Labor Hegemony Under Threat? Perspectives on the By-Election…

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Category Archives: Politics

Labor Hegemony Under Threat? Perspectives on the By-Election in Ipswich West

By Denis Bright

The tidal wave swing against Labor in the Ipswich West by-election on 16 March 2024 created no ripples on the stagnant Bremer River.

Historic struggles on behalf of the Labor Movement will come and go in the future without any lasting effects from the by-election results. The Timothy Molony Oval in front of St. Mary’s Church is usually the venue convivial Labor Day socials and even the starting point for a protest march against the Bjelke-Petersen Government over the dismissal of railway employees for extended strike action during the early 1980s. I can see the same thing happening in the future if David Crisafulli and Peter Dutton take power on behalf of an older style LNP support base.

Even if Labor were to lose government on 25 October 2024, its support base would soon bounce back as in the Can Do Days of Premier Campbell Newman (2012-15) whose government was soon out of its depth in delivering for the people of Queensland. In those days, the state LNP promised to reduce the state debt, now the promise is about reducing crime.

With all the additional police and judicial resources developed to fighting and preventing crime, does the LNP really believe that Labor is soft on crime?

The chorus about Labor being soft on crime came from the Murdoch press with the support of eyewitness news reports. Stocking up fear is a misplaced political game strategy that seems to work in outer metro suburbs and regional areas. Crime embedded in cultural disadvantage. It has been a curse across Queensland even though overall crime rates present a complex challenge as noted by Griffith university criminologist, Michael Townsley (ABC News 26 November 2023). This is an excellent price of ABC journalism.

The state-wide Newspoll of voting intentions across Queensland was released in The Australian on the eve of the Ipswich West by-election. The Newspoll indicated the prospect of a 9.6 percent decline in Labor’s primary vote since the last state election on 31 October 2020. The swing against Labor on a TPP basis was 7.2 percent as support for the Greens on 13 percent (+3.5 percent since 2020) moderated the swing against Labor. The absence of a Green Party candidate at the Ipswich West by-election removed this moderating effect on the swing against Labor. These swings against Labor were more than excelled in the Ipswich West by-election.

By-elections provide opportunities for local conservatives in Ipswich to mount populist campaigns on issues like crime and self-perceived neglect of the city. At a state level, these campaigns hit their mark in the seat of Ipswich on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929 and again in 1974, 1998 and 2012.

Darren Zanow’s campaign excelled in the use of these superlatives.

In the provision of public health services for Ipswich, the LNP chose to overlook problems associated with years of neglect by the federal LNP in support for the Commonwealth-state health agreements and long-term failure to fund renumerations paid for highly expensive specialist and diagnostic services. Disadvantaged voters should ask their GPs to add a statement about financial disadvantage to their medical referrals. They will usually be bulk billed as a result of this initiative.

The transition in Labor leadership in Ipswich West from Ivor Marsden (MLA 1949-66) to Labor’s Vi Jordan produced a remarkably close result at thee 1966 state election. Labor retained the seat by a mere 227 votes after preferences. Labor bounced back with a swing of 11.3 percent after preferences at the next state election in 1969 with further swings in 1972. Defeat came again for Labor in Ipswich West on 7 December 1974 when the populist campaign by Joh Bjelke-Petersen reduced Labor to eleven members after the loss of 22 Labor seats.

Even in 1974 when Labor had the advantage of a largely unionized local workforce in manufacturing and railway workshops, populist campaigns could work against Labor. This is not the case in the contemporary workforce in Ipswich.

A half century later, the Ipswich West electorate offers a very diverse demography between semi-rural western components and suburbs like Chuwar, Karalee and Barellan Point on the fringes of Brisbane’s wealthy mortgage-belt suburbs in the Moggill electorate.

Excuses aside, the swing to LNP candidate Darren Zanow exceeded all expectations. Labor candidate Wendy Bourne may have retained the seat if the Green Party had decided to endorse a candidate. The flow of preferences from the Legalise Cannabis Queensland (LCQ) were not strong enough to retain the seat for Labor:

 

 

Three consecutive terms of Labor representation in Ipswich West since 2015 were certainly not cast aside after robust policy debates. The populist campaign from the LNP and One Nation hit the electorate with a thump as in previous occasions when Labor lost the seat to conservative opponents. In the pre-depression era both the seats of Rosewood and Ipswich fell to the conservative on the mantra of giving young people a chance for work as the global financial crisis approached.

As in 1929, the result in Ipswich West is a tragedy for the Queensland government. The 2022-23 budget delivered $1.3 billion in capital works for Ipswich City across the three state seats in Ipswich. This is around ten percent of the state’s total capital works spending. In a growing city, this extraordinary expenditure is easily absorbed into the routine provision of roads, hospital services, schools and a wide range of community services (Queensland Budget Papers).

Commitment of $59.2 million in social housing for Ipswich in the 2022-23 budget was never acknowledged in the LNP’s populist campaign strategies.

Given the warnings prior to the by-election in Ipswich West on 16 March 2024, the people of Queensland deserve a new team of media communicators to deliver messages of hope to voters in outer metropolitan and regional seats before the David Crisafulli style is perhaps successfully transferred to the state election campaign prior to 25 October 2024.

Fortunately, the Queensland election date is still a few months away.

However, there are communication problems between some Labor policy elites at both federal and state levels with more disadvantaged voters in regional and outer metropolitan areas. The 2022 Australian election result swings did not extend to most of Queensland. Queensland Labor was left with just five members of the House of Representatives and just three out of a total of twelve Queensland senators.

In Maryborough, state local member Bruce Saunders knows how to handle this problem with his commitment to local manufacturing industries and active community development programmes, appropriate for a regional heritage city. Maryborough once posed problems for Labor candidates prior to the arrival of Bruce Saunders on the state political scene.

The communication theories to bring government back to the needs of people are well developed. Some Labor’s policy elites in all states and territories have obvious links to lobbyists from corporate giants and firms from the global military industrial complexes. Readers should take a glance at the LinkedIn site in their own locality to peruse these quite obvious but still circumstantial connections.

Ohio State University’s Communications department has long been a champion of progressive media communication but there are literally dozens of exponents.

The Ohio State University’s journalism department has been involved in developments in communication theory, particularly in areas where digital media, changing audiences, and the evolving role of journalism intersect. Here are some examples:

Faculty Research

  • Gerald Kosicki: A leading expert in the fields of survey methodology and public opinion research. Examines how technology and the changing media landscape affect how we understand and measure public opinion.
  • Morgan Ellithorpe: Researches the intersection of journalism, audience engagement, and social media. Analyses how news organizations use social platforms and how audiences interact with news content online.
  • Nicole Kraft: Focuses on health communication, especially how media portrayals of health issues and persuasive messaging influence health behaviours.
  • Kendra Garrett: Explores media representation, particularly the portrayal of race and gender in media such as news and entertainment programming.

Projects and Initiatives

  • The Media Project: An initiative within the School of Communication aiming to bridge the gap between research and the media industry. They run workshops, conduct research, and host events on issues like audience behaviour and the impact of new technologies on news delivery.
  • Eye on Ohio: A project bringing together student journalists and faculty to address critical issues facing the state of Ohio. Their work exemplifies the interplay between journalism practice and the broader social and communication theories surrounding civic engagement.

I became an instant fan of Associate Professor Gerald Kosicki when I looked at his work some years ago. This is very relevant to the construction of alternatives to the David Crisafulli style of campaigning which hit its targets in Ipswich West and Inala on 16 March 2024.

In support of Premier Steven Miles, I must add that by-election results must not distract Labor from delivering good government for Queensland, including tough on crime strategies.

Premier Miles delivered the prospect of additional police resources to Ipswich during the by-election campaign.

The notion that Labor is soft on crime is totally ridiculous and a distracting ruse by conservative populists to bring down the government of Queensland on 25 October 2024 and the federal government likewise in 2025.

As global economic conditions worsen as in 1929, opportunities will soon dry up under the austerity programmes from the LNP in government at all levels.

 

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

 

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Predictable Outcomes: Australia, the National Security Committee, and invading Iraq

Archivists can be a dull if industrious lot. Christmas crackers are less important than the new year announcement in Canberra, when the National Archives of Australia releases documents like the newborn into the information world. The event is not without irony, given that such documents are often aged and seasoned numbers, whiskered by storage and grey with cataloguing.

On January 1, the NAA diligently followed a long-standing convention of releasing a stash of cabinet documents running into 240 from the Howard government, a period in Australian history when finance ruled with raffish vulgarity, and critical adventurers of conscience were anesthetised and told to get a mortgage. John Howard, Australia’s dull, waxwork prime minister, reminded his voters that Australia’s links to Asian countries were less important than the sigh-heavy attention from Washington.

What was particularly interesting in this disgorging of material was the focus on Australia’s foolish, negligent and even criminal contribution to the war on Iraq in 2003. Even more interesting was how little the files said about the reasons for Australia’s commitment to the invasion. Much of this was occasioned by the omission of 78 records that would otherwise have been in the original 2020 transfer to the archives.

Canberra is the city of smudged politicians, unnervingly clean air and endless meetings, but the omission of documents troubled Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, given that they concerned the invasion. He even went so far as to order an inquiry. In true capital fashion, it was done with reserve and caution, the broom being of the “one of us” school. Dennis Richardson, former director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), not to mention being on the government’s retainer as a consultant, became the broom in question.

In subsequent recommendations as to why the omission of the documents had taken place, Richardson advanced the less than controversial thesis that the NAA include documents from the National Security Committee (NSC), a fixture of the Howard government.

On March 14, the Archives, as if prodded, released certain NSC documents relevant to the Iraq invasion. In the incomplete release, Australia as empire’s obedient, perfumed appendage becomes almost ridiculously evident. On January 10, 2003, the Defence Minister Robert Hill, along with the defence force chief, identified the need for deploying some personnel from the Australian Defence Force within a month “on the likely time-frame for possible military action against Iraq” as indicated by US Central Command. The meeting also reveals that ADF forward units were already designated from a list agreed upon by the NSC on August 26 and December 4, 2002. The thrill for imminent war was palpable.

Howard, at the same meeting, promised that committing ADF forces required the consideration of all cabinet members, also noting that he had “foreshadowed to the governor-general the general direction of steps under consideration by the government in relation to Iraq.” But the governor-general of the time, the eventually doomed Peter Hollingworth, was subsequently told by the prime minister that involving him in the decision to invade Iraq was needless; the ADF could be deployed under the provisions of the Defence Act.

A minute dated March 18, 2003 makes mention of the full cabinet’s authorisation of the invasion, though hardly anything else. There is, however, a submission from the defence minister “circulated in the cabinet room on 17 and 18 March” intended to convince cabinet on possible military operations in Iraq. In anticipation of a formal request to commit troops, the ADF had already been authorised to pursue “prudent contingency planning” on the matter. The two stated war aims of Washington are outlined (vassal, take note): “regime change” and crippling Iraq’s “delivery of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).” On this point, the Howard government dawdles, if ever so slightly, notably on the issue of regime change, admitting, ultimately, that “this may be a desirable, even inevitable, outcome of military action.”

The now infamous memorandum of advice authored by the first assistant secretaries of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Attorney-General’s department is also to be found. The memorandum offers the shakiest of justifications for invading Iraq, also drawing from unsubstantiated reasons from their UK counterparts. It was subsequently and rightly excoriated by an irate Gavan Griffith, the then unconsulted Solicitor-General. Not only were both bits of legal advice “entirely untenable”, they were also “arrant nonsense”, furnishing “no threads for military clothes.” Nothing from President George W. Bush’s remarks had revealed any desire “to clothe American action with the authority of the Security Council.” Thuggish unilateral action seemed the order of the day.

For Griffith, certain omissions were almost unpardonable. What, for instance, of such authorities as Canberra’s veteran authority, Henry Burmester, the former head of the Office of International Law, subsequently appointed Chief Counsel of the AG’s department. Or for, that matter, of the now late James Crawford of Cambridge University, commonly retained for the giving of advice on international law. Cautious experience had been elbowed out in favour of the gun.

