The skin toasted Australian Minister of Defence, Richard Marles, who resembles, with each day, the product of an overly worked solarium, was adamant. Not only will Australians be paying a bill up to and above A$368 billion for nuclear powered submarines it does not need; it will also be throwing A$100 billion into the coffers of the military industrial complex over the next decade to combat a needlessly inflated enemy. Forget diplomacy and funding the cause (and course) of peace – it’s all about the weapons and the Yellow Peril, baby.

On April 18, Marles and Defence Industry Pat Conroy barraged the press with announcements that the defence budget would be bulked by A$50.3 billion by 2034, with a A$330 billion plan for weapons and equipment known as the Integrated Investment Program. The measures were intended to satisfy the findings of the Defence Strategic Review. “This is a significant lift compared to the $270 billion allocated for the 10-year period to 2029-30 as part of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and 2020 Force Structure Plan,” crowed a statement from the Defence Department.  

Such statements are often weighed down by jargon and buoyed by delusion. The press were not left disappointed by the insufferable fluff. Australia will gain “an enhanced lethality surface fleet and conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines”, an army with “littoral manoeuvre” capabilities “with a long-range land and maritime strike capability”, an air force capable of delivering “long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” with “an enhanced maritime, land and air-strike capability” and “a strengthened and integrated space and cyber capability.” The glaring omission here is the proviso that all such policies are being essentially steered by Washington’s defence interests, with Canberra very much the obedient servant.

The defence minister was firmly of the view that all this was taking place with some speed. “We are acting very quickly in relation to [challenges],” Marles insists. “I mean, the acquiring of a general-purpose frigate going forward, for example, will be the most rapid acquisition of a platform that size that we’ve seen in decades.” Anyone who uses the term “rapid” in a sentence on military acquisition is clearly a certified novice.

The ministers, along with the department interests they represent, are certainly fond of their expensive toys. They are seeking a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as replacements for the F/A-18 Super Hornets. The EA-18G Growler jets are also being replaced. (That said, both sets of current fighters will see aging service till 2040.) Three vessels will be purchased to advance undersea war capabilities, including the undersea drone prototype, the Ghost Shark.  

The latter hopes to equip the Royal Australian Navy “with a stealthy, long-range autonomous undersea warfare capability that can conduct persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike.” Importantly, such acquisitions and developments are always qualified by how well they will work in tandem with the imperial power in question. The media release from the Department of Defence prefers a more weasel-worded formula. The Ghost Shark, for instance, “will also enhance Navy’s ability to operate with allies and partners.”  

The new militarisation strategy is also designed to improve levels of recruitment. Personnel have been putting down their weapons in favour of other forms of employment, while recruitment numbers are falling, much to the consternation of the pro-war lobby. A suggested answer: recruit non-Australian nationals. This far from brilliant notion will, Marles suggests, take some years. But a good place to start would be the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders resident in Australia. Sheer genius.

The announcement was also meant to offer budget trimmers a barely visible olive branch, promising “to divest, delay or re-scope projects that do not meet our strategic circumstances.” (They could start with the submarines.) A$5 billion, for instance, will be saved from terminating naval transport and replenishment ships intended to refuel and resupply war vessels at sea.  

Hardly appropriate, opined some military pundits keen to keep plucking the money tree. Jennifer Parker of the National Security College suggested that, “The removal of the Joint Support ship means there is no future plan to expand Australia’s limited replenishment capability of two ships – which will in turn limit the force projection capability and reach of the expanded surface combatant fleet if the issue is not addressed.”

The focus, as ever, is on Wicked Oriental Authoritarianism which is very much in keeping with the traditional Australian fear of slanty-eyed devils moving in on the spoils and playground of the Anglosphere. Former RAAF officer and executive director of the Air Power Institute, Chris McInnes, barks in aeronautical terms that Australia’s air power capability risks being “put in a holding pattern for the next 10 years.” Despotic China, however, was facing no such prospects. “There is a risk of putting everything on hold. The People’s Liberal Army is not on hold. They are going to keep progressing their aircraft.” (The air force seems to do wonders for one’s grammar.)

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian was cool in his response to the latest promises of indulgent military spending Down Under. “We hope Australia will correctly view China’s development and strategic intentions, abandon the Cold War mentality, do more things to keep the region peaceful and stable and stop buzzing about China.” No harm in hoping.

By James Moore  

The only feature not mentioned was drool.

On his second day in court, charged with multiple felonies, the putative leader of the free world once more fell asleep. The man who has called the current president, “Sleepy Joe Biden,” cannot keep his eyes open in the midst of a trial that may put him behind bars and end any aspirations of retaking the White House. Journalistic observers described his “chin on his chest” and “jerking awake” while appearing “slack jawed” and “slumped forward” during the proceedings in the Manhattan courtroom. There is a chance that he drooled, though, and maybe those trained observers of men and events did not take note, distracted as they were by their mutual giggling. If there were cameras allowed in the courtroom, his desultory time before the bar might be the end of his dreams of political restoration.

The man who falsifies his face each morning with artificial coloring has worked even longer and harder at falsifying his life. Outside the courtroom, where he lectures without taking questions, he whined about the judge refusing to let him attend his son’s high school graduation, an important event for any father. The judge said nothing remotely close to Trump’s claim and refused to rule on the request, telling the defendant’s attorneys that he will decide at the time of the graduation based upon progress the trial has achieved.

Barron was less of a concern for his father, it needs to be pointed out, only four months after he had come into the world. Daddy was off at Lake Tahoe that month in 2006, hot in pursuit of a porn star who he wanted to convince to be nice to his naughty bits. When she acceded to his pleadings after vague promises he would help her get a legitimate break at a TV network, she discovered the already long-established fact that he was a liar, which years later prompted her threat to sell the story of their tryst to a tabloid. A side effect is that the man might not get to attend his son’s graduation, which is not that big of a deal since he did not show up for his other children’s matriculations.

According to the adult actress’ timeline, Barron was a baby and Melania was in her New York City golden castle nursing her infant son while the randy daddy was at a golf soiree in the Sierra Mountains of California. His investments in sexual relationships seem to have been as ill-advised as his real estate projects and casinos. A Playboy Playmate had also hooked up in 2006 with the man who would become democracy’s greatest mistake. Both women were paid in exchange for their silence during the 2016 campaign, but it’s how they were paid that has reduced a former West Wing and Oval Office occupant to a defendant. His lawyer, who will testify against him, set up a shell corporation to hide the the money transfers. A cascade of lies about the transactional sex and how it was disguised have led us to the first criminal trial of an American ex-president.

