Read time: 4 mins
Based on Populism and international law: the Morrison years in Australia by Jolyon Ford, published April 2025.
New ANU analysis of a 2019 cabinet process has revealed the resilience of diplomacy. Isolationist rhetoric failed to change foreign policy due to the persuasive efforts of public servants.
Read time: 4 mins
Based on Populism and international law: the Morrison years in Australia by Jolyon Ford, published April 2025.
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Populism is always on the rise somewhere. But some worry that blaming multilateral organisations is a global trend and there’s a risk states will leave them.
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Analysing a 2019 cabinet decision, an ANU expert investigated what happened when former prime minister Scott Morrison flirted with such populist rhetoric.
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The incident shows that risky words from leaders don’t always become risky policymaking – at least in foreign policy.
After the 2025 federal election, some called Labor’s historic win a rejection of ‘Trumpism’. But the way populism and populist rhetoric work in Australia are still subject to deeper research questions.
The success of populist leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte has led to predictions of a populist wave crashing all over the globe.
But according to an ANU expert, populism is more a political style than a cohesive ideology or vision for public policy. It’s a vision for winning votes, often by blaming ‘elites’.
Researchers define populism as a frame that portrays institutions as frustrating the will of the people. Populist leaders often suggest that international law and institutions are illegitimate in this sense and should be abandoned, via treaty withdrawal, de-funding and more. So, populist rhetoric at home tends to suggest imminent multilateral disengagement.
New ANU evidence shows that in Australia, support for multilateral diplomacy is resilient.
The research analysed the events of 3 October 2019, when former prime minister Scott Morrison gave an international affairs lecture.
In his speech, he denounced “negative globalism” and pitted ordinary people against so-called technocrats in global organisations. He said he’d order a review into Australia’s multilateral engagements. The media called this populist.
The ANU research puts the speech in context. It also used expert interviews and analysed its real-world effects.
It found that Australian foreign policy didn’t change after the speech. There was no pull away from multilateral efforts under the Morrison government. If anything, we became more engaged.
Morrison’s speech was seen as Trumpist and isolationist. But, according to the research, it may help to see it as ‘sceptical’ instead.
A sceptical view of international bodies doesn’t mean an actor is never willing to engage – especially to get something it needs.
Morrison used this rhetoric to call for a review into multilateralism and his cabinet took on the main recommendation from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) : that Australia play a bigger role, not a smaller one, on the world stage.
This worked because DFAT did better than just present cabinet with a wall of motherhood statements about a ‘rules-based international order’.
Instead its report included strong, specific examples of how leaving organisations would harm Australian interests. It proved Australia would be weaker if it left these bodies.
DFAT officials argued that by not engaging, other nations could instead influence these standard-setting bodies in Australia’s absence. They demonstrated they could influence them in ways that even populist-leaning Australians may not like.
For his part, Morrison never again said ‘negative globalism’ as prime minister. And the same DFAT report was used to shut down talk that Australia ‘might’ follow the US out of the World Health Organisation.
Top Image: I T S/Shutterstock.
“A sceptical view of international bodies doesn’t mean an actor is never willing to engage – especially to get something it needs.”