The latest documents from the NSC are more sleet than snow. They do confirm that the parliamentary system, more than ever, should be involved in reining in the wild impulses of war makers. In the meantime, drawing up an indictment for Howard to stand trial in the International Criminal Court is overdue. The same goes for a number of his cabinet. We would not want them to go stale before justice.

 

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Dutton’s bid for nuclear power: hoax or reckless endangerment?

It’s incredible. Such is our love-in with Peter “Junkyard” Dutton, our former Border Overlord, who used to play the bad cop dispensing rough justice–doing whatever it took to keep us safe-that today, he’s being cheered by most of the press gallery for reckless endangerment in his punt on nuclear energy.

Is it just to please his sponsor, Gina Rinehart and other richly attractive mining oligarchs who will make a few extra billion out of delaying the end of coal-fired power generation? Even if they do hasten the end of the world, they do get to star in their own perverted, planet-destroying mother of all snuff movies?

Or… brace yourself- does “Dutts” blunt truth and other fiction’s pin up boy-harbour ulterior motives?

Of course. A whiff of Emu Field, Montebello and Maralinga on the campaign trail helps with Coalition branding and product differentiation. “I’m with nuclear, stupid” would be a killer of an election slogan. Albo and Dutts could get together to whip up a referendum for the next federal democracy sausage BBQ. Besides, no-one in the nuclear power side hustle isn’t also itching to develop his or her own nuclear weapon cycle. Nuclear energy only makes sense if you are a nuclear arms manufacturer.

And what a boon for democracy. Voters choose between the pro-mining, colliery-opening, Labor Party and the pro-mining right-wing rump of a moribund Liberal Party, only in the race because of its secret agreement with the National Party, a mob of pro-mining, faux populists who pose as saviours of The Bush and its battlers, such as Riverview Old Boy, Barnaby Thomas Gerald Joyce’s Weatherboard Nine.

Or Bob Katter’s family which includes the incredibly successful arms manufacturer, son-in-law Rob Nioa.

Nuclear is also a feint in the climate wars. Let’s talk tactics. Team Dutton can say that Labor is on the right track but has “no credible pathway” unless you have nuclear energy in the brew, firming up your mix. The Liberal Party plays the front end of the Coalition panto horse; the Nationals bring up the rear.

And just as he did after defeat in Aston, Dutton dashes into nuclear after his Dunkley debacle. Note he’s now a big reactor man, having got the email that small modular reactors are scarce as rocking-horse manure. It’s a revolutionary turn. A year or so ago, Dutts opposed, “the establishment of big nuclear facilities”. But being a conservative in Australian politics means, you don’t have to explain or apologise.

Nor do you have to heed our scientists. “… the CSIRO has made clear, large reactors are too large for our small grids, and small reactors are still unproven commercially.”

Smear them. Say it’s a discredited study.

Sean Kelly sees Dutton’s pro-nuclear vision as a way of buying unity. Nobody on Dutton’s team thinks it’s a real policy, he claims, and it’s a long-term fantasy, so they won’t buck Dutton’s wilful stupidity. He’s sniping at CSIRO, too, which always wins friends amongst a growing anti-science brigade, a resource tapped into shamelessly by such figures as, “planter saint”, Barnaby Joyce; off his nut about the “green peril”. The former deputy PM also calls windmills, “filth” whilst renewable energy is a “swindle”.

The Coalition attack on CSIRO parallels its harassment of a now cowed ABC, on which it inflicted a barrage of criticism, funding cuts and Morrison’s captain’s pick of Ita Buttrose as chair. Cutbacks in the CSIRO have also taken their toll but their CEO, Professor Doug Hilton publicly rebukes Dutton.

“For science to be useful and for challenges to be overcome it requires the trust of the community. Maintaining trust requires scientists to act with integrity. Maintaining trust also requires our political leaders to resist the temptation to disparage science.”

Kelly might add that the Coalition is riven by at least ten factions, post-Morrison, and has rivals hatching plots of helping their leader by taking his job away from him. One of these, with some experience of edged weapons, is former SAS Patrol Commander, Captain Andrew Hastie who must have been cheered when in 2017 the AFP cleared of war crimes, an SAS soldier who cut the hands off two suspected Taliban fighters. Handy Andy was in command of some other soldiers at the scene. Hastie’s mentor is none other than party kingmaker, Big Mining Shill and fellow happy clapper, the Nationals’ John Anderson.

A spill now could avoid some bloodletting in the next federal election, a surgical strike, perhaps.

Rex Patrick sees Peter Dutton’s move as a “nasty” political wedge given that the federal Labor government has already signed us on to Morrison’s AUKUS which guarantees a small modular nuclear reactor inside a submarine moored near you if you happen to live close to HMAS Stirling Naval Base in Perth, the Osborne Naval Shipyards in Adelaide, SA or the yet to be opened mystery envelope containing only three options, Sydney Harbour, Wollongong/ Port Kembla or Newcastle.

Hint. The Royal Australian Navy berths in Sydney Harbour.

Moreover, the disposing of nuclear waste is also well in hand, notes Patrick.

“In the last few months, we’ve seen a bill introduced into the Parliament by the Labor Government that legalises the acceptance of nuclear waste from the UK and US and provides the Government with the power to nominate any place in Australia as a nuclear waste site, with no requirement to consult with local communities or other interested groups.”

In the bigger picture, AUKUS depends upon a gamble that nuclear power will be the naval fuel of the future. And the even bigger gamble that submarines are not yet obsolete. Yet even today it’s uneconomic and fraught with a perplex of disposal and safety issues. Dutts the Kiwi Bikie Gangster Deporter, Dual Citizenship-Stripper, Dole-bludger-buster, or the African Gang vigilante; dog-whistling racism, fear and division, demonising the other, is as complex as the next bloke. But he is not a big ideas man. Fizza Turnbull has never heard Peter propose a single constructive idea.

Dutton’s mentor, John Howard was rarely troubled by big ideas either. But now, Dutton is calling for “a mature debate™” on a nuclear energy, we don’t need, can’t afford, could never rely on and can’t fuel. We’d be importing expensive fuel rods we can’t make at home for reactors which would never be built in time (without a slave labour workforce like the UAE) to replace our rapidly clapped-out coal-fired plant.

The latest that coal burner stations will be decommissioned is 2038. We couldn’t get atomic energy working until at least the 2040s. But let’s not let practicality get in the way of progress. We are already being sold a mythical new generation of reactor, now that the small, modular model has imploded.

Whoever is backing the Coalition’s nuclear crusade, however dark, the money trail, we can expect a litany of lies about the most expensive, unsafe and least reliable energy, we could hope for.

Nuclear energy lacks the flexibility we need to switch around a modern grid. It cannot “firm” renewables. Even if we could change the laws of every state and territory which currently make nuclear reactors illegal – because of the risk to the environment and to public health. And welch on our obligations as global citizens under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, (NPT).

And that’s before we get to solve the problems of where to build our reactors or what to do with their toxic waste. Of course, we could grovel to the US; beg to join the nuclear arms production club. Experts have tried. Why repeat the humiliation of public refusal?

Above all, a nuclear reactor is not emissions free once you tot up the cost of the long and complex build and once you factor in the cost of a long decommissioning – plus transporting live and spent fuel rods or factor transportation emissions to the equation.

“In one life cycle study, Netherlands-based World Information Service on Energy (WISE) calculates that nuclear plants produce 117 grams of CO2 emissions per KWH. Other studies have similar findings.”

Given the cost, nuclear power plants would be possible only with massive government subsidies. In 2023, the French government had to nationalise its nuclear power industry, responsible for generating seventy per cent of its energy. France has had a mere seventy-eight years in which to make nuclear energy pay its way. But who gives a fig about the experience of a major nuclear nation?

Instead of slogans about reliability and endurance, why not heed the US example where twenty plants had to be shut down well before they reached the claimed forty-year life span? Mostly, the failures are in the steam generators but there’s also a built-in source of degradation.

“In addition to normal industrial wear-and-tear, nuclear plants have the unique and often irreparable liability of having their components continually exposed to varying levels of radiation. Over time, radiation embrittles and/or corrodes the infrastructure (metal components in particular) and will eventually lead to structural failure.”

Yet Dutts is up for a debate which will help us decide whose reactors will come into our national grid and the circumstances in which they come. His “debate” will kill time while global heating soars and the owners of coal-fired plants and other Liberal donors are laughing all the way to the bank.

Is Spud, a paperback Howard? The same message but less weight? Lech Blaine sees him that way, even if that’s unfair given that John Winston Howard never betrayed any intellectual breadth or depth. Under Dutts, the Coalition is “One Nation Lite”, says Tasmanian Liberal, MP for Bass, Bridget Archer. Both are helpful assessments of his character but it would be fatal to underestimate Dutton’s tactical nous.

After denouncing The Voice, as a conspiracy of elites against ordinary Australians, stoking race, immigration and gender culture wars, the LNP knight-errant is off on a new, nuclear-powered, pseudo-populist quest to help make Australia hate again. His minders borrow from the Trump playbook.

There is something eerily familiar about Dutton 2.0’s crazy-brave new world, in which old hatreds blaze anew in a series of assaults on reason, decorum, parliamentary convention, renewables and CSIRO. Truth. It’s a world where a “reasoned debate” about nuclear energy is code for stalling to keep coal.

Blaine sees Dutton as a Tony Abbott without the Rhodes Scholarship and bizarre religious hangups. And without, we must add, the St Ignatius Riverview elite private school old-boy power network.

Ambitious and strategic, Dutton would rather be a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Yet LNP history is littered with con men who’ve posed as strong men. In 2015, after rave reviews from his own comms department on Border Protection, the fabulist, Scott Morrison, styled himself as the “tough cop” on the welfare beat. But what ensued was a politically expedient, vindictive cruelty towards the poor and vulnerable.

Dutton does love Big Mining. In April 2010, Labor proposed to tax mining companies’ super-profits. This would kill mining overnight, Abbott ranted. Yet it’s impossible to see how. In the five years to 2020, the top fossil fuel mining companies were paying little or no tax, reports Michael West.

Yet The Liberals’ scare campaign had to hit pause, briefly, because Dutton had bought shares in BHP just after the policy announcement. As you do. “I bought them to put in the bottom drawer,” he says.

Is Dutt’s the thinking man’s Pauline Hanson? Currently undertaking a reverse ferret on nuclear energy, the goose-stepping Coalition is taking such a hard right turn that it’s back to budgie-smuggling.

Only with added hyperbole. Forget the $100 lamb roast or Whyalla being wiped off the map, it’s how renewables will steal a third of Australia’s agricultural land.

So, says, Queen Gina Rinehart, The AFR’s 2024 “Business Person of the Year”, who with 12 million hectares here and in the USA, is also the world’s biggest individual landholder.

Renewables may take up 0.27%. But Ms Rinehart said her “meticulous research” is done by The IPA to whom, she is a major donor. As Richard Ackland notes,

“This, once again, is a glimmer into how the world works. Rino gives the Institute pots of money garnered from publicly owned quarry assets, the institute then concocts “research” favourable to her interests, which she publicly proclaims to be “meticulous”.”

Dutts is hell-bent on steering his crew back to a Tony Abbott future of opposing everything Labor proposes. Onion-breath-opposition for its own sake. Especially on energy. Take a bow Big Ted O’Brien. Federal shadow minister for Climate change and Energy and Fortescue Metals shareholder, the LNP’s beige cardigan, Ted O’Brien could be a younger Scott Morrison’s body double.

Ted’s certainly a spiritual twin in his industrial-strength hypocrisy.

In 2019, Mr O ‘Brien chaired a committee which found that:

“Australia’s rich renewable energy sources are more affordable and bring less risk than the elevated cost and risk associated with nuclear energy,”

Federal Minister for Fairfax, a Gold Coaster who was pipped by 53 votes by white-shoe brigadier, Clive Palmer in 2013, a legend in his own lunch-bucket, who set a new national record for MP least likely to show up to work in 2014, O’Brien is a dead ringer for the former member for Cook, Scott “no mates” Morrison, whose farewell dinner at the Shire is “adjourned” because none of those invited would show up. Perhaps they turned up to Ted’s party instead. “Time for Ted” was his election slogan.