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

The even greater tragedy for the U.S. is that this man has taken control of the Republican Party and it is no longer a viable institution. Worse, the shredded remnants of the party of Lincoln have decided to put the country, and even the wider world, at risk with political intransigence. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who has compared himself to Moses and claims to use his Bible to guide his life, is also taking orders from a serial adulterer, pathological liar, fiduciary conman, and a Putin pal. While the Creamsicle Caligula gets his nappy time prior to his ultimate jail time, Speaker Moses refuses to move legislation that would protect the border because the new laws would also help the incumbent Biden with his reelection efforts. Those were his orders. Party over country.

Speaker Moses and his acolytes are not without projects, though. Measures they are considering, as Ukraine’s freedom slips away without U.S. assistance, include the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, the “Liberty in Laundry Act,” (Give me clean white underwear or give me death!), “Clothes Dryers Reliability Act,” the “Refrigerator Reliability Act,” “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” (Let my Frigidaire go!) and, of course, the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act.” These are all part of the powerful Hands Off Our Home Appliances Movement, which seems to have taken, at least momentarily, precedence over money for Ukraine and Israel and the border. There must be horrors in our homes we never knew but we have members of congress who are much wiser and understand how to prioritize for our protection.

Moses finally has a plan, but it’s doubtful it leads his people to the Promised Land, or that he will get to see it either, which follows the ancient script. Like his self-proclaimed Biblical namesake, Speaker Moses might see the Promised Land from a distance but is not likely to get there if he betrays the radical right caucus by passing funding bills to help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The Georgia congresswoman is likely to zap him with her control of Jewish space lasers and move to have the speaker’s chair vacated by a draconian rule accepted by the previous GOP speaker, who was also desperate for power and control. The new bills under consideration include a lend-lease program for Ukraine, a ban on Tik Tok, (political cyanide for the Rs), and authorization to sell seized Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s resistance. The biggest accomplishment of this congress, though, appears to be accomplishing an historic level of disfunction, which could be tossed aside if they just voted on a comprehensive foreign aid package already passed by the Senate. The half-awake bully in the courtroom is haunting their daylight dreams of achievement.

The most unsettling fact about what is happening in the lower chamber of the federal government is that it is a consequence of officeholders bending the knee to a man who cannot stay fully conscious through his own criminal trial. They want what he wants, even if it harms their country and its allies, which is a certainty. Ukraine is running out of defensive weapons and wonders why the U.S. and other western countries were willing to shoot down Iran’s missiles and drones over Israel but is unable to do the same in their fight against Russia. Do the Ukrainians not understand the power of the doddering old man down in Florida? His madness and demands make effective two-party governance impossible, which is what he and his followers prefer to a functional country. While he moans before the cameras about not being able to attend a U.S. Supreme Court argument about granting him immunity from his many crimes, the country he purports to care about comes undone and its stature falters among allied nations. The high court could cause even greater damage if it rules the president is above the law later this year.

The infection, nonetheless, continues to spread through the American body politic. Down in Arizona, a former TV news reader who is running for the U.S. Senate, told a rally crowd the “next six months will be intense” and we need to “strap on a Glock,” an automatic weapon that can kill with great proficiency. A stylish celebrity, she sounds like the former president but with different hormones and an even more refined disregard for facts. Her politics were formulated by searching for the shortest line to public office and the radical right was dramatically lacking in gender diversity. The language spreading across the right has not stopped suggesting that violence will be essential to win elections and take offices. The Arizona TV lady clearly does not care what happens as long as she gets attention and glory and money and public office. None of her thinking is original and comes from the Adderall addled mind of a future Riker’s Island inmate. Global geopolitics, meanwhile, are on a knife edge and Americans are fixated on a low-intellect ex-president on trial for money and sexual promiscuity.

Our future may be as uncertain as his.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

The Middle East has, for some time, been a powder keg where degrees of violence are tolerated with ceremonial mania and a calculus of restraint. Assassinations can take place at a moment’s notice. Revenge killings follow with dashing speed. Suicide bombings of immolating power are carried out. Drone strikes of devastating, collective punishment are ordered, all padded by the retarded notion that such killings are morally justified and confined. 

In all this viciousness, the conventional armed forces have been held in check, the arsenals contained, the generals busied by plans of contingency rather than reality. The rhetoric may be vengeful and spicily hysterical, but the states in the region keep their armies in reserve, and Armageddon at bay. Till, naturally, they don’t.

To date, Israel is doing much to test the threshold of what might be called the rule of tolerable violence. With Iran, for instance, it has adopted a “campaign between the wars”, primarily in Syria. For over a decade, the Israeli strategy was to prevent the flow of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, intercepting weapons shipments and targeting storage facilities. “Importantly,” writes Haid Haid, a consulting fellow for Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, “Israel appeared to avoid, whenever feasible, killing Hezbollah or Iranian operatives during these operations.” 

But the state of play has changed. The Gaza War, which has become more the Gaza Massacre Project, has moved into its seventh month, packing morgues, destroying families and stimulating the terror of famine. Despite calls from the Israeli military and various officials that Hamas’s capabilities have been irreparably weakened (this claim, like all those battling an idea rather than just a corporeal foe, remains refutable and redundant) the killings and policy of starvation continues against the general Palestinian populace. The International Court of Justice interim orders continue to be ignored, even as the judges deliberate over the issue as to whether genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip. The restraints, in other words, have been taken off. 

The signs are ominous. Spilt blood is becoming hard currency. Daily skirmishes between the IDF and Hezbollah are taking place on the Israeli-Lebanon border. The Houthis are feverishly engaged with blocking and attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, hooting solidarity for the Palestinian cause. 

On April 1, a blood crazed strike by Israel suggested that rules of tolerable violence had, if not been pushed, then altogether suspended. The attack on Iran’s consular offices in Damascus by the Israeli Air Force was tantamount to striking Iranian soil. In the process, it killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and other commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi. Retaliation was accordingly promised, with Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, vowing a response “at the same magnitude and harshness”.

It came on April 13, involving 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles, all directed at Israel proper. Superficially, this looks anarchically quixotic, streakily disproportionate. But Tehran went for a spectacular theatrical show to terrify and magnify rather than opt for any broader infliction of damage. Israel’s Iron Dome system, along with allied powers, could be counted upon to aid the shooting down of almost all the offensive devices. A statement had been made and the Iranians have so far drawn a line under any further military action. What was deemed by certain pundits a tactical failure can just as easily be read as a strategic if provocative success. The question then is: what follows?

