This is the Australia that Pauline Hanson has been waiting for – a frightened country

June 23, 2026 — 3:00am

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It’s come to this. Australians now trust the US president only as much as they trust the ruler of the Chinese Communist Party. And not because they think Xi Jinping is any great paragon of virtue. Most Australians recognise that Xi’s China is repressive at home and a long-term military threat to Australia, according to the latest annual Lowy Institute poll.

The driver of distrust is the fact that Donald Trump has done so much damage to the world. Only 21 per cent of Australians trust him to do the right thing in world affairs, according to the poll.

Which is identical, statistically speaking, to the 20 per cent who trust Xi to do the right thing. The margin of error in the poll, which surveys about 2000 Australians on their feelings about the world each year, is 2.2 per cent.

Australians are in a dark and fearful mood, as the poll confirms. The collapse in trust in the US president is just one of the reasons. The Lowy poll quantifies others, too. And, while some are threats from abroad, others are seen as threats from within.

A record 55 per cent of people say that Australia has too many immigrants. The proportion who look on cultural diversity as something “positive” is still a large 73 per cent but has fallen a whopping 20 percentage points over two years. This is the Australia that Pauline Hanson has been waiting for.

For the first time in the poll’s history, most Australians report feeling “unsafe” in the world. The 53 per cent who say so today is even more than the 50 per cent proportion who said so at the outset of the COVID-19........

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