Yet not only is Edward Lyneham O’Brien, the spitting image of Scott John Morrison, with less hair loss but he also sounds just like him. Listen to him bull-doze his host, ABC 7:30’s Sara Ferguson, badgering her with non-sequiturs. Sound-bites. Lies about non-existent small, modular nuclear reactors. Labour refusing to have a mature debate. How Australia has some of the highest energy prices in the world. Premature evacuation.

“We should not be closing our coal-fired power stations prematurely.”

Most of our coal-burners are clapped-out already, AEMO reports and will expire well before we’re ready with nuclear replacements – or the wiring required. Ten have shut since 2012 and the remainder may be wound up three times faster than their operators say.

The smug, arrogance is at play, too. Not only is Ted right about how nuclear energy will firm up the grid, hopelessly flaccid under woke solar, wind and batteries, he’s doing us a favour in pointing it out.

Be a breeze to get the odd SMR up and running over Easter. Just copy the bijou miracle of the UAE, an iconic dictatorship and a triumph of can-do capitalism, reliant on South Korean funding and millions of migrant slave-workers, mainly from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

So US giant Westinghouse declared bankruptcy in 2017 following its disastrous reactor construction projects in South Carolina and Georgia? There’s always the UK.

OK, Britain’s nuclear power industry went bankrupt years ago. France bought it, then the French nuclear industry went bankrupt. In Gallic desperation, it has now been fully nationalised – just to keep it going. Expensive. The South Korean utility KEPCO which achieved a miraculously quick nuclear installation for the UAE which the Coaltions keen to tell us about, is in big trouble. Its debt is now A$224 billion.

So? We could look to Japan. Japan’s nuclear industry never recovered from Fukushima.

“By giving in to the climate deniers and nuclear cheerleaders in his own show, Dutton shows his preparedness to consign the Australian community to an expensive, disaster-prone, and dangerous future for the sake of protecting his own position,” Labor’s Josh Wilson says.

But that’s only half the story. Dutton’s nuclear dream is a dead cat on the table to distract us from his Dunkley debacle. When he proposes a debate, the last thing he wants is us to have a conversation. The debate will help keep fossil fuel giants in the play; delay the uptake of renewables. Make billions for Gina Rinehart, whose businesses are flat-lining right now. The LNP is big on corporate welfare.

But beyond the tactics of Labor-baiting and the politics of diversion and the need for Dutton to keep himself safe from the empty chair he defeated in the last Liberal spill, lurks the original – and only – economic rationale of nuclear power – as an adjunct to a nuclear arms industry.

Add in the (now-delayed) AUKUS submarines which need to refuel in Australia and the fake debate which the Opposition leader is calling for could be gazumped by an agile federal government with an honest and open conversation. Professor Matthew Kearnes, Professor of Environment and Society in the UNSW School of Humanities and Languages, observes,

“When we say ‘We need to talk about nuclear technology’, it matters who speaks and who is in the room to be a part of that conversation. If we are going to have a conversation then it needs to be an open one where there are lots of possible inputs into that discussion.”

What we don’t need is the fog of obfuscation and deceit, Peter Dutton’s team is intent on giving us instead. Call his bluff, Labor. Have a real conversation. Be time to even whip up a bit of a plebiscite. But one with all the facts spelled out in writing.

 

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Issues Changing the Nation: Never Ending AUKUS Submarine Policy Sagas

By Denis Bright

The issue of AUKUS has resurfaced from the murky depths of undersea politics. ABC News graphics (featured image) reminds readers of the latest additional payment to fast track the AUKUS deal with its proposed cost of at least $368 billion.

Public policy interest in the AUKUS submarine saga is now being propelled by doubts about US construction deadlines for the high technology nuclear-powered submarines. The US Navy confirmed that it will halve the number of nuclear-powered submarines on offer in its 2025 budget. Second-hand LA Class submarines will not be available for sharing with Australia as they will be needed in the USA. Even the construction schedule for AUKUS-class submarines in Adelaide is now in doubt (ABC News 13 March 2024).

For readers who are new to this issue, I might restate some background to the AUKUS deals. The commercial military industrial complexes do not advertise their hidden details. Making a request to Gemini-Google Bard provided this summary for verification by readers:

  • US Virginia-class submarines: Australia will acquire at least three (and potentially up to five) Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines from the US. The first of these might be in early 2030s. The leading corporations from the US military industrial complexes are General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries (Newport News Shipbuilding). Numerous supportive technology companies engage in preparations for these developments including involvement from Boeing.
  • AUKUS-class submarines: Provided through US and British commercial providers of a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarines during the 2040s. The British firms particularly embedded in the AUKUS Programme are:

: BAE Systems will play a critical role in the construction of the AUKUS submarines.

: Babcock International will be involved in construction and maintenance.

: Rolls-Royce will be involved in design and delivery of the nuclear reactors.

  • Temporary Rotational Deployment UK Astute-class and US Virginia-class submarines are planned on a rotational basis to HMAS Stirling in Western Australia.

The US Studies Centre in Sydney (9 February 2024) offered commentary by its Director Professor Peter Dean and research associate Alice Nason:

AUKUS has become a case study in generational politics. Public opinion polling reveals only 33 per cent of Gen Z and millennial voters believe it’s a good idea for Australia to have nuclear-powered submarines, compared with 66 per cent of voters aged sixty-five and over.

Still, on some things, all generations agree: a plurality of Australian voters feel nuclear-powered submarines are not worth the cost to Australian taxpayers. Only 21 per cent of voters believe the submarines warrant their $368bn price tag.

These apprehensions, especially among young people, should alarm our policymakers. The people who are expected to staff Australia’s new submarine enterprise as of now don’t support it. This is only the tip of the iceberg for Australia’s workforce challenge.

Australia will build up a sizeable military industrial complex over the next half-century if the AUKUS deals proceed as planned. Lobbying in support of AUKUS has attracted retired political leaders from both sides of politics who are committed to the goal of a more militarized Australia (Anton Nilsson Crikey.com 23 January 2024).

From the far-off United States, Anna Massoglia and Dan Auble from the Open Secrets site were able provide details of lobbying by major corporations in during 2023 just in support of AUKUS. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics topped the lobbying spending with a combined expenditure of over $US80 million.

David Hardaker of Crikey.com exposed the roles of conservative lobbyists in support of the efforts of the military corporates (31 May 2023). This is an exercise in investigative journalism at its best:

A Crikey investigation into the power of conservative political lobbyists CT Group has revealed that two US companies represented by CT are set to be among the biggest winners of the “forever” AUKUS defence deal hatched by former prime minister Scott Morrison.

One of the companies, General Dynamics, is the lead contractor for constructing the US navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. The other company, Centrus Energy, is the leading provider of nuclear fuel for US national security purposes and for naval reactors.

CT’s US entity, CTF Global LLC, has acted as a lobbyist for General Dynamics and Centrus Energy since it set up shop in Washington in 2018, taking on the client list of long-term lobbyist Larry Grossman who was seeking to extend the global reach of his firm.

The evolution of the CIT Group as defence lobbyists came as it reached the peak of its political influence in Australia at the end of 2018 with its then-Australian CEO Yaron Finkelstein joining Morrison’s staff as principal private secretary.

In parallel with Australia, the CT Group also enjoyed the closest of relationships with then-UK prime minister Boris Johnson. David Canzini, a former CT executive, was part of Johnson’s team as a deputy chief of staff.

Readers can follow the investigative trails offered through Crikey.com:

Explore the Series

  1. Crosby Textor: the pollsters that took over the Liberal Party and became a global power.
  2. Mere coincidence? Crosby Textor is the common link in Morrison’s AUKUS deal.
  3. Scott Morrison issues blanket denial on nuclear submarine questions.
  4. Spooks and spies: Crosby Textor moves into shadowy territory.
  5. Crosby Textor group’s influence on the Liberals has been pervasive. Is it time to cut the link?
  6. Crosby Textor’s influence on prime ministers helped it dominate the Anglosphere.

In this era of cost-of-living politics, no one on either side of politics seems to worry about the irregular additional costs of the AUKUS deals. There was an unexpected allocation of $A835 million to France was imposed on the Labor Government for breach of contract from the cancellation of Malcolm Turnbull’s submarine deal.

The Register of Lobbyists and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (the Scheme) from the Attorney-General’s Department do not provide easy access to the specific roles played by lobbyists for firms associated with military industrial complexes. Just knowing which lobbyists have an association with a company like the CT Group is of little practical purpose in investigative journalism. This is a sample register extract for the CT Group which was mentioned in the Crikey.com articles.

The LinkedIn site offers more clues by showing which ex-politicians or former military personnel and policy advisers with links to Australian and global military industrial companies through both lobbying activities or the convening of forum events or other corporate links. There is nothing sinister about the openness of the opportunities offered through LinkedIn which opens a new world of connections for further investigation by journalists.

Here are just three examples.

 

 

 

 

The anecdotes from LinkedIn can be followed up with a direct communication to the person listed and further research on his/her activities within the military industrial complexes through quite legal lobbying or forum events.

However, cheering on the military is historically a dangerous practice. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the British Empire was once united around the need for Freedom of Navigation to advance its economic diplomacy against China in the two Opium Wars. The US and France joined Britain in the second round in the Opium Wars (1856-60).

Britain once had a balance of payments problem with China during the Days of Empire. It authorized the export of opium to China to address this imbalance.

Imperial China rejected Britain’s efforts against China in the two Opium Wars.

Critical discussion might be painful to political elites. Armed conflicts in a nuclear age are even worse. Let’s pause for some reflection before more jingoism gets Australia into real trouble through over-commitment to global corporate military industrial complexes and the expansion of a stronger home-grown variant in Australia.

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

 

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The Strange Cases Of Kate, Dutton And The Man On The Moon…

As I often remind everyone, the trouble with conspiracy theories is that they start from two central truths of life:

  1. You can’t trust people in authority.
  2. Always look carefully at the evidence.
  3. The Illuminati is controlling everything.

Now my more astute readers will have noticed that I listed three things when I said that there were two truths. I could tell you which of the two are true but I’ll leave it work it out for yourself but please, for the safety of both of us don’t write in the comments that it’s number three!

Anyway, I must confess that I wasn’t taken too much notice of all the conspiracy theories surrounding the Princess of Wales. I mean, whatever you think of the Royal Family, it is pretty far-fetched to believe that she’d turned into a zombie and was eating their brains, even if there are less and less of them appearing in public. After all, a lack of brains never stopped them in previous generations so why should they go all sensitive about that now…

Yes, it was only in the last few hours that I felt the need to put my sharp investigative skills into the strange case of Kate’s photo. I call it strange for a number of reasons that haven’t been canvassed yet:

  • Media organisations decided that it was digitally altered and didn’t publish it. This is only strange because many of the same media organisations have been publishing digitally altered photos for years.
  • Prince Will wasn’t in the photo which would lead one to presume that he took the photo.
  • Kate admitted to digitally altering the photo… Of course, when I say that Kate has admitted to doing that I simply mean that she tweeted that she’d done it after several media outlets said that it was altered. Of course, she explained that she’s an amateur photography who takes photos of herself and her children which makes one wonder where Willie was if he wasn’t the one taking the photo… And when I say that she explained what I mean is that there was a tweet from the account of The Prince and Princess of Wales which one presumes is from her because it ended with a capital “C” because her name is Catherine and William doesn’t use the “C” word at the end of his tweets. Although when I think about it the “C” could stand for a lot of things, including “Counterfeit”, “Contrived” and … anyway, let’s move on!

Speaking of Peter Dutton, I’d have to say that his nuclear policy is one of those times when I’m totally onboard with the conspiracy concept. What’s the Coalition being doing for the past ten years? Delaying the rollout of renewables and extending the life of fossil fuels. What would introducing nuclear do? Delay the rollout renewables and extend the life of fossil fuels!

It’s not hard to put two and two together and actually get four this time. Let’s take the policy seriously for a moment and presume that it’s a damn good idea. The first thing that’s wrong with it I’ll explain with this apocryphal story.

