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?

By Denis Bright

In Australia’s motorized society, most householders still turn their ignition keys as a reflexive response to their transport needs. Transport black spots are particularly evident in outer metro districts of Brisbane and adjacent regional areas. These localities attract householders in search of more affordable housing prices and lower rents. There would be similar examples in the other states and territories. The examples from Queensland strengthen the case for similar campaigns interstate and are not meant to promote parochial agendas from the Deep North.

In Queensland, quite legitimate allocation of government financial support for integrated public transport still attracts only 6.2 percent of commuters on their journeys to work in Brisbane according to the latest estimates from Translink. Queensland Government subsidies cover 83 percent of the running costs of Translink services according to Michael Berkman, the state member for the inner western electorate of Maiwar. This electorate is well served by regular train, bus and Citycat river services within the Translink network. The transport available to outer metro and nearby regional areas does not offer similar luxurious transport infrastructure.

Even with the concessions available for Go Card use after eight journeys in a week, travel costs for commutes offset many of the savings from the selection of more distant residential addresses. It costs a notch under sixty dollars a week to travel by train from Karalee to Brisbane by making use of the extensive car-parking facilities at Dinmore Station, just a few kilometres away.

A bus trip from Karalee, Chuwar or Barellan Point by bus into Brisbane’s CBD could not be generated on Translink’s online journey planner. There are no bus services from Karalee or adjacent suburbs to by the road link through Karana Downs.

The outer metro suburb of Karalee is just across the Brisbane River from Moggill. There is no direct road link for cars or buses across the river. From Moggill, buses operate every fifteen minutes to the Brisbane CBD. Buses from the Ipswich area could operate a limited express service into the Brisbane CBD. Collapsing existing bus routes from Yamanto to Ipswich CBD then onto Karalee Turnoff, Karana Downs and into Brisbane CBD is also another possibility as a limited express service. Buses from Beaudesert and Logan City currently operate into the Brisbane CBD and are quite popular with commuters.

These logical options are bipartisan plans which are highly compatible with the Climate Council’s suggestions for sustainable transport. Political forces are at work to dampen commitments to integrated public transport. The results of the recent Ipswich West by-election on 16 March 2024, show how populist electioneering strategies with Tough on Crime Agendas can easily trump legitimate concerns about the environmental costs of a motorized society as presented in the latest carbon emissions data (Department of Climate Change: DCCEEW Emission Profiles 2005-30).

Planning controls on the clearing of forests and rural landscapes show up positively in controls on land clearing in this profile (LULUCF profiles).

Metro Brisbane has an extensive electrified rail system as part of the broader Translink network with supporting buses and frequent Citycat river services. The Cross River Rail Project (CRR) should be up and running by 2025 with additional support from the Brisbane Council’s Metro Bus System. However, for residents in outer metro areas and nearby regional areas like the Lockyer Valley, the costs and inconvenience of public transport combine to reinforce more private car use.

Public transport assets in SEQ are heavily invested in the electrified Queensland Rail Network which is supported by Translink buses, Citycat river services and light rail networks on the Gold Coast.

Translink supports bus services in regional areas through subsidies to urban networks and even regional commercial services beyond towns and cities.

By chance, even some regional bus networks are quite accessible to tourists who seek exotic destinations. This is the case with Trans North Buses in the Cairns Hinterland. Frequent travellers’ passes could add a hop-on and off dimensions to these routes for both locals and for tourists during the cooler months.

Despite the challenges imposed by the tyranny of distance to North-West Queensland, bus services do operate between Cairns and Normanton three times a week. A new tourist loop from Normanton to Burketown, Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) Gorge, Mt. Isa and Cloncurry could be added for the winter tourist season with the support of state government subsidies.

Transport-oriented projects (TODs) delivered by the corporate sector or even the Queensland Government’s own Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) might ease the financial burden on the state government for future co-investment in the extension of new transport and community development initiatives. 

While much of the QIC’s infrastructure and real estate portfolios are in Queensland or in other Australian locations, there are also lucrative investments in overseas locations. Capital gains from these ventures helped to generate $4.1 billion in profits using data from the latest annual report from QIC. The QIC has just sold its 50-year lease on CampusParc at Ohio State University which was purchased for $US 200 million in 2012 and just sold for $US 850 million (Bloomberg 7 March 2024).

