AUKUS. This is a horror for which I now fear for the lives of my children and their children. Every time a Labor member of parliament or senator puts foot outside their office to appear in public, turns up at a public meeting, we need to ask them: why have you betrayed us? Why have Continue reading »
International Relations
The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress in October last year may be seen with the efflux of time as a watershed event, not so much for the extension of Xi Ping’s tenure in the job, but for subsequent sharp policy resets. This year began with the shock announcement that China’s zero covid policy, and Continue reading »
An open letter to the ABC, 22 March 2023. In a series of aggressions, Israel has been occupying Palestine from the river to the sea for over 74 years, by ethnically cleansing two-thirds of its people through over seventy massacres, killing and executing Palestinians daily (at least 89 Palestinians, including 16 children and a woman, Continue reading »
Our Defence Minister said that Australia has not given any guarantees to the USA about what we would do with our submarines in the case of war but would take our own decisions at the time. This is welcome but what are the implications? Does it only apply to the submarines? As always, the devil Continue reading »
The New York Times report of 8th March that ‘Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say’ elicited two sets of responses. The mainstream US media dutifully replicated the story without curiosity or challenge, carefully sidestepping questions of plausibility or context, and often, as with the Washington Post, managing to avoid mentioning the name Continue reading »
In February 2023, the number of asylum cases in Australia for the first time exceeded 100,000. Despite the intense attention on boat arrivals for the last decade, note that very few of these 100,000 asylum cases are boat arrivals. The bulk arrived during an intense period of labour trafficking of Malaysian and Chinese nationals from Continue reading »
The relentless drive to war against China goes on. There is no longer any pretence that China is in the US sights and so Australia is prepared to spend whatever it takes to prove its fealty to Washington. No military outlay is too much, no threat to our economic future too risky for the Australian Continue reading »
AUKUS has landed – well, sort of. At eye-watering cost over an extraordinary time frame, Australia is to host the rotation of US and UK submarines before it acquires three to five single-owner pre-loved Virginia class submarines as the pathway to participating in the British design and construction of an evolved Astute class submarines in Continue reading »
Little that was distinctive about Penny Wong’s foreign policy has survived the signing of the AUKUS agreement. In her first speech to DFAT staff she observed that the department had lost influence under the outgoing coalition administrations and she intended to bring it back to the centre of government. And here we are now with Continue reading »
Lest we forget the consequences, today we recall the great lie of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq which led to the smashing of that country and the slaughter of hundreds of thousand of innocent men, women and children. Peace Rally – Address, 18 March 2023 When the lie was revealed, our precious alliance with Continue reading »