The Israeli approach varies depending on who is being asked. The IDF Chief of Staff, General Herzi Halevi, stated that “Israel is considering next steps” declaring that “the launch of so many missiles and drones to Israeli territory will be answered with retaliation.” 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was taloned in his hawkishness, demanding that Israel launch a “crushing” counterattack, “go crazy” and abandon “restraint and proportionality”, “concepts that passed away on October 7.” The “response must not be a scarecrow, in the style of the dune bombings we saw in previous years in Gaza.” 

Cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who is a voting member of the war cabinet alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, is tilting for a “regional coalition” to “exact the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us. And most importantly, in the face of the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will unite and become stronger.” The immediate issues for resolution from Gantz’s perspective was the return of Israeli hostages “and the removal of the threat against the residents of the north and south.”

Such thinking will also be prompted by the response from the Biden administration that Netanyahu “think very carefully and strategically” about the next measures. “You got a win,” President Joe Biden is reported to have told Netanyahu. “Take the win.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also expressed the view that, “Strength and wisdom must be the two sides of the same coin.”

For decades, Israel has struck targets in sovereign countries with impunity, using expansive doctrines of pre-emption and self-defence. In doing so, the state always hoped that the understanding of tolerable violence would prevail. Any retaliation, if any, would be modest, with “deterrence” assured. With the war in Gaza and the fanning out of conflict, the equation has changed. To some degree, Ben Gvir is right that concepts of restraint and proportionality have been banished to the mortuary. But such banishment, to a preponderant degree, was initiated by Israel. The Israel-Gaza War is now, effectively, a global conflict, waged in regional miniature.

It seems Prime Minister Anthony Albanese does. In Brisbane this week he announced that the ALP Government would be considering legislation that would bring some high technology manufacturing back to Australia. While some of us may be pining for the return of the ‘Aussie designed and made’ Holden or Ford, along with the Lightburn fridge, AWA Television and so on, that’s unlikely to be what he was talking about. It’s also fairly difficult to claim that Holden and Ford were wholly Australian anyway; as the ultimate decisions were made in Detroit and Dearborn respectively.

What Albanese is more likely to be talking about is the recent announcements regarding measures to support solar panel manufacturing as well as the machinery needed to make green hydrogen. No doubt there is more to come. Australia used to make solar panels and we had world leading technology. But we stopped partly because the government of the day decided not to provide some support when cheaper and initially less well made panels began to flood the market. While Abbott & Hockey withdrew support from Australia’s motor vehicle industry both sides have form in this area thanks to neo-liberal economic policy.

Albanese isn’t the only leader of a country that is promoting a process to bring manufacturing home. The USA’s Inflation Reduction Act is one example, with other ‘well developed’ economies either planning or implementing similar packages. And it makes sense. While not everything will work and bring us global domination in a particular area, the economics stack up. A local workforce employed in the design and manufacture of material and items required around the world pays taxes and funds the services and retailers in the area they live in (who then go on to pay more taxes, wages and so on). It also makes us far less susceptible to supply shocks should something happen somewhere in the world that disrupts trade and commerce such as another pandemic or some tinpot dictator determining that he should take over another country.

The media has noticed the change inside the government as well, an example being Michelle Grattan’s piece in The Conversation when’re she discusses Albanese’s Industry Policy as well as the governments change in attitude to the war in Palestine.

There is a good chance that no-one expected Opposition Leader Dutton to come out in full throated support for the governments apparently changes in policy on manufacturing and the worsening situation in the middle east, it’s telling what he did do. When Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated that Australia, like some other nations around the world, are considering options regarding recognising the Palestinian state, Dutton (ably assisted by his usual mouthpieces employed by ‘Sky after dark’, The Australian and Nine Media) was horrified. Rather than couch his opposition in terms of someone who aspires to the political leader of our country, he seems to think of something abhorrent to say and then goes to the next level. There is no correlation between a Palestinian protest in Sydney and a terrorist event in Tasmania, despite Dutton’s claim he was demonstrating how a conservative political leader might have acted. There has also been little if any comment on Albanese’s statement regarding supporting manufacturing in Australia.

It takes time to be constantly negative. Every idea and suggestion that is made has to be examined to look for the hidden agenda, half truth or trap that might be able to be blown out of all proportion to placate the ever diminishing ‘rusted on’ Coalition supporter as well as those further to the right. Half truths can also come back to discredit you. Recently Dutton flew to Western Australia to attend a birthday soirée hosted by Gina Reinhart. Dutton claimed he paid his own way and the records submitted to the Parliament support this. What Dutton didn’t mention is that the cost of travel for the staff that accompanied him was billed to the taxpayer and totalled around $6,000. Apparently Dutton was at Reinhart’s birthday party for under an hour and was back on the hustings in Dunkley talking about the cost of living the next morning! It’s doubtful Dutton’s staff would have felt an overwhelming need to be in Western Australia for an hour or so if Dutton wasn’t going there.

Albanese’s vision of the future may not be as rosy as the rhetoric suggests, and we have little detail on what the vision really is. No doubt there will be challenges and blind alleys on the way to a more vibrant and successful country. Dutton in contrast seems to believe that negativity and constant niggling will convince enough people to vote him into power at the next election.

While we might still have two older white men in change at the next election, one hopefully will be able to sell policies with positivity and vision while the other still apparently seeks a return to the days and practices of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government. If so, it might be a really interesting contest of ideas – at last!

While the Australian government continues to pirouette with shallow constancy on the issue of Israel’s war in Gaza, making vacuous utterances on Palestinian statehood even as it denies supplying the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with weapons (spare parts, it would seem, are a different, footnoted matter), efforts made to unearth details of the defence relationship between the countries have so far come to naught.

The brief on Australian-Israel relations published by the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs is deplorably skimpy, noting that both countries have, since 2017, “expanded cooperation on national security, defence and cyber security.” Since 2018, we are told that annual talks have been conducted between defence officials, while Australia appointed, in early 2018, a resident Defence Attaché to the embassy in Tel Aviv. What is conspicuously absent are details of the Memorandum of Understanding on defence cooperation both countries signed in 2017.

A little bit of scrapping around reveals that 2017 was something of a critical year, a true bumper return. The Australia-Israel Defence Industry Cooperation Joint Working Group was created that October. A following Australian Defence media release notes the group’s intention: “to strengthen ties between Australia and Israel, explore defence industry and innovation opportunities, identify export opportunities, and support our industries to cooperate in the development of innovative technologies for shared capability challenges.”

The intentions of the group were well borne out. Defence contracts followed with sweet indulgence: the February 2018 contract between Israel-based Rafael Advanced Defence Systems with Australia’s Bisalloy Steels worth A$900,000; an August 2018 joint venture between the Australian defence engineering company Varley Group and Rafael, behind such “leading weapons systems” as “the Spike LR2 anti-tank guided missile”; and the Electro Optic Systems-Elbit Systems agreement from 2019 responsible for developing “a modular medium-calibre turret that can be configured for a range of platforms, including lightweight reconnaissance and heavy fighting vehicles.”