Meanwhile, back in town, Translink’s kangaroo mascots have been talking up the value of affordable public transport.

The most logical option is to move towards free public transport within the Translink networks.

This would at least reduce dependence on the US corporate firm Cubic with its global networks for electronic fare collection and technological support for US Global Military Alliances.

Staying with commitment to integrated public transport is a worthwhile public policy. Those old-school commitments to unplanned urban sprawl will take decades of innovative planning to extinguish.

After the Super Tuesday results signalled Trump would become the Republican presidential candidate in November, a first promise was that “We’re going to drill baby drill.” One of the most important reasons to watch American politics this year is that a Trump victory will push the world faster towards catastrophic climate heating.

The global community is currently failing to meet this challenge. Petrostates have become the venue of choice for COP meetings, signalling governments accept that the forces of disruption will allow no interruption to their profits until the crunch. Whether that crunch is some technological breakthrough or the start of civilisational collapse remains to be determined.

We have, however, the global structures where the majority might choose to cooperate to steer the Titanic away from the iceberg.

If America finds itself governed by the Republican Party in 2025 the chances become very slim indeed. The GOP now consists of Tea Party disrupters and rank opportunists, all dedicated Trumpists. Fact-based policy is irrelevant. Antagonism towards climate concerns is intense, one aspect of the loathed “woke” threat they intend to destroy.

Project 2025 has been depicted, with caveats, as the game-plan that Trump’s government would follow as it did in 2017, when it enacted two-thirds of the earlier iteration. Trump himself has little interest in any project apart from his own revenge. A set of policies, structures and people that will effectively enact his vengeance will prove attractive if he wins.

Project 2025 is hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a preeminent Atlas Network thinktank. Heritage has consistently fought climate action adhering to the Network’s fossil-fuel donor’s goals. Its new Christian Nationalist president, Kevin Roberts, has made it more extreme. Heritage brought in key actors from Trump’s previous administration to run Project 2025 so that it would look duly MAGA, and not like an establishment body trying to hijack Trump’s victory. As a result, this is the most radical Roadmap in four decades of production. The 800 pages of the 2025 Mandate is the sum of work by 400 contributors with 50 thinktanks from the Atlas Network and the Christian Nationalist Council for National Policy cooperating. It represents the merged thinking of the Trump-complicit Right.

There will be no global action on climate, or any other goal: they are not so much isolationists as unilateralists who want to act unchecked by international bodies or allies. Robert’s introduction to the Mandate states that the Left’s “supranational organisations” seek a world “bound by global treaties they write, in which they exercise dictatorial powers over all nations without being subject to democratic accountability.” He demands that the next Republican administration will abandon “International organisations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty.”

This fossil fuel-funding is evident. Roberts enjoins that “The next conservative President should go beyond merely defending America’s energy interests but go on offence, asserting them around the world. America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth. American dominance of the global energy market would be a good thing: for the world, and, more importantly, for ‘we the people.” Environmentalism is depicted as “anti-human.” The overwhelming scientific evidence is meaningless. Roberts preaches: “‘Cheap grace’ aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptise liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”

Biden’s crucial Inflation Reduction Act which “unleashes at least hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies for renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, batteries, heat pumps, and more” is likely his most significant achievement. Repealing it has become a Republican obsession. Project 2025 aims to dismantle the American administrative state: all departmental action to constrain pollution would be under attack alongside laws.

Fossil fuel corporations have long shown that they cannot be trusted to act in our interests without government regulation. Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) goals which had pushed some companies to consider broader stakeholder wellbeing have fallen out of fashion. This is in part because they have been prone to cynical deployment, functioning as “greenwashing” rather than a driver of actual change.

More concerning, however, is that corporate interests have been directing campaigns to discredit ESG investing as “woke” and an intrusion on their corporate liberties. Sky News, like Fox News in the US, has campaigned against the attempt to introduce corporate morality. Rowan Dean, for example, railed against it as “just pure socialism being introduced through the back door.” The scope of plutocrat campaigns against morality in business was revealed in emails from an Atlas Network-interlinked junktank in America recently. It was not just the ability to act regardless of environmental considerations these corporations and plutocrat foundations were funding: it was also campaigns to free up child labour, even to strip healthcare and food support from America’s most desperate.

