poorly on the already poorly regarded Congress.”

However, he warned “repeated failure does have a cost”, and “the goodwill and tolerance of your voter base can be the patient for only so long”.

On this he is probably correct but it was none the less a monumental failure that would have seen 25 million of America’s poorest left without health care.

He was more correct when he said that Mr Trump and his “America first” message was rooted in the global financial crisis and the long-term erosion of confidence in American institutions, Mr Hockey told the dinner. In Australia he would never acknowledge that one ever existed.

Quoting research from the Pew Research Centre which showed that  trust in the federal government had fallen from 73 per cent in 1958 to just 19 per cent in 2015. And that faith in other institutions had also collapsed.

He said that middle-income families had seen their assets halved in value since the GFC, this explained “why the strongman change-maker, Donald Trump, was so attractive to many Americans”

He made the point that educational attainment characterised “the new electoral divide” in the US. States with higher numbers of professional degree-holders were more likely to vote Democrat, and vice-versa.

“Regular citizens have become increasingly distant from their own governments, both geographically and often ideologically. They don’t trust institutions that they can’t directly influence.”

Again this is true and equally applies to us, but in Australia as Treasurer, he was instrumental in creating this divide between the haves and have-nots. He had no interest in equality or indeed, opportunity. Remember his 2014 budget.

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https://theaimn.com/day-day-politics-gutless-joe-back/