In February this year, Elbit Systems, Israel’s notorious drone manufacturer and creator of the Hermes 450 aerial device responsible for this month’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers including the Australian national, Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, was rewarded with a A$917 million contract. Business, even over bodies, exerts a corrupting force.

In a heartbeat after the outbreak of the latest Gaza War last October, the Australian Greens filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request seeking a copy of the barely mentioned MOU. After a period of three months, the Australian Defence Department reached the boring conclusion that the application should be rejected. It fell, the argument went, within the category of exemptions so treasured by secretive bureaucrats keen to make sure the “freedom” in FOI is kept spare and bare. 

What follows is repulsive to intellect and denigrating to morality. “The document within the scope of this request,” went the letter from the Defence Department, “contains information which, if released, could reasonably be expected to damage the international relations of the Commonwealth.” The MOU “contains information communicated to Australia by a foreign government and its officials under the expectation that it would not be disclosed.” Releasing “such information could harm Australia’s international standing and reputation.”

A telling, and troubling role was played by Israel in the process. With characteristic, jellied spinelessness, Australian defence officials notified Israel of the FOI request in December 2023. In February, the Netanyahu government responded with its views, of which we can only speculate. The Greens were duly informed by the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) that the relevant decision maker in Defence “will consider the foreign government’s consultation response to make an informed and robust decision.” With such words, a negative response was nigh predictable. 

Greens Senator David Shoebridge, in responding to the decision, was adamant that, “There is no place for secret arms treaties and secret arms deals between countries.” Furthermore, there was “no place for giving other countries veto power over what the Australian government tells the public about our government defence and arms deals.” The case is even more pressing given allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide taking place in the Gaza strip.

This regrettable episode retains a certain familiar repulsiveness. Unfortunately for devotees of open government, a fraught term if ever there was one, Australia’s FOI regime remains stringently archaic and pathologically secretive. 

Decision makers are given directions to frustrate, not aid applications to reveal information, notably on sensitive topics such as security, defence and international relations. Spurious notions about damage to international relations are advanced to ensure secrecy and the muzzling of debate. The OAIC has also shown itself to be lamentably weak, tardy and inefficient in reviewing applications. In March 2023, it was revealed that almost 600 unresolved FOI cases had bottled up over the course of three years.

The latest refusal from the Defence Department to disclose the Israel-Australian MOU to members of Parliament, a decision reached after discussions with a foreign power (that fact is staggering and disheartening in of itself), betrays much doubletalk regarding defence ties between Canberra, the IDF, and the Israeli government. More than that, it confirms that those in Canberra are being steered by other interests, longing for the approval of foreign eyes and foreign interests. 

With Stephen Charles AO KC

The dire state of truth in Australia’s civic space crystalised in 2023. We had seen the waning influence of News Corp’s impact on our elections and assumed it meant that enough of us were becoming inoculated against the propaganda. The defeat of the notoriously mendacious Coalition government might have signalled a ceasefire, a moment for the ‘conservative’ parties to rediscover their integrity. We had underestimated, however, the strategising of vested interests. The year also revealed starkly what happens when the world’s instant communication platform, X (formerly Twitter), is owned by one malevolent billionaire. All these forces converged in a grim battle over the Voice to Parliament referendum.

The overwhelming rejection of Scott Morrison’s Coalition government in 2022 had been in large part an indictment of its lack of transparency and integrity. Revelation had followed revelation about the brazen pork-barrelling undertaken with the help of colour-coded spreadsheets kept in a ministerial office.1 The flood of deception, echoing Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, was such that Bernard Keane assembled a whole book on it.2 Solid gold Liberal seats were lost to community independents known as the ‘teals’ who were focused on climate action and integrity.

Anthony Albanese’s government was sworn in with the expectation that it would move efficiently to introduce the integrity platform it had promised, including an anti-corruption body and whistleblower protections. So, 2023 saw the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) enacted and its commencement. In the first months, it received over a thousand submissions, which it had to cull to the few it can investigate.3 Of course, Australia won’t know which claims of corruption are being tested because Labor was seduced by the Liberals into constraining public hearings: they will only take place in ‘exceptional circumstances’.4 Public hearings are vital for such bodies in fulfilling their primary object of exposing public sector corruption; they educate the sector about the nature of corruption and deter others from future misconduct. The fact that the NACC will only rarely exhibit its work causes Australians to be less confident that corruption is being pursued at all. Other reforms remain stalled. It is scandalous that whistleblowers Richard Boyle and David McBride continued to face court action for their heroic efforts to expose serious wrongdoing to the public. The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme was a brilliant demonstration of the debasement of our public service; that the few bravest truthtellers among them should continue to be persecuted instead of celebrated is a blight on Labor’s record.

This year, Peter Dutton’s Opposition could have chosen to build itself up as a more electable proposition by developing policy directions and proudly declaring that corruption was in the past. Instead, Dutton put all the Opposition’s chips on the culture wars: the Albanese government was to be made a one-term proposition by defeating the Voice referendum using whatever weapons were available. Dutton’s party worked alongside activist groups and News Corp to foster chaos and confusion.

The fact that disinformation and misinformation around the referendum seemed so often to tie back to the mining sector was revealing. Clive Palmer spent $2 million of his own money on swaying South Australia and Tasmania in the final weeks of the campaign.5 Gina Rinehart attended the glamorous ‘No’ team victory party at the Hyatt Regency in Brisbane.6 While some of the mining sector supported the Voice as part of their environment, social and corporate governance goals, behind the scenes the fossil fuel sector continued to play its long-term wrecking game.

The war on the Voice – and the chance it might strengthen First Peoples’ protection of their Country – is emblematic of the long game of alliances of sector interests, big donors and canny strategists. The battle against the regulation of tobacco from the 1950s became the campaign to disrupt certainty about the science of climate change.7 The goal was public confusion. Now, epistemological chaos is set to damn us all. Information has been weaponised to divide the public and steal victories for vested interests. The damage done to democracy by cyclones of disinformation tearing through social media is only compounded by the leaders who legitimise it.

Just as US Republicans tried to ride the tiger of populist nativist fury to power over the Obama years, the Coalition in Australia is hoping to regain power by fuelling suburban and rural anger at the so-called ‘inner-city elites’. Conspiracists enraged by pandemic health measures united with culture warriors against ‘woke’ to fight any project that signals empathy, justice, expertise or inclusion. This year also brought to public attention the growing Christian right takeover of ‘conservative’ party branches that has infused Pentecostal cultish ideas into that mixture.8

The Voice to Parliament referendum hijacked by lies

The shame of 2023 was the No campaign against a Voice to Parliament becoming enshrined in the Australian constitution alongside an acknowledgement of First Peoples’ existence in the country before European settlement. The plan to place the Voice in the constitution rather than merely legislate it emerged from the long consultation that formed the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart. First Peoples representatives asked Australians to grant them a permanent body to advise on matters relating to them. By placing it in the constitution, the body could be reformed over and again, but not axed without another referendum.