Imagine my wife and I want to go on a holiday at the end of the year. She decides that she’d like to go to France and I say that it’s too far away and they don’t speak English. She counters with the idea that we can learn enough French to get by and use Google translate for the rest and I counter with: “What about when the Internet doesn’t work at night!” and she replies that I’m an idiot and we get nowhere. However because it would be good to go on a holiday I propose that we go on space flight instead, but instead of discussing this with her and trying to reach consensus, I announce at a dinner party in front of friends that my wife has this silly idea of going to France and that she totally rejects the idea of a space flight because she doesn’t accept that the technology is completely safe and she thinks that it would cost more than France but if you people will just vote for me, I’ll have the space flight thing all organised sometime in the next decade.

Apart from anything else, you can probably presume that our end of year holiday won’t be happening.

So, in terms of Dutton, if he were really serious about nuclear energy then surely it would be good to be working on a consensus with the government rather than; “We’ll make this an election issue because power prices are too high and nuclear will help with that sometime in the very near future because it should only take 3-5 years to build a small nuclear reactor on every corner. Look at our success with the NBN rollout where we used the existing copper wires and we can do the same with nuclear reactors by putting them on the sites of defunct coal-fired power stations.”

Naturally there are some little holes in his plan. That is, if you presume that his plan is really to build them and not to merely keep Gina happy. Let’s look at the best case scenario for nuclear:

  • Dutton wins election
  • Dutton announces task force to draw up plan for SMR
  • Task force investigates for six months and hands report to Dutton for consideration
  • Dutton holds press conference to announce his intention to draw up a plan
  • Press reports on rumoured location of SMRs
  • Dutton tells media that no decisions have been made
  • Coalition announces that they’ve contracted out the investigation of potential sites to a company which nobody has heard of but has an office in a shack on Kangaroo Island.
  • Directors of said company go overseas to research the countries with SMRs operating.
  • Directors return and announce that as there were no such countries we need to develop our own.
  • New contract is drawn up giving Liberal donors lots and lots of money to build SMRs just as soon as they’re viable.
  • Dutton is defeated in a spill and the new PM announces that he (this is the Liberal party, after all, so no need for a he/she there) will be getting nuclear back on track.

Like I said, the trouble with conspiracy theories is that they start with something perfectly reasonable. However, as someone once observed, when you have a choice between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, pick the latter. You’ll usually be right!

 

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Illiberalism: the Dunkley by-election and the cost of doing business

The liberal international order has been responsible for a great many deaths. If the “anti-liberal internationale” becomes ascendant, however, we will see those numbers multiplied exponentially. It is not a stretch to say that the Liberal Party’s campaign in the Dunkley by-election places them firmly in the illiberal category. This is hardly surprising since several Liberal Party grandees and other strategists are firmly ensconced in the Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s propaganda network, and he is the leader of that illiberal faction.

In December 2023, Donald Trump said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” It echoes similar sentiments from the illiberal leader of the aspiring autocrats, Viktor Orbán: “We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race.” The eugenicist messaging is reminiscent of the Third Reich, and Hitler used the metaphor of outsiders poisoning the nation’s blood in Mein Kampf. Orban has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago this week as though the latter was running a parallel illiberal state.

The ideology that links the anti-liberal internationale can be defined as “traditionalism.” There is a philosophical version that inspires many of the leading actors and the White supremacist militants. The populist version creates a mythical past where a virtuous ethnostate functioned in unity and purpose. It is patriarchal: women knew their subordinate place, submissively breeding for the family and the nation. There is no room for Queer people in a world where the superior ethnic group must reproduce for national strength. There is little room for aberrant women who won’t be domesticated. And there must be no room for women breeding with men who aren’t of the privileged race.

The messaging deployed in Dunkley falls into this category. The Liberal Party’s leaders had chosen to dwell on borders and the dormant story of the High Court’s release of people indefinitely detained. Advance, an Atlas Networkconnected body, that exists to foster community discord thus helping the Coalition return to government on the wave of grievance voting had paid to have lurid advertisements published on the issue (relishing its cashed up status including payments for “working” for its charity-statusaffiliate).

Surprisingly, two days before the by-election, Victoria Police made a mistake by publicising the arrest on sexual assault charges of one of that category of detainee before, some hours later, admitting that they had mistaken his identity.

The Liberal leadership pounced on this timely error by Victoria Police and spent the hours and days following sensationalising the mistaken arrest and the threat to women in the electorate. Some of the wording demands the label fascistic politicking.

The Liberal Party and Advance did not succeed this time, even with the convenient mistake made by Victoria Police. The goal of the Atlas Network and philosophical Traditionalists has been the slow destruction of the modern, diverse, democratic project. The goal of the more extreme traditionalists has been Accelerationist. This demands shoving crowbars into the cracks in the democratic project and propelling it towards immediate destruction. The damage done in any one campaign must not be assessed on its own merits but in the steps taken to imminent or longterm collapse.

The Atlas Network’s goal has been to damage civil society around the world to make welcome ground for (American) corporations. Some of the donors and strategists see deploying anti-immigrant and anti-refugee messaging as a useful distraction from the ultra-free market goals. Promoting the hatred of Queer people, ensuring they are bashed or murdered or driven to suicide, is a small price to pay for people who think pay-outs to the families of the dead are cheaper than maintenance work on expensive infrastructure, the “cost of doing business.”

Other donors and strategists are firmly in the traditionalism sphere where they despise “woke.” For them this denotes societies that are inclusive of “race” and race-mixing, sexuality and gender diversity. The “unity” of their nostalgic imagined past is fractured by liberal tolerance of difference. This is central to Vladimir Putin and his ally Orban. It is Trump MAGA and, apparently, the Coalition’s Australia.

For these traditionalists, there is a “visceral disgust” felt at bodies that defy their straitjacketed definitions of acceptable. Queer and Brown people or non-feminine women, even the fat, are disgusting. And their bigotry-infused morality allows them to confuse that feeling of disgust for a “moral abhorrence” of the target.

The Liberal Party and Atlas-connected Advance both needed the imaginary crime of the refugee to be sexual in nature because the safety and purity of White women is one of their primary weapons against the rest of us.

Traditionalism is also entrenched in an early 2000s clash of civilisations where the “Muslim world” replaced the “Iron Curtain” as the implacable foe. Any implied Muslim (which includes Christian Palestinians as well as refugees) is utterly disposable in the existential battle they wage in their crusade.

Thus Israel’s “Jewish Nationalists” and India’s Hindutva are allies against the selected “Muslim enemy.” China is characterised as a global threat, so sometimes these figures care for the Uighur population suffering ethnic cleansing by China, but they are just as likely to share China’s characterisation of (Muslim) resistance to oppression as “terror.”

Benjamin Netanyahu and Putin are both eagerly awaiting Trump’s reinstatement, indeed probably shaping their own military goals to help him win in November. If Trump wins, these ethnic cleansers will be even freer to kill the inconvenient populations on the land they want for their empires.

Meanwhile, for free market devotees, the chaos will elicit plentiful disaster capitalism windfalls. And traditionalism’s disdain for empirical knowledge has been their friend in fighting climate science. Trump will roll back Biden’s crucial transition bill and free the illiberal petrostates from the despised limping towards some kind of international consensus on climate action.

When Liberal Party figures play Orbanist games to win by-elections, they further their last decade’s efforts to push Australia’s democratic project towards illiberalism.

All the people harmed – or killed – in the process are just the cost of doing business.

 

This was first published in Pearls and Irritations as Illiberalism ascendant: the Dunkley by-election and the cost of doing business

 

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Matters of Revenue: Meta Abandons Australia’s Media Stable

It was praised to the heavens as a work of negotiated and practical genius when it was struck. The then Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had finally gotten those titans of Big Tech into line on how revenue would be shared with media outlets for using such platforms as supplied by Facebook and Google.

Both companies initially baulked at the News Media Bargaining Code, which led to a very publicised spat between Facebook and the Morrison government. For a week in February 2021, users of Facebook in Australia were barred from sharing news. A number of government agencies, trade unions, media groups and charities found the restrictions oppressive.

Amendments were eventually made to the Code to make matters more palatable to the tech behemoths, notably on the arbitration mechanism and their algorithmic use of ranking news. Revenue sharing agreements with various media outlets were struck, most notably with members of the standard stable, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and News Corp. With a degree of perversity, traditional news publications could now receive revenue for using free sharing platforms, having failed to address their own stuttering revenue models. (The fall in advertising revenue has been particularly punishing.)

With a jackal’s glee, Rupert Murdoch could claim to have made a fiendish pact with Facebook to prop up parts of his ailing News Corp empire, leaving Facebook’s approach to surveillance capitalism unchecked and uncritiqued.

Such agreements on sharing news were always conditional on continued approval by Facebook, which is now operating under the rebrand of Meta. Various countries have similarly tried to compel digital platforms to pay for news content that they permit, freely, to be shared. It is also clear that Meta is particularly keen to deprecate them and eventually let them lapse.

In February, a statement from Meta made it clear that these arrangements would not be renewed. “The number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the US has dropped by over 80% last year. We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content – they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests.”

Such jaw dropping observations would have surprised users who have foolishly made Facebook a central pitstop in their news journey – and what counts as “news” in the narrow, arid world of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But according to Meta, news made up less than 3% of what people saw on their Facebook feed in 2023.

Meta’s public declaration of intent threatens various media companies with significant loss. In Australia, Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and News Corp risk losing between 5 and 9% of net profit.

The entire field of revenue sharing between the digital platforms and media groups has been opaque. The Australian Financial Review managed to obtain two summaries of agreements signed by the Australian Network Ten, owned by Paramount, and Facebook, shedding some light on negotiation strategies. For the social media giant, videos are all the rage, and one of the summaries notes the insistence by Facebook that Network Ten share 18,000 videos on its platform while threatening termination of its contract in the event it was taken to arbitration.

The Albanese government, through Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones, described Meta’s decision to halt paying news outlets “a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media.” But to have assumed it ever had such a commitment was surely naïve to begin with.

Michael Miller, Executive chairman of News Corp Australia, could not resist his own flourish of disingenuous exaggeration. “If content providers were farmers Meta would steal their crops and demand their victims thank them for the privilege.” Meta’s refusal to pay for news would create “shockwaves for Australia, our democracy, economy and way of life.” The vital question here is what, exactly, are these agreements doing?

For one thing, the Bargaining Code, which never stipulated how the money would be used, has done nothing to enliven a media scape that remains imperially confined to a handful of providers. A conspiracy of convenience arose between one set of giants furnishing the digital platforms, with another of giants claiming to provide the news. Smaller outlets have had little say in these arrangements. Facebook, for instance, showed no interest in reaching revenue sharing arrangements with the SBS broadcaster or The Conversation. And to consider such representatives as News Corp sterling examples of democratic protection is a view not only misplaced but deserving of ridicule.

The ABC’s Managing Director, David Anderson, has at least admitted that funding obtained through its arrangements with Meta has been useful in supporting 60 journalists. News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven News Media have been less than forthcoming, ever keen using the shield of commercial confidentiality. In terms of employees, Nine Entertainment reported a fall in the number of employees from 5254 at the end of the 2022 financial year to 4753 at the end of 2023. “It is likely,” suggests Kim Wingerie in Michael West Media, “that the A$50 million or more they receive annually from Meta and Google is used predominantly to prop up their net profit.”

Meta’s promise to abandon agreements reached with the media hacks is no reason to be gloomy. The company’s loathing of privacy, its delight in commodifying the data of its users, and its insistence on tinkering with human behaviour, make it a continuing societal menace. Governments and news outlets would do far better in critiquing and challenging those aspects, rather than taking revenue that seems to silence the critical instinct.

 

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Floozy Sussie and the racist gambit Featured

From whinging, whining and blowing snot bubbles to playing to the Klueless Klutz Klan

From objet d’ridicule to vile scrubber

“The real competition now is to see who is a bigger drag on the Liberal vote, Dutton or Ley. Either way it’s a race to the bottom.” (Dee Madigan).

The Tory capacity for feculence knows no boundaries. There are no dogs unwhistleable, no sewers untrawlable, there are no hypocrisies too breathtaking nor any lie too blatant in their campaign to re-establish their ‘rightful’ access to the national treasure to then divert to their mates – as is their entire raison d’etre.

There is no outrage that they won’t countenance. Do not doubt, say, that they carefully watch Benedict Orange and wonder admiringly how much of his behaviour they could get away with here.

“Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.” (Tangerine man and career criminal Rapey McScumbag).