These “conservative” actors demand adherence to Milton Friedman’s “shareholder theory” that insisted a corporation’s sole concern must be to maximise returns to shareholders. Putin’s war on Ukraine has enabled huge profits for fossil fuel companies and they are being driven by “insistence from shareholders that companies keep record profits flowing and stick to their core business.” Thus Shell has become the latest company to announce that it has resiled from its zero carbon commitments, extending timelines and lifting limits.

Even the 2.5% of the global oil and gas industry’s capital spending currently investing in renewable energy is resented by shareholders. BP was threatened by a hedge fund for depressing its share price by this “irrational” spending.

Lacking any moral framework, this shareholder model demands government regulation to behave responsibly.

It is likely that a Trump victory at the end of this year will leave one of the world’s largest economies expanding its fossil fuel sector, cutting back every limit on carbon energy and stripping incentives promoting clean energy. Any regulation mitigating the immorality of shareholder capitalism will be stripped away. It is possible that China or India might step into a gap left on the global stage by America, but the damage to international cooperation will be extensive.

The world’s fate might rest on this election.

This essay was first published at Pearls and Irritations as A Republican victory in 2024 will be a climate disaster

Of course, any election will have various reasons for why a particular candidate or party won or lost. Therefore, what I write can only be taken as my opinion and may contain some bias.

So, how does one decide why a party won or lost? The facts will show that one party won because it got more votes than the other, or preferences played an important part. These are facts. Other than that, it is all assertion.

However, other reasons, of course, influence the result and are endless in their variety. They can only be considered views, and one has to consider the veracity of the statement, who is giving it and their qualifications or sentiments for doing so.

My own stab in the dark suggests that a large portion of the community rejects conservatism and its tactics of fear and scare. They have not yet forgiven the LNP for their deplorable governance over almost a decade since they were last in power. And might I add the absence of even the meekest of apologies? 

Morrison may have gone, but he has been replaced by Peter Dutton, who this cohort dislikes with a vengeance; they know his history and reject what he stands for. Come the election, if he continues in this vein of Trumpish negative politics, he will offend more people.

Writing for The Guardian, Paul Karp had thoughts dissimilar to mine, saying that “attack lines about a tax on cars can do real damage.” He pointed out that:

“Over on Sky, Peta Credlin said the bullish early results showed ‘the strategy’s right, the positioning is right.’ Of course, the strategy is to falsely claim that a fuel efficiency standard that will give Australians a choice of more efficient cars amounts to a tax. But, hey, there are votes in it.”

In my translation, she is saying that we need to use more lying bullshit if we are to win office.

“When the results soured for the Liberals and it became clear they would fall short, Credlin’s prescription was that the opposition needed ‘more of the same’ to go one better next time.”

When the dust had settled, and it was apparent that Labor had won, she said the Dunkley by-election result was a “wake-up” for the Albanese government, with the Liberal Party securing “the preconditions you need to start taking seats off Labor at a general election.”

As simple as it seems, people demand truth from their politicians. Lies about taxes on cars, the cost-of-living crisis, and immigration will continue with further embellishment.

Sussan Ley is a politician prone to bizarre comments regarding the Dunkley vote swing. She claimed that:

“… if the same swing occurred in the upcoming federal election, the Coalition would win 11 seats, which would be enough to form a government.”

However, it’s worth noting that by-elections differ from federal elections, and the results may not necessarily be replicated.

On Sky News, Pauline Hanson said:

“The turn is on against Labor because they can’t stand his lies – he goes back on his word – and he’s not a true leader for this nation.”

Writing in The Australian (paywalled) on the Monday after the by-election Robert Gottliebsen reckoned that: 

“With the right strategies, the Dunkley by-election was a poll the Drover’s Dog could have won for the Liberals.”

On ABC Insiders the next morning, David Speers interviewed Dan Tehan, the member for Wannan, who showed all the emotion of a politician who had won a momentous victory. The only problem was that they lost. It was something to see. 