The decision of the National Party to oppose the Voice took place before the wording was finalised. The Liberal Party, in the wake of Peter Dutton’s embarrassing loss in the Aston by-election, declared its intent to follow and campaign against the body. These choices were not surprising. The fossil fuel sector has a decades-old architecture of influence working assiduously to muddy debates; one of its targets is Indigenous communities taking environmental action to obstruct resource- extraction projects. The Coalition has acted for decades to deter genuine climate action in Australia, and its attack on the Voice was, in part, another gift to the fossil fuel sector.

The right’s lies about the Voice began when the Uluṟu Statement was first issued in 2017. It was almost immediately labelled a ‘third chamber of Parliament’, a ridiculous mischaracterisation.9 In 2023, the Opposition’s parliamentary leaders depicted it as an inchoate power grab with ‘insufficient detail’. Experienced politicians know that the constitution only provides the barest outline: the working consequences of a constitutional amendment are forged by legislators, which would have happened in negotiation with First Peoples representatives. The inaugural legislation could be renegotiated as limitations or problems became apparent.

The Voice had approximately 60% support before the referendum campaign began. By the end of the campaign, the No majority stood at roughly 60%. A percentage of that No contingent was a ‘progressive No’ that believed Treaty should come first or that no cooperation with the coloniser could be helpful. The Voice was to have no ability to compel action; the very modesty of the proposal – likened to a school student representative council – drove these voters to campaign against it. The Yes campaign faced the typical challenge of Australia’s hesitancy regarding constitutional change. Moreover, it would have inescapably faced social media disinformation about the body, but the decision of political leaders around the country to fight – and fight dirty – was disastrous. What should have been a campaign above politics was dragged into the culture wars, with First Peoples as the most damaged casualties.

News Corp was at the centre of the media campaign against the Voice. While the organisation claimed to be explaining both sides…

The essay continues at Meanjin, where a digital subscription is only $5 per month or $50 for a year.

The occasional burst of candour from US diplomats provides a striking, air clearing difference to their Australian and British counterparts. Official statements about the AUKUS security pact between Washington, London and Canberra, rarely mention the target in so many words, except on the gossiping fringes. Commentators and think tankers are essentially given free rein to speculate, masticating over such streaky and light terms as “new strategic environment”, “great power competition”, “rules-based order”.

On the occasion of his April 3 visit to Washington’s Center for a New American Security (CNAS), US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was refreshingly frank. His presence as an emissary of US power in the Pacific has been notable since the AUKUS announcement in September 2021. 

In March last year, Campbell, as Deputy Assistant to the US President and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific National Security Council, was unfurling the US flag before various Pacific states, adamant that US policy was being reoriented from one of neglect to one of greater attentiveness. The Solomon Islands, given its newly minted security pact with Beijing, was of special concern. “We realise that we have to overcome in certain areas some amounts of distrust and uncertainty about follow through,” he explained to reporters in Wellington, New Zealand. “We’re seeking to gain that trust and confidence as we go forward.”

In Honiara, Campbell conceded that the US had not done “enough before” and had to be “big enough to admit that we need to do more, and we need to do better.” This entailed, in no small part, cornering the Solomon Islands Premier Manasseh Sogavare into affirming that Beijing would not be permitted to establish a military facility capable of supporting “power projection capabilities.”

In his discussion with the CNAS Chief Executive Officer, Richard Fontaine, Campbell did the usual runup, doffing the cap to the stock principles. Banal generalities were discussed, for instance, as to whether the US should be the sole show in projecting power or seek support from like-minded sorts. “I would argue that as the United States and other nations confront a challenging security environment, that the best way to maintain peace and security is to work constructively and deeply with allies and partners.” A less than stealthy rebuke was reserved for those who think “that the best that the United States can do is to act alone and to husband its resources and think about unilateral, individual steps it might take.”

The latter view has always been scorned by those calling themselves multilateralists, a cloaking term for waging war arm-in-arm with satellite states and vassals while ascribing to it peace keeping purposes in the name of stability. Campbell is unsurprising in arguing “that working closely with other nations, not just diplomatically, but in defensive avenues [emphasis added], has the consequence of strengthening peace and stability more generally.” The virtue with the unilateralists is the possibility that war should be resorted to sparingly. If one is taking up arms alone, a sense of caution can moderate the bloodlust. 

Campbell revealingly envisages “a number of areas of conflict and in a number of scenarios that countries acting together” in the Indo-Pacific, including Japan, Australia, South Korea and India. “I think that balance, the additional capacity will help strengthen deterrence more general [sic].” The candid admission on the role played by the AUKUS submarines follows, with the boats having “the potential to have submarines from a number of countries operating in close coordination that could deliver conventional ordinance from long distances. Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances.” And so, we have the prospect of submarines associated with the AUKUS compact being engaged in a potential war with China over Taiwan.

When asked on what to do about the slow production rate of submarines on the part of the US Navy necessary to keep AUKUS afloat, Campbell acknowledged the constraints – the Covid pandemic, supply chain issues, the number of submarines in dry dock requiring or requiring servicing. But like Don Quixote taking the reins of Rosinante to charge the windmills, he is undeterred in his optimism, insisting that “the urgent security demands in Europe and the Indo-Pacific require much more rapid ability to deliver both ordinance and other capabilities.” 

To do so, the military industrial complex needs to be broadened (good news for the defence industry, terrible for the peacemakers). “I think probably there is going to be a need over time for a larger number of vendors, both in the United States in Australia and Great Britain, involved in both AUKUS and other endeavours.”

There was also little by way of peace talk in Campbell’s confidence about the April 11 trilateral Washington summit between the US, Japan and the Philippines, following a bilateral summit to be held between President Joe Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. When terms such as “modernize” and “update” are bandied about in the context of an alliance, notably with an eye towards a rival power’s ambitions, the warring instincts must surely be stirred. In the language of true encirclement, Campbell envisages a cooperative framework that will “help link the Indo-Pacific more effectively to Europe” while underscoring “our commitment to the region as a whole.”