Time to up the ante on John Howard’s Tampa and children overboard subterfuges. Step forward Sussan Lley:

“If you live in Frankston and you’ve got a problem with Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor.

“If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor. Send Labor a message.” (Suss’s tweet on the Dunkley byelection).

But let’s start on a positive note. Suss has some worthwhile attributes. As a qualified accountant she can do sums – adding up and taking away; a skill set that could prove handy in any future party room test of fealty, eh Spud <cough>Scott Morrison</cough>? Some say she can also read joined-up running writing and that, as a pilot, she has the unique talent in the Tory sunshine bus of well-developed hand/eye coordination. That’s it, that’s all I’ve got on the + side.

Suss’s feigned outrage is one of the Tories’ go-to-market strategies. If only she was a better actor. Her aesthetic of prolapsed whoopee cushion with duck-lipped pout is a manifestation of the realisation of disappointed expectations that would otherwise be shown by someone who hands out the towels at a Fyshwick rub ‘n’ tug. Suss comes fully armed with a lengthy whine list that seeds a suspicion that she pickles her own vag, denying the reality of her active membership of the most delinquent, corrupt and incompetent government in our history.

The Tories obviously believe that their constant whining handfeeds the lazy and vacuous hordes of flacks who dominate our complicit media, the Lib’s humbug and hypocrisy usually going unremarked upon. “Flooding the zone with shit” as Steve Bannon, one of their admired models of democratic integrity, has championed.

This humbug and hypocrisy is an area where Suss has demonstrated some particular talent, joining the pile-on of Anthony Albanese for his (shock, horror) travel as Prime Minister of a whole, actual country when she has taken 27 flights in and out of the Gold Coast over recent years where her partner owned a bin-cleaning business (some sort of metaphysical connection surely). Two minor details – the Gold Cost is about 270° and 1,400 kms off course from the travel between her electorate and Canberra. All done within the rules of course.

Her boss’s view of folks who don’t match the colours on his chart of acceptable tinges is hardly hidden. The Thug walked out on the apology to the Stolen Generation, he orchestrated a duplicitous campaign against The Voice, he figuratively poked refugee kiddies with pointed sticks, warned of African gangs and deployed black-uniformed goons to patrol Melbourne streets to quiz the dusky-toned. And our consonant abuser Suss is a proven Spuddist – during the 2018 Liberal leadership spills she voted for Dutton against Trumble in the first vote and again voted for Herr Shickltuber against Diddley Scott in the second spill days later. Add ‘fascist adjacent race baiter’ to her CV.

In 2001 Suss lost Tory preselection for the Victorian seat of Indi to the truly horrendous Sophie Mirabella. On a scale from ‘mildly disgusting’ to Peter Dutton, Sussan Lley is now a Pauline Hanson; the Tories’ very own version of the red dipstick. Is that how she rose from Indi reject to her current status as number 2? Because she’s worse than Mirabella?

Spud and Suss. Bubba and Squeak. The crème de la crims of the Tory Party. FMD!

*****

A random sampling of Suss’s greatest hits

What have the koalas ever done for us?

Ley successfully appealed a Federal Court ruling that she had a “duty of care to children to consider climate change harm when approving coal mines”.

She approved a Coalition decision to scrap 176 out of 185 recovery plans designed to prevent the extinction of threatened species and habitats, including the Tasmanian devil.

With 1600 threatened species she claims… we will destroy their habitat for jobs so “we just have to pick winners”

Hiding a document that was handed to the coalition government in December 2021, ahead of the 2022 Australian federal election. The document outlined the poor and declining health of the Australian ecosystem.

She voted consistently against:

  • Ending illegal logging,
  • Federal government action on animal & plant extinctions,
  • Increasing marine conservation,
  • Increasing protection of Australia’s fresh water,
  • The Paris Climate Agreement.

She approved the clearing of 52hectares of koala habitat for a quarry.

She identifies as a feminist

“While men speak on a variety of topics, they also speak for women so I’m very comfortable with the leadership of our party.”

She has also promised to travel widely throughout Australia to listen to women. Noting her pile-on of PM Albo’s travel.

Moron says what now?

“We know we’re not going to have electric vehicles tomorrow,” Ms Ley said. “And no one in the world is making an electric ute, by the way, and even if they were it would be unaffordable.”

Sussan Ley, Question Time 6 Feb 24

“Will the PM rule out any changes to the current tax treatment of neg gearing?”

Sussan Ley, Sky News 7 Feb 24

“I’m not going to play the yes, this is good, no this is bad, the rule in, rule out. I’m not going to do that.”

*****

‘A bit rich’: Laura Jayes questions Sussan Ley over Anthony Albanese travel criticism as Liberals head to conference. Sky News

Multimillionaire Sarina Russo hosted Sussan Ley at New Year’s Eve parties. The Guardian

Ley twice travelled at taxpayer expense to the Gold Coast to attend events with Sarina Russo, one of Australia’s richest women, whose companies won multimillion dollar contracts under the Abbott government.

 

The Lib’s number two

 

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

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By-election for Cook

Department of the House of Representatives Media Release

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Hon Milton Dick MP, has issued the writ for the election of a Member of the House of Representatives, for the electoral division of Cook in New South Wales.

The dates in connection with the by-election will be as follows:

Issue of writ: Monday, 11 March 2024

Close of rolls: Monday, 18 March 2024

Close of nominations: Thursday, 21 March 2024

Declaration of nominations: Friday, 22 March 2024

Date of polling: Saturday, 13 April 2024

Return of writ: On or before Wednesday, 19 June 2024

 

 

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A Broken Land

By James Moore

“The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?” – Hugo Chavez

I am trying to be optimistic. The nature of Americans is to buy into the notion that anything is possible in our country. We are convinced the only two kinds of people in this nation are millionaires and those who will very soon be millionaires. There is little accommodation for failure. If you live in the United States you are expected to buy into the calculus that X amount of effort will always produce Y amount of results, which is, obviously, utter nonsense. Failure, however, is always your fault, not a flaw in the land of the free and the articulations of capitalism. You are expected to pull yourself up by your bootstraps even if you were born into a family that cannot afford boots.

This delusion that anybody and everybody can make it here is often central to the conflicts at the heart of our body politic. The successful, hurrying down that smooth, shining road toward a great horizon of affluence, do not wish to look into the ditch and see the losers struggling to climb back up onto the roadbed. They are there of their own accord. Why should we afford them a hand up when they might become reliant on assistance? America’s unresolved moral dilemma revolves around how much to help, and that unanswered question has almost always informed our politics and created the great divide between our two major political parties. How much government is too much government?

There is one Republican consultant who is famously quoted as saying his party will not be happy until government is “shrunk to the size that can be drowned in a bathtub.” The anti-Washington infection that has spread across the land began in earnest with Ronald Reagan, who once said, “The scariest words in the English language were, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” He quickly set out to make his hoary aphorism into a reality by blowing up the Air Traffic Controllers’ union to intimidate American labor and pretending that AIDS would go away if the feds would just ignore its increasing rate of fatality.

Trump made a similar assertion as the pandemic was spreading throughout the population when he said, “It’s going to disappear. It’s disappearing.” His proclamation, a barely subtle attempt to remove government from responsibility of managing the spread of the coronavirus, was made the day after he was released from being hospitalized for the disease. Spring weather, though, made him hopeful he would be shed of any responsibility for Washington’s involvement. “You know,” he said, “A lot of people think that (coronavirus) goes away in April with the heat, as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.” Instead, millions subsequently died. What went away were family members, loved ones, children and grand parents, while Trump talked of horse tranquilizer cures.

Rank conservatism has, historically, offered nothing but suffering to Americans. There is, in fact, no such brand of politics functioning in this country. It might be considered conservative to cut corporate taxes and believe the falsehood that freed capital will then be invested back into jobs and economic expansion, but that never happens. Nobody gets trickled down on. Investors are paid fat dividend checks and corporate boards buy back stocks at premiums to regain control of their companies from small shareholders. Hoarding capital and cutting taxes to giant businesses does little more than generate huge national debts for the government, and nobody does that better than “conservatives.” Trump and his massive tax cuts for business created a $7.2 trillion dollar increase in the federal deficit in the four years he was in office, a figure that presently accounts for 30 percent of the total national public indebtedness. Conservative George W. Bush cut corporate taxes just as he launched a war that would eventually cost a few trillion and left President Obama an historically high deficit, which the Democratic President cut in half before leaving office.

Conservatives do not act conservatively in this country. What they really want is a form of anarchy, an expression of the attitude that government’s only role is to pave roads, protect the border, and then get the hell out of the way. We are supposed to rely on our own “rugged independence” to succeed, a concept whose notional value is utterly worthless. Nobody really makes it on their own. Wealthy business magnates like to claim they built their companies without government assistance but that obfuscates the investment of tax dollars in the infrastructure and common carrier laws that made delivery possible for their products, whether digital or physical. Governments built the roads and harbors and airports, keeps them safe and operational, and provides regulations to offer some assurance consumers will not be buying unsafe drugs or food or fly in airplanes that have not met safety standards. When those rules fail, and an aircraft falls from the sky or masses become addicted to opioids, the causes tend to be corporations cutting corners to increase profits and serve the capitalism that has made America an economic engine for much of the world.

Argumentation over how much government, and its optimal role, is central to the division of the American electorate. We have split into camps that can no longer seem to compromise or find a middle ground that is best for our country. Progressive thinkers believe in government as the organizing principle of any society and that it gives life to a culture and an economy by creating an environment of opportunity. The conservative belief is that the larger the government the less freedom is offered the individual. Their primary assertion is proved false by their own politics, which have taken away reproductive and even voting rights while banning certain books their standards claim ought not be available, and forcing their Christian religion into public institutions like schools and government. Conservatism explicitly is a resistance to change and the implications of that are we would have no equal rights for minorities or women or regulations to protect our air and water or even minimum wage laws.

If ruination comes to America, therefore, it will be driving a tank loaded with ballistic missiles of explosive partisan grievance. The symptoms of our potential collapse are already clear and manifest. The most recent former president just spent a day at his resort consorting with Viktor Orban, the dictator and authoritarian leader of Hungary. While his formal title is prime minister, Orban has made himself the source of all policy and government actions, discriminatory and unfair to millions who disagree. Undoubtedly, Trump sidled up close seeking pointers on how to run the U.S. into an even more diminished democracy. “He’s the boss, and that’s it,” Trump said.

 

Little Men Seeking Bigness

 

Trump has no formal authority as a former president but has managed to put his country into a precarious situation with his egotistical obstinance. After years of complaining by conservatives about a crisis at the border, Democrats and Republicans collaborated to create the strongest reforms in a half century. The Senate easily achieved passage of the measure and there is a wide majority for the same result in the House. Trump, however, realizes that if the problem is solved in a bipartisan agreement, he will be robbed of his lead issue. Consequently, he has told House Speaker Mike Johnson, a man who claims god told him he was to play the role of Moses in America, to not bring the legislation to a vote on the house floor, and Johnson has complied. Partisanship by the sycophantic constituency of Trump’s GOP has ground America to a halt.

We are also failing to keep our geopolitical promises. Speaker Moses, also at the behest of the non-president Trump, has blocked a funding measure that would re-arm Ukraine in its defense of the Russian invasion. The congressional stasis has NATO countries wondering about the reliability of the American commitment to the protection of Europe. While the house speaker seeks flattery from the putative dictator Trump, Ukraine is dying under assault with a constantly diminishing ability to respond militarily because of a lack of U.S. armaments. We continue, meanwhile, to become victims of our own military adventurism. The same funding legislation to help Ukraine would also continue the flow of weapons to Israel as it fights Hamas and razes Gaza. The IDF has averaged 100 deaths of children each day of the war, with a total dead of well over 30,000, and President Biden has yet to demand a cease fire from the Israelis. Instead, he has ordered the U.S. military to build a peer to deliver food and medicine to Palestinians suffering under the Israeli assault and he has set the plan in motion even as he continues to supply Israel with bombs, artillery, tanks, and jet fighters. The absurdity of the contradiction appears to escape most voters, and, apparently, the president.