I have some opinions from my Facebook friend Tim Leeder, who voiced the following comments. Tim is a citizen who takes a considerable interest in politics. He is candid, astute, and has a brilliant memory:

1. A liberal politician last night said a 3 to 4 per cent swing would put the libs back in government. Not true. It would not be enough. Swings are never uniform.
2. A former liberal staffer said (No name was mentioned.) They need to stress out. We are better at economic management. There needs to be a product difference between us and Labor.  
3. They also need to negate issues like climate change.
4. Former Victorian Premier Kennett was on the TV coverage last night saying people are waking up to Labor. They are hurting the middle class.  
5. The election is still 12 months away. I think, on balance, Labor will win, but in a minority government situation.
6. The swing was higher than the ordinary by-election swing against a government in its first term but not against a government overall. It was always a big ask. I suspect the result was about what was expected, depending on the final swing. If it is under 5 per cent, I think it is disappointing for the Liberal Party.
7. Labor got a sympathy vote. But I suspect the tax cuts issue saved the seat for them.
8. One view is that the Liberals did not vigorously contest Dunkley last time, so the margin increased to 6 per cent.
9. Libs have a real problem in Victoria; there is no doubt about that.
10. Greens’ vote went down. One view is that they were too concerned with Gaza, etc. Aussies don’t care. They do care about the cost of living.

Tim makes some better points than those in the Liberal Party and the media, for that matter. However, at this stage of the election cycle, like polls, we can only take these events as a snapshot of people’s thinking.

But how do the readers of this site see it at this stage of the cycle? Do you agree with the examples I have raised in this piece? What is your perception?

In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government in two jurisdictions across Australia, the (party political) Brisbane City Council and Tasmania. Before anyone scoffs at the Brisbane City Council, it is an amalgamation of around 20 shires and town councils that occurred in the 1920s Apart from managing the roads, rubbish and so on for most of the Brisbane urban area, it also operates a considerable component of South East Queensland bus network, has a significant part in the planning of South East Queensland with a budget and population larger than Tasmania’s.

In Brisbane, residents have two votes, one for a Councillor and one for the Lord Mayor. At the time of writing, the LNP’s Adrian Schrinner had received 48.58% of the vote, the ALP’s Tracey Price 26.40% of the vote and the Greens Johnathon Sriranganathan 19.40% of the vote. There are a couple of Independents as well as the Legalise Cannabis Party who account for the other 5% or thereabouts of the vote. So far, slightly over 703,000 votes have been counted. The Electoral Commission Queensland results page is here – should you want to see the current figures. Tellingly, there is no One Nation or Clive Palmer candidate to split the conservative vote.

On those figures, the ALP has a problem. While they can claim to be taking a ‘principled stand’ and not joining in a coalition of reasonably like minded people, the reality is that elections are a numbers game. The situation is even worse if you consider the individual votes in the ‘Wards’ that elect the Councillors that serve on the Brisbane City Council. The ABC’s Election Results show that rather than the traditional contest between the ALP and LNP, a lot of the contests are now LNP versus Greens. While the Greens may not have reached the tipping point on this occasion, it is likely that some of them will in four years time.

The Tasmanian State Election night finished with no one holding a majority of the seats required to form a government in their own right. While in February Premier Jeremy Rockliff was preaching the perils of minority government. He is likely to form one following the election. Especially telling was the ALP Leader, Rebecca White, saying on Election Night that she would attempt to form a minority government if Rockliff couldn’t, only to be walking the statement back on Sunday and resigning from the leadership by the middle of the following week. At the time of writing, the ALP could have formed a minority government based on the publicly available results. 

In both the Brisbane City and Tasmania Elections, if the ALP had been prepared to work with others, they could have stitched together a deal to effectively be in control of the two jurisdictions. While it is probably harder work to manage the differing views of the various members of a coalition in power, the views of the different members of a minority government make better decisions for all. The ALP minority Government with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister managed to be more productive in terms of legislation passed than any government since. Some of the achievements of the Gillard Government, such as the NDIS and an effective carbon pollution reduction program was leading edge at the time – only to be neutered by subsequent governments.