A remarkably perverse reality is in the offing regarding AUKUS. In terms of submarines, it will lag, possibly even sink, leaving the US and, to a lesser extent the UK, operating their fleets as Australians foot the bill and provide the refreshments. Campbell may well mention Australia and the UK in the context of nuclear-powered submarines, but it remains clear where his focus is: the US program “which I would regard as the jewel in the crown of our defense industrial capacity.” Not only is Australia effectively promising to finance and service that particular capacity, it will also do so in the service of a potentially catastrophic conflict which will see its automatic commitment. A truly high price to pay for an abdication of sovereignty for the fiction of regional stability.

The utter slaughter, ethnic cleansing and genocide that Israel has carried out over the last six months has, of course, been harrowing to watch. The glory that is instantaneous communication in the digital age has made information, up to and including video of these war crimes, available to anyone with a device in their hands. Such information should lead to the utter condemnation of Israel, and its identification as a rogue nation in the international sphere. But this is not the case, or at least it has not been up to this point.

The international response to this callous, intentional massacring of more than 40,000 people has been weak to put it very mildly. Leaders in the West (Britain, the US and Australia specifically) have spoken of ‘anger’ and ‘concern’, but have done precisely nothing tangible. Why is this? This is one of the issues I want to explore today. The other issue concerns the Western reaction to the recent murder of those international aid workers.

Inconvenient Truth, Part One a): The International Mafia

In my younger days, I used to conceive of international affairs as run like a mafia organisation, with the United States as the Godfather pulling the strings. If you were ‘outside the family’ (that is to say outside of the influences of American capital) you were a rogue nation that might ‘need some democracy’, especially if you had natural resources that Western capital wanted to exploit. In light of recent events, I have modified this description somewhat. It still very much holds, but the role of the United States has changed.

America is no longer (if it ever was) the Godfather of this international mafia organisation. It is merely the muscle. As the owner of the largest and most powerful military apparatus in human history (for now), the Americans have great influence, but they still cower in fear when it comes to the true Godfather of international affairs: Israel. Israel has carried out what the International Court of Justice has said there is reasonable evidence to call a genocide, but the Americans continue to fund, and more importantly arm, this rogue nation.

Israel is a paper tiger propped up by American money and weapons. The Americans do not know (or are choosing to ignore) the fact that this gives them tremendous power when it comes to Israel. If the US made its funding and arming of Israel conditional on, oh I do not know, adhering to international law, the Jewish state’s policy would change right quick. But they do not do this. Why? What are they afraid of?

Inconvenient Truth, Part One b): Israel’s ‘Secret Weapons’

The Jewish state has, in recent times, adopted a new secret weapon. You may have noticed that anyone, regardless of who they are, or how many facts they have on their side, is labelled, for even the most tepid criticism of Israel, an anti-semite. This pathetic conflation of disagreement with the policies of one state with hatred of an entire people, members of which live all over the world, seems to keep nations in line. Think of it as a form of extortion, as in ‘Nice international reputation you have there; be a shame if anything were to happen to it’. This slimy tactic effectively renders Israel ‘the nation who cried anti-semite’. The word is now meaningless.

Israel has another secret weapon, one of geography, which gives them power over certain American christians. There is a twist to this which I will get to in a minute, but for now some facts. There is a subset of American christians who believe that the end-times cannot happen until all the land in the middle east is under Israeli control. This partially accounts for their obsessive, almost religious, support of Israel. They need Israel to ‘win’ so jesus can come back.

But there is a twist. There is a great unspoken truth about the fate of the Jews in Israel when jesus comes back. According to this subset of christians, those Jews will be tossed into the lake of fire for eternal torture because they never accepted jesus like the christians did. That’s right: the religious support of Israel is a total con. Every Jew in Israel is to be obliterated because they did not fall in line with this very narrow subset of christianity. But remember, it is critics of Israel who are the anti-semites.

Inconvenient Truth, Part Two: The Hypocrisy of The West

The world was recently set alight with outrage over the murder of those seven international aid workers in Gaza. It was this event, rather than the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians, that got international attention. The cynics among you may have noticed that the West, for all its bleating about ‘equality’ and all the rest of that crap, actually gives less than two sh*ts about Palestinians. But you kill our citizens? Oh now we’re outraged.

The utter hypocrisy of the West is thereby exposed: if you’d just stuck to killing Palestinians, everything would have been fine. We could have gone on ignoring your obvious genocide since no-one really cares about ‘Palestinians’ anyway. But you f*cked it up. By killing UK, Australian and American citizens, we have to respond now. Our citizens expect us to. We won’t actually change our policy in any way, we promise, but we have to be seen to be doing something. Maybe a few days’ delay on the next weapons shipment. Maybe.

Analysis: Voltaire and Who Rules You

Anyone who thinks the idea that Israel is in control of international affairs is some sort of conspiracy should consider the quote attributed to Voltaire:

If you wish to know who rules you, find out who you are not allowed to criticise

In light of this, the status of Israel as hegemon (leader) in international affairs is no conspiracy. Any and all criticism of Israel has to be premised with statements about ‘Israel having the right to exist and to defend itself’ and ‘I condemn Hamas’. When medicine is given to an animal, it is commonly concealed in food to make it as palatable as possible. The comparison to criticism of Israel needing to premised with the aforementioned statements is apt. And they will still call you an anti-semite.

Conclusion

I realise I have gone for the jugular here, but I do not apologise. Israel is subject to a different standard (read no standards) precisely because it is Israel. If Iran or one of the other so-called ‘rogue nations’ bombed the living hell out of a region to this extent (whatever the provocation) the American and other nations’ response would not be strong words. The response would be a bombardment so vicious that Dresden would say ‘calm down’.

The time has come to remove Israel’s special status and hold them accountable under international law and the laws of war. This will never happen, of course, since setting a precedent of prosecuting war criminals who are ‘the good guys’ (read friends of America) is not in the interest of the international community. As Noam Chomsky said, if the Nuremberg Laws were actually enforced, every post-war US President would hang as a war criminal. Awkward.

This post is likely to cost me a friend or two, but that is ok. Friends like that I can do without. I abhor violence and indiscriminate killing of civilians and children. If condemning that makes me an anti-semite, then HH.

By Denis Bright

NATO leaders met in Brussels to anticipate more policy confusion after the US Presidential elections on 5 November 2024. From ten major opinion polling institutes, the trendlines on oncomes are quite inconsistent and with wafer thin according to feedback from media monitoring by Microsoft Copilot to anticipate the election outcomes. This raises the possibility of continued tensions between the incoming president and the houses of congress.

Co-ordinated strategic commitment to Ukraine was the appeal to the world from the 75^th birthday function for NATO in anticipation of this US leadership instability extending into the late 2020s (NATO 4 April 2024):

Foreign Ministers concluded two days of talks in Brussels on Thursday (4 April 2024) with a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, and another meeting with Indo-Pacific partners and the European Union. Thursday marked 75 years since NATO’s founding. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the landmark, saying: “since 1949, we have been the strongest and most successful Alliance in history.”

