We know little of the views of Teals on foreign and strategic issues. There are some big issues coming, on which they will need to focus. At the 2022 elections for the Australian parliament a new phenomenon was evident. A group of female candidates stood in conservative electorates with core concerns about climate change and Continue reading »
International Relations
The Order of Australia system is a bunyip aristocracy that reflects the hierarchies of British society in which the high and mighty get the cream and others are left with the skimmed milk. Just before the country slipped into its raucous celebrations for Australia Day last month, Mr David Hardaker served up in Crikey a Continue reading »
Surely the Australian people are entitled to an explanation as to why in December last year the government voted against an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. On 30 December a vote was taken in the UN General Assembly whereby the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was Continue reading »
The western sanctions weapon is not new to Syria, but since 2019 it has become a lethal one, destroying entire Syrian sectors and killing its people. First published in The Cradle February 6, 2023 Some 83 years after being employed against Germany in 1940, economic sanctions have become the most widely-used tool in Washington’s arsenal Continue reading »
Labor came to office last May, replacing a government that had steered Australia’s relationship with the United States to new heights of servility. Our ties with China were in tatters. Many had hoped that the change of government would usher in a shift to a more imaginative and less subservient foreign policy. Nine months later Continue reading »
Secrets make us paranoid. We should do away with secrets and spies and become a truly open society. We have become so obsessed with the so-called ‘China threat’ that our fears are now totally irrational. The decision by the USA to shoot down a Chinese balloon might have had a strange logic to it, but Continue reading »
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a story Wednesday alleging that the United States was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system last year, citing a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” The Biden White House adamantly denied the veteran investigative journalist’s reporting, calling it “complete fiction.” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative Continue reading »
Foreign Minister Penny Wong invoked the power of shared colonial histories in a speech during her recent visit to the United Kingdom. The statement was clearly carefully prepared and framed but, judging from her recorded comments, it seems that she has not thought through the implications of the adoption of radical post-colonial diplomacy. Rather, she Continue reading »
Three years into the Covid -19 pandemic the many weaknesses and disconnections within the jurisdictional decision-making arrangements are clear. These fault lines significantly impair our national capacity to reliably detect and respond to this ongoing outbreak in a timely, effective and efficient manner. We urgently need to develop integrated national and international responses to disease Continue reading »
In Ukraine and in other parts of the world, Western violence and supremacy has been abetted by its educated more than any other group. This has been clear for the history of the British Empire, one of the most violent to traverse the globe along with its offspring; even the warmongering and provocations of the Continue reading »