As an outsider, it seems that the ALP has similar problems to the Coalition. It is highly unlikely that the alternative political parties to the left and right of the ALP and LNP will be going away any time soon. The ALP is losing votes to the Greens and they aren’t necessarily returning just as the LNP is losing votes to One Nation and others to their right. While the ALP knows and understands how to attempt to entice voters from the LNP and seems to be actively pursuing the strategy, they are ignoring those that do want stronger emissions reduction targets, humanity to refugees, action on the cost of housing and rentals, a better funding system for public schools and so on. Instead the ALP is trying to ‘out-flank’ the LNP on cruelty to refugees and refusing to change the rules around religious and racial discrimination without the Coalition joining them on a ‘unity ticket’. The ‘unity ticket’ is just as likely as verified sightings of the Easter Bunny delivering presents on Easter Sunday.

While minority government may not necessarily be easy, or enable legislation to be passed without full consideration and consent of the respective parliament, arguably it is a better result for the community at large as more than one ideological group has to be convinced of the worth of the measure. Minority governments work in many countries around the world. In reality every Liberal Party Prime Minister and most Liberal Party Premiers in Australia since World War 2 have been the leaders of minority governments as the Liberal Party usually doesn’t have the numbers to ‘govern’ in their own right. A progressive minority government would be a far better result than a conservative Liberal/National Party ‘Coalition’ lead by Peter Dutton this time next year. Maybe that’s something the ALP and Greens party operatives should think about seriously.

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to it, notably when it comes to dealing with political charges? The record is not good, and the ongoing sadistic carnival that is the prosecution (and persecution) of Julian Assange continues to provide meat for the table.

Those supporting the WikiLeaks publisher, who faces extradition to the United States even as he remains scandalously confined and refused bail in Belmarsh Prison, had hoped for a clear decision from the UK High Court on March 26. Either they would reject leave to appeal the totality of his case, thereby setting the wheels of extradition into motion, or permit a full review, which would provide some relief. Instead, they got a recipe for purgatorial prolongation, a tormenting midway that grants the US government a possibility to make amends in seeking their quarry.

A sinking sense of repetition was evident. In December 2021, the High Court overturned the decision of the District Court Justice Vanessa Baraitser to bar extradition on the weight of certain assurances provided by the US government. Her judgment had been brutal to Assange in all respects but one: that extradition would imperil his life in the US penal system, largely due to his demonstrated suicidal ideation and inadequate facilities to cope with that risk.

With a school child’s gullibility – or a lawyer’s biting cynicism – the High Court judges accepted assurances from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that Assange would not face the crushing conditions of detention in the notorious ADX Florence facility or suffer the gagging restrictions euphemised as Special Administrative Measures. He would also receive the appropriate medical care that would alleviate his suicide risk and face the prospect of serving the balance of any sentence back in Australia. The refusal to look behind the mutability and fickle nature of such undertakings merely passed the judges by. The March 26 judgment is much in keeping with that tradition. 

The grounds for Assange’s team numbered nine in total entailing two parts. Some of these should be familiar to even the most generally acquainted reader. The first part, comprising seven grounds, argues that the decision to send the case to the Home Secretary was wrong for: ignoring the bar to extradition under the UK-US Extradition Treaty for political offences, for which Assange is being sought for; that his prosecution is for political opinions; that the extradition is incompatible with article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) noting that there should be no punishment without law; that the process is incompatible with article 10 of the ECHR protecting freedom of expression; that prejudice at trial would follow by reason of his non-US nationality; that the right to a fair trial, protected by article 6 of the ECHR, was not guaranteed; and that the extradition is incompatible with articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR (right to life, and prohibiting inhuman and degrading treatment).  

The second part of the application challenged the UK Home Secretary’s decision to approve the extradition, which should have been barred by the treaty between the UK and US, and on the grounds that there was “inadequate specialty/death penalty protection.”

In this gaggle of imposing, even damning arguments, the High Court was only moved by three arguments, leaving much of Baraitser’s reasons untouched. Assange’s legal team had established an arguable case that sending the case to the Home Secretary was wrong as he might be prejudiced at trial by reason of his nationality. Following from that “but only as a consequence of that”, extradition would be incompatible with free speech protections under article 10 of the ECHR. An arguable case against the Home Secretary’s decision could also be made as it was barred by inadequate specialty/death penalty protection.

