I hesitate to stray into the florid world of military strategists, senior public servants, cabinet ministers and assorted think tanks, but what on earth is going on with Australia’s so-called defence policy? The Albo government seems hellbent on turning Australia into a militarised outpost of the US whose ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific region has led Continue reading »
Economy
Wellington’s shift in defence policy abandons long-held neutrality, follows US’ anti-China stance. New Zealand has been increasingly bent on asserting a place in the United States-led ranks opposing China in the Asia-Pacific region, following in the footprints of Australia. In recent decades, New Zealand has cultivated a sense of pride in its “independent foreign policy”. Continue reading »
The consultancy-military-industrial complex continues to reveal its sinister nature as serious questions are raised over conflicts of interest in the tender process for KPMG’s $46 million REDSPICE contract with the Australian Signals Directorate. In recent reports, one of the big four consultancy firms has been implicated in a gross conflict of interest in advising and Continue reading »
The biggest enemy of AUKUS is not the resistance of ALP branches and unions but its own over-engineered grandiosity, its naive ambition. A vote wrung from a conference doesn’t deliver the cash for what is the biggest transfer of wealth outside this country in its history. The government places the cost between $268 billion and $368 Continue reading »
How ever did it come to this! It is familiar to all that Scott Morrison, Prime Minister and Minister for Everything at the time, pulled the AUKUS rabbit out of his Akubra as a wedge issue for the forthcoming 2022 Federal Election. It appears that he did so with only a small inner circle in Continue reading »
The federal Coalition’s dissenting report on a Senate inquiry into nuclear power claims that Australia’s “national security” would be put at risk by retaining federal legislation banning nuclear power and that the “decision to purchase nuclear submarines makes it imperative for Australia to drop its ban on nuclear energy.” The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Continue reading »
At this moment in the economic cycle the Chinese economy is stalling whilst the US is experiencing a buoyant phase. However, there is another angle to their strategic rivalry that is more important than ephemeral shifts. Viewed through a longer lens both China and the US have economic aces up their sleeve. Both possess a Continue reading »
There have been growing concerns among regulators about the potential misuse of sustainability-linked loans
Newspapers decry it; yet market-led inflation more broadly is tut-tutted away as a ‘sacred mystery’ central to a free and working capitalist system. Government mandated inflation however, which society must pay to maintain a balanced economy, does not please anyone. As more and more social and economic ‘data’ is captured in society, details of trends Continue reading »
The main contest between the US and China will play out in the economic arena. At the end of the day, the winner will be seen to be the country with a bigger economy. Editor’s Note: In his book, The Asian 21st Century, Kishore Mahbubani (Mahbubani), a former diplomat who served as Singapore’s permanent representative to Continue reading »