One of the most important Australian novels of the last few decades is Boy Swallows Universe, the semi-autobiographical debut by Queenslander Trent Dalton. Set in the boondocks of Brisbane in the early 1980s, it chronicles the post-war Australian dream bypassing an entire generation of ‘white trash’, leaving them in the clutches of welfarism, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction and junk-food poverty. As its protagonist Eli Bell laments, ‘Life is really different when you grow up with a family of outlaws…. Someone’s always gotta pay the price.’

A global best-seller, the story of young Eli’s struggle to overcome the deprivations and dysfunction that curse today’s white working-class poor was recently turned into a superb Netflix series by top Australian producer Andrew Mason.

Readers and viewers across our continent, from the rust-belt suburbs once home to South Australia’s car factories to the towns surrounding our silent coal mines, will have recognised the social failures wrought since the Whitlam years, in which an underclass dependent on the opiate of state welfare and handouts flounders in a world of increased crime, corruption and social despair. Some individuals, like Eli, break through and turn their adversity into a strength. Many, of course, do not. Has any political party successfully managed to represent the lost hopes and dreams of those whose jobs disappeared thanks to mismanaged globalisation and the pernicious effect of greedy unions and ever-increasing costs of production? Have any political parties seriously attempted to address the chronic and seemingly irreversible social decline caused and encouraged by the ever-expanding welfare state and its relentless focus on elitist, woke, eco-progressive issues? One Nation? Yes, but they are a minority party. The Liberal party? Yes, to a degree under Howard, Abbott and now Dutton but not at all under Turnbull or Morrison. The Nationals? Yes, to a degree. Labor? Of course not. The once-great party of the blue-collar worker these days prefers pandering to undergraduate ‘environmentalists’ and blue-haired, nose-pierced women with degrees in gender science.

Eli Bell should, of course, be a role model for those eager to escape the poverty trap of dispossessed, pension-addicted Australia. A real Eli Bell would be someone we would admire and look up to, a survivor who had overcome adversity to thrive and live the Australian dream. Ironically, the closest we have among our political leaders to an Eli Bell is Anthony Albanese, with his single-mum/housing-estate background; but the tragedy is that the young Mr Albanese instead of aspiring to a productive career as a self-made man preferred the leech-like embrace of socialism and Labor’s fraudulent undergraduate politics.

Two years before Trent Dalton’s book was published in Australia, a similar book was a major hit in the USA. Hillbilly Elegy, like Boy Swallows Universe, told the story of a bright young boy, this one brought up in the rust belt and white trash-land of Middletown, Ohio, in a childhood marred by poverty, domestic violence, abuse and parental drug addiction. Like Eli’s, this young boy’s mother’s opioid dependency deprives him of proper maternal affection. Like Eli’s, his dysfunctional family are a shadow of their proud forebears. And also like Eli, it is this young lad’s high IQ, buzzing personality and self-determination that offer a bright future as he seizes the opportunities that a free society presents to him.

As the author says, ‘Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful.’ Sounds like life in a thousand Aussie towns.

Hillbilly Elegy, like Boy Swallows Universe, was also turned into a Netflix hit.

At the end of Boy Swallows Universe, a flourishing career as a journalist awaits the bright young Mr Bell. At the end of Hillbilly Elegy… well, this week Donald Trump selected its author and protagonist J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee.

Several points need to be made. Firstly, that if the choice of Mr Vance was a surprise, it was only because there were so many other exceptional talents Mr Trump had to choose from; a veritable smorgasbord from Ron de Santis and Vivek Ramaswamey to Tim Scott, former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard and others. The contrast with the Democrat party could not be starker, where, literally the only reason the decrepit, senile, demented and doddery Joe Biden has not been replaced is because they can’t think of anyone better.

Secondly, it is noteworthy that the bien pensants of the Australian ‘conservative’ media have by and large sneered at this appointment, much as they have always sneered at Donald Trump himself.

Thirdly, there is no question that the political, economic and social decline of the West will only accelerate without politicians like Mr Trump, Mr Vance, Nigel Farage, Pierre Poilievre and others (mislabelled as ‘far right’) who are prepared to slay the woke shibboleths and tackle issues like illegal immigration, cost of living and the self-inflicted energy crisis (aka climate change) with verve and imagination.

To quote the protagonist from one of the books, but it could just as easily fit the other, ‘There is nothing lower than the poor stealing from the poor. It’s hard enough as it is. We sure as hell don’t need to make it even harder on each other.’

He’s only partly right. of course. Even lower than the poor stealing from the poor is when the government steals from the poor, which is precisely what is occurring every single day with insane net zero and other leftist inflationary policies.

Congratulations, Mr Trump, on  your inspired pick. What a week!