What had taken place was a dramatic and savage pruning of a wholesome challenge to a political persecution garishly dressed in legal drag. On the issue of whether Assange was being prosecuted for his political opinions, the Court was happy to accept the woeful finding by Baraitser that he had not.  The judge was “entitled to reach that conclusion on the evidence before her, and on the unchallenged sworn evidence of the prosecutor (which refutes the applicant’s case).” While accepting the view that Assange “acted out of political conviction”, the extradition was not being made “on account of his political views.” Again, we see the judiciary avoid the facts staring at it: that the exposure of war crimes, atrocities, torture and various misdeeds of state are supposedly not political at all.

Baraitser’s assessment on the US Espionage Act of 1917, that cruel exemplar of war time that has become peacetime’s greater suppressor of leakers and whistleblowers, was also spared necessary laceration. The point missed in both her judgement and the latest High Court ruling is a seeming inability to accept that the Act is designed to circumvent constitutional protections, a point made from the outset by the brave Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette. 

On the issue of whether Assange would be denied due process in that he could not foresee being prosecuted for publishing classified documents in 2010, the view that US courts are “alive to the issues of vagueness and overbreadth in relation” to the Act misses the point. It hardly assures Assange that he would not be subject “to a real risk of a flagrant denial” of rights protected by article 7 of the ECHR, let alone the equivalent Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. 

The matter of Assange being denied a fair trial should have been obvious, evidenced by such prejudicial remarks by senior officials (that’s you Mike Pompeo) on his presumed guilt, tainted evidence, a potentially biased jury pool, and coercive plea bargaining. He could or would also be sentenced for conduct he had not been charged with “based on evidence he will not see and which may have been unlawfully obtained.” Instead, Baraitser’s negative finding was spared its deserved flaying. “We, like the judge, consider the article 6 objections raised by the applicants have no arguable merit, from which it follows that it is not arguable that his extradition would give rise to a flagrant denial of his fair trial rights.”

Of enormous, distorting significance was the refusal by the High Court to accept “fresh evidence” such as the Yahoo News article from September 2021 outlining the views of intelligence officials on the possible kidnapping and even assassination of Assange. To this could be added a statement from US attorney Joshua Dratel who pertinently argued that designating WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” was intended “to place [the applicant] outside any cognizable legal framework that might protect them from the US actions based on purported ‘national security’ imperatives.”

A signed witness statement also confirmed that UC Global, the Spanish security firm charged by the CIA to conduct surveillance of Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, had means to provide important information for “options on how to assassinate” Assange.

Instead of considering the material placed before them as validating a threat to Assange’s right to life, or the prospect of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the High Court justices speculated what Baraitser would have done if she had seen it. Imaginatively, if inexplicably, the judges accepted her finding that the conduct by the CIA and UC Global regarding the Ecuadorian embassy had no link with the extradition proceedings. With jaw dropping incredulity, the judges reasoned that the murderous, brutal rationale for dealing with Assange contemplated by the US intelligence services “is removed if the applicant is extradited.” In a fit of true Orwellian reasoning, Assange’s safety would be guaranteed the moment he was placed in the custody of his would-be abductors and murderers.

The High Court was also generous enough to do the homework for the US government by reiterating the position taken by their brother judges in the 2021 decision. Concerns about Assange’s mistreatment would be alleviated by granting “assurances (that the applicant is permitted to rely on the First Amendment, that the applicant is not prejudiced at trial (including sentence) by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same First Amendment protection as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty not be imposed).” Such a request is absurd for presuming, not only that the prosecutors can be held to their word, but that a US court would feel inclined to accept the application of the First Amendment, let alone abide by requested sentencing requirements.

The US government has been given till April 16 to file assurances addressing the three grounds, with further written submissions in response to be filed by April 30 by Assange’s team, and May 14 by the Home Secretary. Another leave of appeal will be entertained on May 20. If the DOJ does not provide any assurances, then leave to appeal will be granted. The accretions of obscenity in the Assange saga are set to continue.