The foreign ministers in attendance at these NATO forums from thirty-two NATO states are generally representatives of conservative governments elected on preferences from far-right parties. The exceptions are largely Iceland, Malta, Norway and Denmark. Germany has a minority social democratic government which must seek accord with the Free Democrat to remain in office. Austria and Switzerland are not represented at the NATO forums because of their neutral status.

Australians might be comforted by our distance from the conflict zones between Russia and Ukraine. Closer to home, there is strategic pressure on Australia from military and intelligence units loyal to the traditional goals of the Five Eyes Network. This Network supports strategic jaunts to rattle Chinese defence installations near the Taiwan Strait and in the vicinity of Hainan on the fringes if the South China Sea.

It is difficult to understand just how our commercial relationships with China have been allowed to deteriorate over just a few years when Australia defence units participated in events with the Chinese PLA even after leadership of the federal LNP was seized by Scott Morrison on 24 August 2018 (Australian Department of Defence 9 October 2019):

Australian Army members have travelled to China to take part in the annual bilateral adventure training Exercise Pandaroo, which begins on Hainan Island today.
First held in 2015, Exercise Pandaroo is an example of the constructive military engagement undertaken as part of Australia’s defence relationship with China.

This annual exercise will see Australian Army personnel working alongside their Chinese counterparts during a series of adventure training activities.

Despite recent strategic problems with China, the latest edition of World Economic Situation and Prospects released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs is cause for great optimism. Australia has a box seat so close to the world’s major growth economies across Asia and the Pacific (26 March 2024).

The healthy state of nearby regional economic relationships contrasts with stagnant levels of economic growth in developed economies from Europe to Britain and Japan. The current positive regional outlook contrasts with the market volatility associated with high interest rates, unacceptable levels of inflation and fluctuating levels of economic growth in the decade after the 1981 recession which defied the wisdom of policy-makers during the Hawke-Keating eras (1983-96).

To assist readers in consolidating the big picture of the mixed state of the global economy, readers might consider looking at Geopolitics and Geometry of Global Trade and Investment from the McKinsey Global Institute in New York (17 January 2024). The McKinsey Institute in New York has no affinity with the current round of megaphone diplomacy about making American Great Again.

The McKinsey brand of economic diplomacy has just brought a large delegation of US executives and academic leaders to China (South China Morning Post 28 March 2024). This follows a delegation from Australia organized by the International Trade Council (18 March 2024). Even delegations from Taiwan are being well received in China as reported by Nikkei (7 February 2024). From Taipei, President Biden’s commitment to strategic stability of the Taiwan Strait is a positive development (Taiwan Foreign Affairs 3 April 2024). Meanwhile, Taiwan has rejected offers of Chinese assistance with its earthquake relief during the recent natural disaster in Hualien (South China Post 3 April 2024).

Getting on top of the strategic barriers to our future trading and investment ties should be a talking point in the lead up to the Australian elections in 2025. Tentative moves for better commercial relations with China should be a plus for the Labor Government in winnable regional seats like Capricornia, Leichhardt, Flynn and Page.

Perhaps our naval brass should take ferries or fly with one of Taiwan’s own airlines if they are seeking carefree perspective on the Taiwan Strait. There are also slow ferries operating across the Taiwan Strait three times a week between terminals adjacent to Taichung in Taiwan and Pington Port near the Chinese City of Fuzhou. Direct flights are available from Taichung to Kinmen Island within Taiwan and adjacent to the City of Xiamin. From here there are ferries into Wu Tong Pier every thirty minutes. Passports are checked at the ferry terminals as the short ferry journey is an international transit.

Megaphone diplomacy did nothing to assist in the development of this improved cross-strait harmony.

Ferry services commenced operations between Taiwanese territories in Kinmen Island and the adjacent Chinese city of Xiamin in 1987.

Over 1.3 million Chinese citizens cross into Taiwanese territories on Kinmen Island according to Microsoft Copilot. Kinmen Island is a popular tourist spot with Chinese visitors for day trips and short holidays. Here the ruins of the old fortresses extended during the lengthy period of Japanese occupation of Taiwan between 1895 and the defeat of Imperial Japan in 1945 are no longer used for Cold War hostilities as in 1960.

If the situation is explained calmly, a different mainstream narrative will evolve in time. The Advance Australia Network has no commitment to this consensus-building. As Advance Australia is not a political party, it can campaign from the sidelines and by-pass spending caps on campaigning.

Microsoft Copilot offers the following profile of the Advance Australia network. These interpretations can be critically investigated by readers for accuracy in the absence of detailed mainstream reporting beyond the columns of The Guardian newspaper:

1. Donations and Funding:
   • In the 2022-23 financial year, Advance Australia received a substantial $5.2 million in donations and other receipts, more than doubling its previous year’s amount.
   • Approximately 47% of these funds came from unknown sources, falling into the category of “dark money”.
   • The group positioned itself as a right-wing alternative to progressive campaign group GetUp!, advocating for Australian “battlers” against the “woke” elite.
   • Some of its prominent financial backers include wealthy investors and businesspeople.
2. High-Profile Backers:
   • Maurice Newman, a businessperson, is one of the notable backers of Advance Australia.
   • Sam Kennard, the managing director of Kennards Self Storage, has also supported the group.
   • David Adler, the president of the Australian Jewish Association, is another influential figure associated with Advance Australia.

Australians live in a highly prosperous regional enclave that will be advanced by increases in the Chinese economic growth and the investment outreach of its Belt and Road Agendas. The negativity in election campaigning from Advance Australia does nothing to advance commitment to more strident national sovereignty compatible with enhanced and sustainable prosperity.

The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was distraught and testy. It seemed that, on this occasion, Israel had gone too far. Not too far in killing over 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza, a staggering percentage of them being children. Not too far in terms of using starvation as a weapon of war. Not too far in bringing attention to the International Court of Justice that its actions are potentially genocidal.  

Israel had overstepped in doing something it has done previously to other nationals: kill humanitarian workers in targeted strikes. The difference for Albanese on this occasion was that one of the individuals among the seven World Central Kitchen charity workers killed during the midnight between April 1 and 2 was Australian national Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom.

Frankcom and her colleagues had unloaded humanitarian food supplies from Cyprus that had been sent via a maritime route before leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse. The convoy, despite driving in a designated “deconflicted” zone, was subsequently attacked by three missiles fired from a Hermes 450 drone. All vehicles had the WCK logo prominently displayed. WCK had been closely coordinating the movements of their personnel with the IDF.  

