You've also got to remember that fascism (let's call it what it is) is much more a state of mind than it is a political ideology. Australian culture is different enough from American culture that the same tricks they used over there to tap into the festering bellyfeels that afflict the American White working class simply won't work over here.
Fascism starts from a feeling in your gut that you and your nation (whatever you think that is) are the first, best and only things that matter, so any action, no matter how reprehensible, is justified in advancing your interests. Followed to its logical conclusion, it delegitimises any opposition, flips traditional morality on its head to make violence a good thing in its own right while also demonising education and abstract thinking. Because fascism is a product of the age of nation states, it wraps its slimy tentacles around your national myths to appeal to as wide a section of the population as possible. This means that any fascist leader will necessarily be draped in the flag.
Trump is basically the embodiment of a bunch of deeply held American myths - the self-made man, the successful business man in a red tie, the titan of industry who shakes the world and makes things happen. An Australian equivalent will be completely different, equally unqualified and equally absurd, a battler perhaps or possibly a former athlete, knowing this country. Trying to copy Trump's playbook word for word will work about as well as Abbott affecting a little moustache under his nose or Bernardi constantly wearing a uniform.
It's also why I always thought that talking about fascist economics was always nonsense. Fascists use whatever means necessary to make their vision of national renewal happen. If that means a corporate state, laissez-faire economics or state ownership, then that's what will happen. Had the starting conditions in Italy and Germany been different during the rise of Mussolini or Hitler, we would be trying to shoehorn in a different model to try to describe fascist economic theory. How the money gets distributed to the "right" people is far less important than the fact that it does.
Make no mistake, it can happen here. The outsized importance our media already places on everything Australian when talking about international matters is already at eye-rolling levels of inane, plus we're prone to forgetting that not all Australians are Anglo-Celtic by heritage. A terrorist attack or tragedy happens and the first question anybody asks is whether any Australians were affected, and if they were and they happen to be white, it becomes national news in an instant. Michelle Corby and that model who "converted to Islam" and wore a burka into an Indonesian court were national sensations. The nerdy looking guy with Malaysian parents who was executed for the same offence at the same time, not so much.
But yes, it does have a harder hill to climb. Compulsory voting takes the edge off the combination of low general turnout and high turnout among the most susceptible voters to the fascist message that make a Trump victory possible.