Biden, however, does not lie like the sociopath Trump, and his party. After the president had defied critics and dark expectations of failure with his State of the Union Speech, the GOP’s response to his list of accomplishments came from an Alabama U.S. Senator. Even in 2024, Republicans thought it was a good idea to put an accomplished woman in her kitchen, wearing a diamond-encrusted cross, referring to getting dinner on the table, and whispering about the horrors of a Biden presidency. One of the stories she told, however, was a complete fabrication about drug cartels that had sex trafficked a woman in the “Del Rio Sector,” Border Patrol parlance for a stretch of the Rio Grande that is identified by that city’s name. Britt described the woman being raped and tortured and declared that this was not even acceptable in a Third World Country. “Enough is enough, Mr. President,” she said into the camera, addressing Biden. What she did not say is that the woman was not assaulted in the U.S. but was in Mexico and the crimes committed against her were back during the administration of George W. Bush. Lying used to put an end to a politician’s career but to lie and deny has become a widely accepted tactic in the age of Trump.

 

@katzonearth

This isn’t going to make her like TikTok more. #katiebritt #sotu #stateoftheunion #lies #politicians #biden2024 #trump2024 #immigration #traffickingawarenes #mexico #bordersecurity #fyp

♬ original sound – Jonathan M. Katz

 

Lies work, of course, and their abundance has proliferated after the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, which gave corporations the right to invest almost without restraint in politics. Most candidates are doomed when they are opposed by big business donors and the victims are usually progressive thinkers who expect a functioning government. What the electorate wants tends to have very little to do with what is desired by the corporatists and the political action committees they front. AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, as a single example, has committed to spending $100 million dollars to defeat congressional candidates who do not unilaterally support Israel and the genocide it is committing in Gaza. Israel’s disproportionate response to the October 7th Hamas attack is costing Mr. Biden support on the left, particularly in the swing states of Michigan and Minnesota, which may help lead to the restoration of Trump.

It has become rationalization to suggest Americans have confronted greater challenges and triumphed in glory but that ignores our long history of adventurism with meddlesome wars and overseas political manipulations and assassinations. The scions of the Bush family are largely responsible for the tensions and the fire and warfare burning across the Mideast today even though public memory is short and understanding of the lies that launched their invasions is minimal. We also ignore the inescapable fact that our involvement in Central America’s politics and economies has much to do with the sea of immigrants now presenting themselves at our gates, and that the problem with drug cartels is a consequence of our national appetite for their narcotics. Accepting responsibility is not a part of who we have become in this country. Our disfunction will lead to our end, if not corrected. The party out of power refuses to cooperate with the party in power and fires accusations of blame for every crisis. When the public finally listens, there is a new party in the majority and the displaced officeholders have no reason to cooperate with those who lied them out of office. Little in the way of governance is achieved.

We are a broken land.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

 

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Junkyard Dutton ducks for cover under Gina’s nuclear umbrella, but he’s still up shit creek

Junkyard Dutton slinks away from Dunkley in a blue funk, after his humiliating rout as the brains behind the Advance-Liberal (Ad Lib) coalition’s “Rapists, paedophiles and murderers”, fear n’ smear campaign.

No-one can count a club of billionaires’ dark money, but a Qantas Chairman’s Lounge of plutocrats, masquerading as a grassroots outfit “Advance” report $5.2 million in donations and $4.5million on election expenditure up to July 2025. We will never know the true cost of those posters, that social media, the trucks, letterboxing, hype and lies out of a grab bag of the worst of US Republican politics.

We do know the Ad Lib coalition threw buckets of money over its shitshow, dumpster-fire-trainwreck of a campaign, giving voters a real choice between an incoherent, under-prepared, over-scripted Ad Liberal stumblebum who struggled to read a script about crime, cost of living – and Jodie Belyea, an articulate and sincere, woman who dedicates her life to empowering other women in her community.

Dutton’s fingerprints are all over the old fashioned, wholesome, Howard-era hysteria, saturation hate-bombing. So his team’s all OK with posters on trucks depicting China’s president, Xi Jinping, casting a vote for Labor in a desperate frenzy of Labor-bashing? Atop the dung-heap is the lurid lie that Labor has released hordes of sex-crazed detainees at large. Also adorning the ordure is Laura Norder;s cousin Tuff, as in Tough on crime. Then there’s the cost of living and a ute tax.

Howard’s acolyte, Tony Abbott is one of Advance’s advisers. Quelle surprise. Gina Rinehart is a backer, but the outfit likes to keep its profile low by using virtual offices, publishing fake addresses and no phone number. The AEC is waving a bit of limp lettuce, in hot pursuit of Advance’s for ts lies on trucks about Chinese control of Labor.

Dutton does a runner. He’s out of circulation for days. The Incredible Sulk, wants to distance himself as far as possible from the scene of the hate crime. He makes no attempt to reflect on his party’s drubbing in a litmus test byelection. Instead, he flings a dead Schrödinger’s cat on the table. His nuclear energy bid is both simultaneously alive, as a culture war strategy and dead as a dodo as a practical solution.

Dutton is a dead man walking. Former Victorian Liberal strategist and walking, talking, oxymoron and avid recycler, Tony Barry, calls Dutton’s nuclear bid, “the longest suicide note in Australian political history” a phrase he’s pinched from the UK when Labour’s 1983 election pledge was to be more socialist.

Instead, Moses Dutton has come down from Mt Dickson with two stone tables, his face radiant with radioactivity. Plus the hot flush he always gets from being near his sweetie, Gina Rinehart. He decrees that nuclear energy will be the focus of energy, environment and climate. Tony Barry’s a director of political consultancy Redbridge group. He cites research to show that Dutton and his Ad Lib coalition are flogging a dead horse.

“Just 35 per cent of people support the idea of using nuclear to provide for Australia’s energy needs. Only coal was less popular. Where there is support, it is among only those who already vote Liberal or who are older than 65.”

If team Dutton had any sense, it would try to win back the under-35-year-old voters who are deserting the coalition in droves. Any sense? Make that any say in the matter.

As we are tipped willy-nilly out of capitalism into a techno-feudal era, as Yanis Varoufakis calls our new servitude to digital overlords, Amazon, Google, and Meta; as we barter personal data for access to the cloud, our aspiring political Czar, “Kamikaze” Dutton, reminds us, that in a Land Downunder we are still at the mercy of our bunyip aristocracy of corporate uber-capitalists, fat cats and “extractavists”. And Alexander Downer.

Of course, it can pay to ingratiate yourself with the powerful. Donate the odd spare kidney as did personal chopper pilot, Nicholas Ross for his boss, Kerry Francis Bull(y)more Packer. Dutton would love Packer’s negotiating style.

In 1984, Kerry got his prodigal son, James, to contact NSW cabinet ministers.

“The old man told me to ring… This is the message: if we don’t win the casino, you guys are fucked.” Oddly, despite James’ best telephone manner, the Packers didn’t win any casino licence in 1994.

At least Ross had a choice. We hope. Most of us, however, are ambivalent, at best, towards the price-gouging, wage thieving, monopolist, duopolist and oligopolist corporate barons, and billionaire baronesses who run our mines, banks, energy, aged care, insurance rackets, shopping centres and make our cardboard boxes and coffins. But real-estate multi-millionaire, Peter Dutton is sure he’s one of them.

In a stunning getaway in a $5,000 business-class flight, Dutton says he pays for himself, (if we don’t note his free, exclusive Qantas Chairman’s club membership, a perk enjoyed also by Albo and other Labor luminaries), Peter Craig Dutton, steals away from Canberra.

He chem-trail-blazes in a haze of kerosene vapour, toxic oxides and ultra-fine particulate matter, down to the fabled Shangri-Lah the long-lost Liberal seat of Dunkley, that “Religiosity Morrison” says is on the cusp of turning right again. It’s a delusion. The outer suburban ute-belt, is not listening to Team Dutton’s cost-of-living crisis mantra. Nor do they fear freed asylum-seeker rapists. Nor are they overwhelmed when he cuts and runs into hiding for three days, leaving boofhead Nathan Conroy to make paternity jokes while Sussan Ley goes haywire and gives a cheerleader speech that may well end her career.

Niki Savva is savage. “Not on any planet or in any universe could a barely average result qualify as success. Arguing otherwise shows no respect for people’s intelligence.”

But in Trump’s America a third of voters believe a loss is a win; his election was stolen.

Dutts barely touches down and, he’s up, up and away again -off in a puff of toxic volatile particles. Thank former Qantas elfin CEO, Alan Joyce, for boosting shareholder profits not only with his flight cancellation scams, but by curbing inessential spending, such as fair wages for workers and pilots, – and upgrading planes. Like the LNP, QANTAS’ fleet is dangerously old and decrepit if not obsolete.

Yet no expense is spared for members of the Chairman’s Club, a type of top secret, Alice’s Restaurant where you can get anything that you want. At Vanessa Hudson’s restaurant, you can get a free steak or the whole beast, at any time of the day or night. Must cost a fortune. And you may also get to your destination. Unless your flight is among the 15,000 cancelled, a one in four chance in the airline’s operations May to July 2022.

Instead of fronting a Senate inquiry, over its role in getting government to block a bid from Qatar Air to double its flights to big Australian cities, Joyce flees to Dublin. Under Dutton, the Opposition is on a road to nowhere. “The politics of fear and loathing did not work in Dunkley. They didn’t land in Goldstein in 2022 and they won’t at the next election,” says Zoe Daniel, Independent MP for Goldstein.

Dutts exits stage right. Jets clear across a third-degree sunburnt country leaving catastrophic fire danger ratings in Victoria. He can’t wait to bend the knee to Queen Gina and her court plus four hundred time-serving serfs, her adoring staff members, in a giant marquee on the banks of the ephemeral Swan.

Dutton’s top of the bill at his patron’s star-studded seventieth private birthday bash and lovefest. He swoons and fawns for forty-minutes, wolfs down the wagyu, necks a Bollinger, and then jets back to lecture Labor on the hustings about the cost of living.

Hypocrisy gone mad? It’s a nine hour round trip. Even then he’s missed a bit of caviar on his tie. Is he smitten? Very. Last November, at her bush doof, Pete was practically sitting in Gina’s ample lap. Gina makes it very clear that she’s looking for love and that in other places they thank their mining billionaires. Is Dutton more than Rinehart’s meat puppet?

Wild horses wouldn’t keep Gina’s toadies away. Arriving a day early, is Pauline Hanson, another pseudo-populist fraud, racist and xenophobe. The One Nation founder, who flew her team to the US to in 2019, to seek funds from the NRA, arrives Friday, to sign up star recruit and son of a gun, former WA Labor’s Ben Dawkins, who’s in a bit of a pickle over breaching a family violence restraining order. Many times over. But he’s just misunderstood. Pauline’s got soft a spot for the underdog. And she loves a bloke’s bloke.

“Maybe if he got some support, that I believe the Labor Party hasn’t given him, and that’s what people need to do their job,” she sighs endearingly mangling sense and syntax. Support groupie, Hanson will be 70 in May. Gina is bound to get a birthday party invitation. As will Ben.

“He’s been the lone member in this parliament, as I was in 1996, when I was just disendorsed from the Liberal Party, so I’ve been there, I’ve worn his shoes, you haven’t.”

Fully booted and spurred, Guy Sebastian nails Advance Australia Fair, over a troupe on horseback kitted out tastefully in iconic Driza Bones and Rossi, both companies bought by Rinehart last year. They wave Ozzie and Hancock flags to The Man from Snowy River theme while aspiring Liberal candidate for state Premier, and Perth’s Lord Mayor, Basil Zempiras is funny as hell on the microphone as the party’s MC.

Basil is still living down his anti-trans scandal but given Dutton’s sedulous aping of Morrison’s campaign strategy, transphobia along with homophobia, may soon enjoy a revival in the Liberals’ manifesto.

But it may be upstaged by Dutton’s embracing nuclear energy as Coalition one-stop-shop solution to climate, environment and energy this week. Is it a dead cat on the table after his Dunkley debacle?

Of course. Labor’s success in holding Dunkley and increasing its primary vote to 41 percent puts the wind up the Coalition. For Niki Savva, team Dutton’s failure is a masterclass in how not to contest a byelection, but the last thing this Opposition is going to do is to change direction. Even if it could. In a world first, Dutton hastily makes the Liberal front bench bigger than its back, a desperate trick doomed to failure.