In a press conference on April 3, Albanese described the actions as “completely unacceptable.” He noted that the Israeli government had accepted responsibility for the strikes, while Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu had conveyed his condolences to Frankcom’s family, with assurances that he would be “committed to full transparency”.

The next day, the Australian PM called the slaying of Frankcom a “catastrophic event”, reiterating Netanyahu’s promises from the previous day that he was “committed to a full and proper investigation.” Albanese also wished that these findings be made public, and that accountability be shown for Israel’s actions, including for those directly responsible. “What we know is that there have been too many innocent lives lost in Gaza.”

Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, restated the need for “full accountability and transparency” and Australian cooperation with Israel “on the detail of this investigation.” She further acknowledged the deaths of over 30,000 civilians, with some “half a million Palestinians” starving.

Beyond an investigation, mounted and therefore controlled by the Israeli forces themselves, nothing much else can be hoped for. The Albanese approach has been one of copybook warnings and concerns to an ally it clearly fears affronting. What would a ground invasion of Rafah do to the civilian population? What of the continuing hardships in Gaza? Push for a humanitarian ceasefire, but what else?  

Australian anger at the government level must therefore be severely qualified. Support roles, thereby rendering Australian companies complicit in Israeli’s military efforts, and in ancillary fashion the Australian government, continue to be an important feature. The F-35, a mainstay US-made fighter for the Israeli Air Force, is not manufactured or built in Australia, but is sustained through the supply of spare parts stored in a number of allied countries. According to the Australian Department of Defence, “more than 70 Australian companies have directly shared more than $4.13 billion in global F-35 production and sustainment contracts.”

The Australian government has previously stated that all export permit decisions “must assess any relevant human rights risks and Australia’s compliance with its international obligations.” The refusal of a permit would be assured in cases where an exported product “might be used to facilitate human rights abuses.” On paper, this seems solidly reasoned and consistent with international humanitarian law. But Canberra has been a glutton for the Israeli military industry, approving 322 defence exports over the past six years. In 2022, it approved 49 export permits of a military nature bound for Israel; in the first three months of 2023, the number was 23.

The drone used in the strike that killed Frankcom is the pride and joy of Elbit Systems, which boasts a far from negligible presence in Australia. In February, Elbit Systems received a A$917 million contract from the Australian Defence Department, despite previous national security concerns among Australian military personnel regarding its Battle Management System (BMS).

When confronted with the suggestion advanced by the Australian Greens that Australia end arms sales to Israel, given the presence of Australian spare parts in weaponry used by the IDF, Wong displayed her true plumage. The Australian Greens, she sneered, were “trying to make this a partisan political issue.” With weasel-minded persistence, Wong again quibbled that “we are not exporting arms to Israel” and claiming Australian complicity in Israeli actions was “detrimental to the fabric of Australian society.”

The Australian position on supplying Israel remains much like that of the United States, with one fundamental exception. The White House, the Pentagon and the US Congress, despite increasing concerns about the arrangement, continue to bankroll and supply the Israeli war machine even as issue is taken about how that machine works. That much is admitted. The Australian line on this is even weaker.  

The feeble argument made by such watery types as Foreign Minister Wong focus on matters of degree and semantics. Israel is not being furnished with weapons; they are merely being furnished with weapon components.  

Aside from ending arms sales, there is precedent for Australia taking the bull by the horns and charging into the mist of legal accountability regarding the killing of civilians in war. It proved an enthusiastic participant in the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), charged with combing through the events leading to the downing of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Ukraine in July 2014 by a Buk missile, killing all 298 on board.  

Any such equivalent investigation into the IDF personnel responsible for the killing of Frankcom and her colleagues is unlikely. When the IDF talks of comprehensive reviews, we know exactly how comprehensively slanted they will be.

Ok, this may not be exactly accurate, but doesn’t it strike anyone else as ironic that many of the people who argued that we shouldn’t have a republic where we get to vote on who the head of state are now saying that they don’t like Albanese’s choice of Governor-General and that it should be someone “more mainstream”.

While, in some ways they may have a point… After all, Sam Mostyn isn’t your typical Aussie. I mean she’s a member of that minority group called women. As Andrew Bolt was quick to point out that there was no way Labor would appoint one of those poor white males who never seem to get a look in these days.

And Janet Albrechtsen did say that if someone asked her to be GG, she’d just say to shoot her. Doubly so, if it was because she was a woman!

Shame on you for thinking that it’s a shame she wasn’t asked, but moving on…

It seems that we shouldn’t be appointing people on the basis of anything other than merit and, well, Sam Mostyn is only getting the job because she’s the “wokest of the woke” and we prefer the sleepy ex-army types like David Hurley who managed to sleep through the fact that he allowed Scott Morrison to have five ministries and his meetings with several people on that future leaders group because he didn’t remember meeting them more than once or twice when it seems that it was closer to several times the number of ministries that ScoMoses managed to appoint himself to.

Yes, ex-ADF types are just fine even if they don’t represent the mainstream because most people don’t join the defence forces but at least they represent the white male brigade so there’s no reason for Bolt to complain and no reason for Albrechtsen feel like Sam was only given the job because she was a woman who supported action on climate change and campaigned for the Voice…

Although I can think of several other women who also support action on climate change and the Voice, so if that was the criteria, why didn’t Albo give it to one of the ones who would have caused an even bigger brouhaha. Maybe an trans person or someone Indigenous… Or some transgender Indigenous individual.

Whatever, it’s important to remember that GG should be mainstream, and that Sam Mostyn is far too ideologically driven. After all, she was the first female AFL commissioner so how does that make NSW feel when most of them are more interested in Rugby? Clearly, she’s not fitting in with the values of the majority there.

And let’s not forget that she’s been on the board of several radical organisations such as Beyond Blue, The Australia Council for the Arts, the GO Foundation, Transurban, Citibank, Virgin Australia and a host of others. Like how lefty is Citibank? And being on so many boards, where’s her real-world experience?

So I think we can safely say that this radical appointment is typical of Labor. The last time they got to decide who’d be our head of state they also chose a woman in Quentin Bryce, so they’ve got a history of doing things like this. I mean most people would agree that our head of state shouldn’t be a woman unless shes’ the Queen and she had a pretty good go, so isn’t it time for a man?

Ok, ok, I’ll take my tongue firmly out of my cheek and say quite clearly that I don’t believe that the head of state should just be at the whim of the PM of the day…

Of course, it should be someone who can achieve the consensus of both of the major forces driving decisions in Australia: Rupert and Gina.

P.S. Is it true that Dutton has been staying at Gina’s place in WA so that he can work out an acceptable plan for the election?