In politics, as in life, if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one. Or worse. Already, daggers are drawn and eyebrows raised over the over-promotion of neighbour Luke Howarth as Assistant Treasurer.

Howarth’s a gunner. He’s gonna give back the stage three tax cuts. The poor can keep theirs, he declares, thinking aloud. Angus “airmiles” Taylor is giving him a lot of side-eye.

On the backburner go Dutton and Ley’s released detainee rapist arrested antics. Off with the Phyllis Diller fright wig, Sussan. Expect more where they came from. More will be seen, moreover, of the take-no-prisoners-open war on democracy with Ad Lib’s Orwellian invasion fleet of Truth Trucks plus saturation hate-bombing posters, emails, FB messages, T-shirts and whopping lies about Labor on social media.

Dutton doubles down. It’s a term from blackjack which means to keep betting when you already in a hole. He’s got the email that the small, portable modular nuclear reactor is pure fiction. Now he’s going for the mother of all nuclear policies proposing an atomic plant on the site of the old clapped-out coal-fired generators, we are slowly phasing out. They’re already wired into the grid.

What could possibly go wrong. “Water”, says Anthony Albanese. Nuclear plants use lots of water.

But Opposition MPs has been competing to woo Gina Rinehart. It’s their Trump card. If we even pretend to go uranium, it creates a delay in which we can have business as usual. For the time being. It will kill us all in the end of, course, but it will extend the life and the worth of coal mining.

And Hancock Prospecting shares.

Powerful people seek powerful friends. Media giants, Kerry Stokes and the Murdoch mob are prepared to post a loss if their empires gain them access to government levers. Keith Pitt, on the other hand takes over the intercom on the chartered jet last November, to sing his sweetheart, Gina Rinehart’s praises.

“A mid-air bootlicking,” The AFR’s Mark Stefano calls it in disgust. Not once but three times on the long flight to Perth. Pitt’s craven sycophancy and his FIFO lickspittle routine would be par for the course in the US, but it’s unwelcome in Australia. Has the man no self-respect? Which is why Dutton’s indecent obsession with Gina Rinehart and his recent mad dash westward to her birthday bash will undo him.

A closer look is required.

The cunning stunt involved a dash to Melbourne, Thursday afternoon, followed by a return berth to Perth, notes Stefano.

“… the opposition leader transited for 12 hours from Canberra > Melbourne > Perth > Melbourne just so he could attend the birthday party of Australia’s richest person for … 40 minutes.”

When he needed to be on the job in Dunkley, Dutton was prepared to drop everything to be on the other side of the island continent swooning and spooning with Gina. Not that it’s easy at the top.

You must be discreet. “That red-headed weirdo”, as Trump called Richard Pratt, the multinational cardboard and paper giant whose family, The AFR estimates to be worth $24 billion, and Australia’s second richest man, speaks of his wealth as his “superpower”.

Only it didn’t protect him from Donald’s wrath when Prat blabbed about his former pal’s alarming stories. Secret tapes reveal Pratt explaining how US democracy is bought, “I paid about a million bucks to [Rudy to] come out as a celebrity guest [but] it didn’t happen so now, he calls me once a week,” Pratt says before proceeding to draw a Mob parallel.

“All these guys are like the mafia. Trump, Rupert, Rudy. You want to be a customer, not a competitor. And I am very aware of that.”

Unwisely, Pratt calls out Trump’s key tactic. “… he knows exactly what to say and what not to say so that he avoids jail … but gets so close to it … that it looks like to everyone that he’s breaking the law”.

To cultivate a close relationship with Donald Trump, Pratt invests hundreds of thousands of dollars in membership fees at Mar-a-Largo, Trump’s private resort. He tells us. Not so clear is why Pratt pays a monthly retainer to Tony “Suppository of all wisdom” Abbott, $8000, and Paul Keating $25,000.

What Pratt pays for, what he gets and how long he continues, is kept secret, much like the membership of the invitation-only, elite Qantas Chairman’s Club.

Or being a Freemason, which, not unlike the Liberal Party itself, is a closed shop to women and which both Matthew Guy and Peter Walsh inexplicably leave off their register of interests. They didn’t know they had to declare it. Of course.

(True, women can nominate but not in safe Liberal seats such as Cook where former McKinsey operative, and failed 2022 Bennelong candidate, Morrison-endorsed, Simon Kennedy who gets the nod.)

Why have a lobster with a mobster when you can have a crustacean with a freemason?

A code of silence helps keep the wheels of power tuning smoothly. As former CEO, Alan “Stonewall” Joyce puts it, “I’m not going to comment on Chairman’s Club membership … I’ve got privacy issues where we will not comment on who’s in, who’s been offered it, or why they’re there.”

But only for the ruling class. Qantas is perfectly free to trade your personal information for the reason it collected it Australian privacy law permits any organisation to use or disclose your personal information for the primary reason they collected it including for direct marketing activities.

Varoufakis would beam. We gift them our information. They don’t have to say why and how they use it. They make money out of it. Billions. And the case of glad-handed Pratt? Who is on his payroll and why?

You can bet it’s not altruism says the Centre for Public Integrity. Paul Keating, for example, is a long-time advocate of super funds being able to invest in Pratt’s line of business.

But when it comes to mining magnate, Hancock Prospecting heiress, Gina Rinehart – Queen of WA Inc, with Nicola Forrest, who split from Andrew Twiggy Forrest, to become our second richest woman with unparalleled power over a territory the late Robert Hughes described as “a colony with a body the size of Europe and the brain of an infant” – when Gina calls – you come running.

If you’re Peter Dutton or any other of his conga-line of sycophants. But especially if you’re Peter Dutton and after your Dunkley debacle, you are all boxed in like Tulloch. Expect the fake debate about nuclear power to distract us all from the Opposition’s incompetence. And the culture warriors are already to go.

But let’s not kid ourselves, Dutton’s desperate turn to Rinehart may give him the backer of the richest woman in the world. But neither the desperate lunge towards nuclear power nor his rich and powerful friend, nor promoting his rivals, will prevent his political career crashing and burning around him. He’s up shit creek as they say in Canberra.

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Significant changes to a worn-out Australian democracy require some positivity from Peter Dutton (cont)

Continued from Significant changes to a worn-out Australian democracy require some positivity from Peter Dutton

Let’s envision a future where everyone has equal opportunities for growth and success. The key to achieving this noble goal is to let go of outdated social objectives and invest in a broader social and philosophical common good that benefits everyone. By embracing ideas, imagination and positivity, “we can reduce inequality and create a brighter future for all“. Together, let’s significantly impact society and work towards a better tomorrow.

The major parties have become fragmented, with Labor losing a large segment of its supporters to the Greens or independents.

Both parties have pre-selection processes rooted in factional power struggles that often see the best candidates miss out. Both need to select people with broader life experience. Not just people who have come out of the union movement or, in the case of the LNP, staffers who have come up through the party.

Our Parliament, its institutions and conventions have been trashed by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, and if he gets the chance, Peter Dutton will do the same.

Ministerial responsibility has at least been restored.

Political donations are out of control and should be recorded in real-time.

Question Time is just an excuse for mediocre minds who cannot win an argument with factual intellect, charm or debating skills to act deplorably toward each other. The public might be forgiven for thinking that the chamber has descended into a chamber of hate where respect for the other’s view is seen as a weakness. Where light frivolity and wit have been replaced with smut and sarcasm. And in doing so, they debase the Parliament and themselves as moronic imbecilic individuals.

Recent times have demonstrated just how corrupt our democracy has become. We have witnessed a plethora of inquiries and Royal Commissions, all focusing on illegal sickening behaviour.

We now have a National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), but after almost a decade of Conservative government, when corruption flourished, no one has been punished. The NACC has to date:

  • received 2561 referrals
  • excluded 1984 referrals at the triage stage because they did not involve a Commonwealth public official or did not raise a corruption issue
  • 159 referrals awaiting triage
  • 212 triaged referrals under assessment including 13 under preliminary investigation
  • assessed 232 referrals

I cannot remember when my country was so devoid of political leadership. In recent times, we have had potential, but it was lost in power struggles, undignified self-interest and narcissistic personality. Under Albanese, it has stabilised.

The pursuit of power for power’s sake by an Opposition devoid of any ideas has so engulfed the political thinking on the right that the common good is forgotten and takes away the capacity for bi-partisan public policy that achieves social equity.

Then there is a ludicrous Senate situation where people are elected on virtually no primary votes, just preferences. It is also a system that allows the election of people with vested business interests without public disclosure.

One cannot begin to discuss the decline of Australian democracy without aligning it to the collapse of journalistic standards and its conversion from reporting to opinion. Murdoch and his majority-owned newspapers, with blatant support for right-wing politics, have done nothing to advance Australia as a modern, enlightened, democratic society. On the contrary, it has damaged it, perhaps irreparably.

The advent of social media has pushed mainstream media into free fall. Declining newspaper sales have resulted in lost revenue and profits. It is losing its authority, real or imagined. Bloggers reflect on the feelings of grassroots society. Social media writers with whom they can agree or differ but at least have the luxury of doing so. As a result, newspapers, in particular, have degenerated into gutter political trash, hoping they might survive. Shock jocks shout the most outrageous lies and vilify people’s character with impunity and, in the process, do nothing to promote decent democratic illumination. They even promote free speech as if they are the sole custodian of it.

A number of people/ideologies have contributed to the decline in our democracy.

For starters, the Abbott factor and the death of truth as a principle of democratic necessity. I am convinced Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton believe that the effect of lying diminishes over time and, therefore, is a legitimate political tool.

Mr Abbott has long set a high standard for not keeping promises. On August 22, 2011, he said:

“It is an absolute principle of Democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring our Democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.”

On the eve of that election, after crucifying Prime Minister Julia Gillard daily for three years, Abbott made this solemn promise:

“There will be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.”

This was an unambiguous statement that cannot be interpreted differently than what the words mean. To do so is to tell one lie in defence of another.

When you throw mud in politics, some of it inevitably sticks, but there is a residue that adheres to the chucker. That was Abbott’s and, in turn, a conservative dilemma, but the real loser was our democracy. In Australian political history, Abbott’s and Morrison’s legacy will be that they empowered a period emblematic of a nasty and ugly period in our politics.

Our democracy is nothing more or less than what the people make of it. The power is with the people, and it is incumbent on the people to voice with unmistakable anger the decline in our democracy.

People need to wake up to the fact that the government affects every part of their lives (other than what they do in bed) and should be more concerned. But there is a deep-seated political malaise.

Good democracies can only deliver good governments and outcomes if the electorate demands it.

“You get what you vote for” rings true.

An enlightened democracy, through its Constitution, must give its citizens a clear sense of purposeful participation. It must remain perpetually open to improvement in both its methodology and implementation. Importantly, its constitutional framework must be subject to regular revision, renewal, and compromise whenever everyday life demands it. There can be no room for complacency or stagnation in a genuinely effective democracy. Only through constant evolution and adaptation can a democracy truly serve the needs and aspirations of its people.

Unfortunately, without Peter Dutton’s cooperation, we can expect more of the same. Without it, constitutional changes and an Australian Head of State are just fantasies.

My thought for the day

The most objectionable feature of a conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge. science, in other words.

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Significant changes to a worn-out Australian democracy require some positivity from Peter Dutton

Continued from Is Australian democracy at risk from an authoritarian leader?

One day on a tranquil Sunday, I found myself lost in thought as the rain gently tapped on the rooftop, prompting me with profound questions. The word ‘democracy’ keeps coming back to me, and though I have written about it before, my inner political self urges me to revisit the topic. Our democracy is in dire straits, but I hope it can be saved from its current state of decay. May my passion for this cause not falter.

Before presenting any ideas for rehabilitating a democracy on its knees, one must first acknowledge the difficulty. When Anthony Albanese was elected Prime Minister on May 21 2022, he was expected to clean up the current state of our democracy and the political culture that goes with it.

He discovered that there is only so much one can do about meaningful and significant change without a like-minded opposition leader’s sincere, earnest cooperation. Dutton must find some positivity. It may be foreign to him, but find it he must.

However, Albanese learned it would never be forthcoming from a man like Peter Dutton, whose sole interest is obtaining power. This was decisively confirmed with the recent “Voice” referendum: The moment Opposition leader Peter Dutton (unexpectantly for Albanese) uttered “No.”

That would be the end of it. And so it was for The Voice, but any proposal that warranted change carried the same threat.

If we want to become a nation, independent, holding its place in a world of hard-earned international goodwill, we must become a republic, one with an Australian as our head of state; it can only happen with the help of Peter Dutton.

But Dutton will have differing views rather than agree to any proposal to upgrade our Constitution via a standing committee putting forward recommendations for the public to consider.

It is just ridiculous that a document that doesn’t even mention women is still with little change since January 1, 1901.

In this period of our political history, the only way for vital issues to be updated is to have all political party leaders agree on the substance of any proposal. For any opposition leader to oppose, such a proposal would render it dead in the water.

Unsurprisingly, our two-party political system was born from this very dreary document written by men for men. Our current combatant political two-party system could serve us better but needs more positivity to change it. Members sit on opposite sides in an auditorium where pit bulls are let off the leash for a bit of snarling and hatred.

Nobody wants to improve the system because it suits them not to. Once they are the winner, they have the power.

Democracy should be a “Work in progress”: Never ending

A clear indication of an Australian democracy in decline is the fact that people are giving up this voting gift, literally saying: “A pox on both your houses”.

Tens upon tens of thousands did so at the last election by not voting.

Our political system is in crisis because our solicitations need to speak with clarity on issues that concern people.

To truly serve the needs and aspirations of its people, a genuinely effective democracy must constantly evolve and adapt. We must be bold and persistent in building a more inclusive and just society. We must remain compassionate and sympathetic towards each other and work together towards creating a better future for all. A functional democracy should give its citizens a definite sense of meaningful involvement. It should always be open to improving its methods and implementation. Crucially, its constitutional framework must be regularly revised, renewed, and subject to political compromise whenever the greater reasonable demands it.

But above all, its function should be that:

“… regardless of ideology the common good should be served first and foremost. A common good healthy democracy serves the collective from the ground up rather than a top down democracy that exists to serve secular interests. One that is enforced by an elite of business leaders, politicians and media interests who have the power to enforce their version. That is fundamentally anti-democratic.

Every facet of society, including the democratic process, needs constant and thoughtful renewal and change. Otherwise, we become so trapped in the longevity of sameness that we never see better ways of doing things.”

Unfortunately, Australia’s democratic process, as defined by its Constitution, is struggling to keep up with the changing times. It seems stuck in the past, and moving forward requires significant changes. Labor’s desire for a republic and a modernised constitution is understandable, but it may need help from others. It’s a difficult situation, and understandably, many people feel frustrated.

With his opposition to the Voice, Dutton has shown that nothing can be changed without his agreement.

In my previous article I wrote – and wish to repeat – that:

“I am not a political scientist, historian or a trained journalist. I write this as a disgruntled and concerned citizen who wants change to the Australian Constitution I grew up with. The demise of Australian democracy originates in a monumental shift by both major parties in how they now interpret their individual philosophies.

They are now tainted with sameness.”

The Liberal Party has been replaced by a neo-conservative one, actively supporting rich individual identities against a collective one, and old-style Liberalism no longer has a voice.

Labor, as is usual, has come to power during a crisis and is managing its wimpy grip on power, unable to make the hard decisions it knows it promised less Dutton denies his support yet again. There is little or no difference between the Liberals and the National Party, who seem irrelevant as a political force in doing anything that benefits our democracy.

Conservatives are going down the path of a defined inequality with a born-to-rule mentality that favours the rich.

Continued tomorrow …

My thought for the day

If there is an acceptance by both sides that negativity is the only means of obtaining and retaining power, then we will get nothing more than what we have now.

 

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Peter Dutton’s New Clear Vision…Oh, Sorry Nuclear Fission!

Peter Dutton has a vision for our energy future. Personally, I think that’s great. One should have a vision particularly if one is a political leader…

Like Jeff Kennett. Being a Victorian, I clearly remember how Jeff shared his vision of a privatised energy market where choice and the market would bring down prices and lead to the sort of efficiencies that would mean that we could be confident that power prices would be lower but unfortunately it didn’t work out like that. Still, one shouldn’t hold it against him that his vision didn’t work out quite as he described it; one should only get stuck into Labor leaders when they promise that electricity prices will come down by $275 by 2025 even if we’re still in 2024… Or in the case of Tony “Marty McFly” Abbott stuck in the 1950s!

Pete was very clear. The sun doesn’t shine at night, wind turbines at sea are likely to interfere with nature and he’s always been keen on nature, and batteries haven’t been invented yet. Yes, he actually said words to that effect. On the other hand, we can put a small, modular nuclear reactor in lots and lots of places just as soon as someone invents one and we find the several billion dollars to pay for it…

Don’t get me wrong, I think that it’s good that Dutton is thinking long term! Far too often leaders only worry about the short term and I sort of find it inspiring that Peter is so optimistic about the future when any reasonable analysis of the Dunkley by-election would have the party changing leaders before anybody had time to count the numbers.

“Let’s elect the new guy from Cook.”

“Simon Kennedy?”
“Yeah. He has to be better and the public don’t know him yet!”

I should point out that the Liberal candidate for Cook hasn’t actually been elected yet, but that didn’t stop News.com.au from declaring him the winner. I mean, I know there’s pressure on to be the first media outlet to declare an election win, but I’m old-fashioned enough to think that we should wait until after the electorate have voted. Still, he did win in spite of the fact that the moderate faction wanted a woman, as did John Howard, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, he’s a winner because he managed to defeat the moderate faction which shows he should fit in quite nicely in the Canberra party room. And he also defeated John Howard which is pretty easy to do, given he’s the only living PM to lose his seat in a general election.

Of course, Peter Dutton’s new clear fission… sorry nuclear vision… has a few hurdles to get over.

The first is that someone is bound to ask for more detail. Naturally, he can say that we’re just outlining the general idea and we can work out the detail later. This should be enough because, after all, it’s not like the Voice to Parliament because it’s his idea so surely we shouldn’t ask for any more than the broad strokes.

The second is that once he starts to become specific about where to locate the plants, then we’ll undoubtedly see the NIMBYs coming out, and while Dutton supports farmers who don’t want powerlines in their back yard, this is different. It’s sort of like fracking where people should just suck it up… Not the gas. That wouldn’t be good. This problem might be solved by only putting reactor in Labor electorates, but then it makes it hard to win government because they have more electorates than he does.

The third is that, while it’s good to have the vision thing, it doesn’t actually solve the immediate problem. After all, if you’re sleeping in your car, you don’t appreciate being told that the solution to this is a new government initiative where you’ll be trained in building and given a low-cost loan, tools and a free block of land to build your own home, even if it would potentially solve your long term accomodation problem. Similarly, while my solar panels have made me ok with my electricity consumption, I find my gas bill annoyingly high and I’m not going to say, “Nuclear in ten years time. Wow, thanks Pete, I’ll just have cold showers till then, but I hear that’s likely to extend my life… at the very least, it’ll seem longer.”

So let’s have three cheers for Peter:

  1. One for having a longterm vision
  2. Two for his optimism in thinking that he’ll be leader by the time the next election comes around. (I’m presuming that News.com.au is right and we already have the winner of Cook. I’m also presuming he lasts that long, so one cheer for me here too!)
  3. And, finally, for actually being the first Opposition Liberal leader to announce a policy.

All right number 3 may be a little unfair because Tony did have two policies: The first was to undo everything that Labor had done and the second was a rolled, gold paid parental leave scheme.

Whatever. Here we go: Three cheers, hip, hip…

Oh, that’s not very nice. You should be ashamed of yourself.

 

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Wary of Sinophobia: Anwar Ibrahim at the ASEAN Summit

It can take much bruising, much ridicule, and much castigation to eventually reach the plateau of wisdom. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who took office in November 2022, is one such character. Like a hero anointed by the gods for grand deeds and fine achievements, he was duly attacked and maligned, accused of virtually every heinous crime in the criminal code. Sodomy and corruption featured. Two prison spells were endured.

His whole fall from grace as deputy-prime minister was all the more revealing for being instigated by his politically insatiable mentor, Mahathir bin Mohammed, Southeast Asia’s wiliest, and most ruthless politician. Eventually, that old, vengeful fox had to relent: his former protégé would have his day.

Anwar is in no mood to take sides on spats between the grumbly titans who seek their place in posterity’s sun. And why should a country like Malaysia do so? During last year’s visit to Beijing and the Boao Forum in Hainan, he secured a commitment from Chinese President Xi Jinping on foreign investment amounting to RM170.1 billion ($US35.6 billion) spanning 19 memoranda of understanding (MOU). Greater participation in Malaysia’s 5G network plan by Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei was assured some weeks later.

In the Financial Times, the Malaysian PM levelled the charge against the United States that Sinophobia had become a problem, a fogging fixation. Why should Malaysia, he asked, “pick a quarrel” with China, a country that had become its foremost trading partner? “Why must I be tied to one interest? I don’t buy into this strong prejudice against China, this China-phobia.”

Much of this middle-of-the-road daring was prompted by comments made by US Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been saddled with the task of padding out ties between Washington and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Rather than being diplomatic, the Veep has been irritatingly teacherly.

Last September, during her visit to the US-ASEAN summit in Jakarta, Harris beat the drum on the issue of promoting “a region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.” Such openness was always going to be subordinate to Washington’s own interests. “We have a shared commitment to international rules and norms and our partnership on pressing national and regional issues.” An international campaign against “irresponsible behaviour in the disputed waters” would be commenced.

During her trip to the Philippines last November, Harris made the focus of concern clear to countries in the region. “We must stand up for principles such as respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, unimpeded lawful commerce, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, and throughout the Indo-Pacific.”

The subtext for those listening was so obvious as to be scripted in bold font: Our values first; China’s a necessarily distant second. This coarse directness did not fall on deaf ears, and Anwar was particularly attentive. He had already found the views voiced by Harris at Jakarta about Malaysia’s leanings towards Beijing as “not right and grossly unfair.”

In remarks made during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held at the current ASEAN summit, being hosted in Melbourne, Anwar expressed much irritation in being badgered by the United States and its allies on the subject of taking sides. The virus of Sinophobia had been doing the rounds, causing sniffles and rumbles. “[M]y reference to China-phobia is because the criticism levied against us for giving additional focus on China; my response is, trade investments is open and right now, China seems to be the leading investor and trade into Malaysia,” Anwar observed. Malaysians, for the most part, “do not have a problem with China.”

Labouring, even flogging the “fiercely independent” standing of Malaysia, Anwar went on to state that his country remained “an important friend of the United States and Europe and here in Australia, they should not preclude us from being friendly to one of our important neighbours, precisely China.”

Nothing typifies this better than Malaysia’s policy towards the supply and manufacturing of semiconductors. The emergence of a China Plus One Strategy, notably in the electronic supply chain, has seen companies diversify their risk through investing in alternative markets to mitigate risks. Keep China on side but do so securely. Anwar has established a task force dedicated to the subject, while also courting such entities as US chipmaker Micron Technology. Last October, the company promised an investment of US$1 billion to expand its Penang operations, in addition to the previous allocation of $US1 billion to construct and fully equip its new facility. In business, such promiscuity should be lauded.

Anwar’s concerns were solid statements of calculated principle, and inconceivable coming out of the mouth of an Australian politician. Albanese, for his part, has tried to walk the middle road when it comes to security in the Indo-Pacific, even as China remains Australia’s largest trading partner. He does so in wolf’s clothing supplied by Washington, with various garish labels such as “AUKUS” and “nuclear-powered submarines.” For decades, Australia’s association with ASEAN has been ventriloquised, the voice emanating from the White House, Pentagon or US State Department.

Canberra’s middle road remains cluttered by one big power, replete with US road signs and tolls, accompanied by hearty welcomes from the US military industrial complex and its determination to turn Australia into a forward defensive position, a garrison playing war’s waiting game. To his credit, Anwar has avoided the trap, exposing the inauthentic position of his Australian hosts with skill and undeniable charm.

 

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