AUKUS
-
Beijing and Canberra should go with the grain of their improving relations
Based on its review of “the changes in the Chinese barley market” that it started in April this year, the Commerce Ministry on Saturday lifted the anti-dumping and countervailing duties it levied on imported Australian barley from May 2020. Continue reading »
-
AUKUS, Australian foreign policy, Defence and Security, Government, International relations, Politics
Vale sovereignty “Combines Intelligence Centre – Australia”
In his recent comprehensive P&I article ( “Abandoned sovereignty: Australia’s intelligence function colonised by US”) Mike Scrafton has raised serious concerns about Defence Minister Marles’ announcement at the recent AUSMIN talks of the creation of “Combined Intelligence Centre – Australia” within our Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) by 2024. Continue reading »
-
AUSMIN death knell for diplomacy
The AUSMIN talks confirmed Australia’s status as a client state of the United States. Its shift has taken years but this is a significant change from the previous status of a friend, or ally, because it hands a significant slice of Australian sovereignty to a foreign power. The degree of military integration foreshadowed by Secretary Continue reading »
-
The ASPI interference machine: China is everywhere
It’s hard to credit, but the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) continues its incessant grumbling about forms of interference across a number of areas of Australian political and economic debate. What stands out in this method of noisy declaration is the tactic of sidelining legitimate public debate. Such interference supposedly impairs the credibility of the Continue reading »
-
AUKUS dissent has ALP power-brokers worried
Over twenty ALP branches around Australia have now passed anti-AUKUS resolutions and the list is growing by the day. Continue reading »
-
Why does the Australian Government fear dissent on AUKUS and Palestine?
Desperate to present a united front at the forthcoming Labor conference in Brisbane, the Albanese government looks to prevent delegates voting on the merits of the AUKUS alliance and for recognition of Palestine as a state. On two crucial issues, dissent is feared. An opportunity for informed debate will be lost. Toeing a party line Continue reading »
-
Unlike Indonesia we are outsourcing our defence to a foreign power
Did colonialism ever die? Distant major powers are making life-and-death decisions that will impact Indonesia, ironically on the eve of the Republic’s 17 August national day celebrating Soekarno’s 1945 proclamation of independence from three centuries of Dutch rule. Continue reading »
-
The VVV — Vietnam Veterans’ Vigil, 3 August 2023
The 3 August Vietnam Veterans’ Vigil (VVV) is separate from the 18 August government-sponsored Commemorative Service on Vietnam Veterans’ Day. Continue reading »
-
The United States has put Australia back in its place … again
After a rather extraordinary month of steadily escalating defence PR and conspiracy opportunities, Australia was sat on its backside over the weekend and reminded to know its subservient place. Continue reading »
-
Australia should forge closer relations with China
Under the Labor party governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard between 2007 and 2013, Australia succeeded in anchoring its relations with China on mutually beneficial grounds. Continue reading »
-
AUKUS, Australia and the drive to war
My fear is not that AUKUS SSNs, if they arrive, will be late, ineffective, and obsolete. My fear is that they will arrive and will be effective and even lethal. Because, if that is the case, they will play a part in the drive to a potentially devastating war with China that would be a Continue reading »
-
Kits for killing: AUKUS goes to school
While Australians pride themselves, for the most part, in having stricter gun laws than most and not being warlike in disposition, their governing officials have increasingly thought otherwise. War drums are beating. The chatter about acquiring and building armaments is getting more frenzied. As a client state of the US imperium, firmly enmeshed in the Continue reading »
-
Australian media’s alarm over Chinese spy ship highlights stark double-standard
The mainstream media has once more tried to generate alarm about the presence of two relatively innocuous Chinese electronic spy ships in international waters during the latest biennial Talisman Sabre military exercise spread across the Australian mainland and offshore oceans. It involves 30,000 troops from 13 countries. Although the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi had Continue reading »
-
Avoiding the same fate: Political Polarisation in the US – Part 5
Australia must carefully monitor US domestic developments as a barometer of longer term risks to the reliability of our “great and powerful friend”, and to avoid being drawn into a US war against China. But the biggest lesson from the political polarisation in the US is that it is better to have lower overall economic Continue reading »
-
Are we on a path to war with China? An interview with David Shoebridge
“One of the most extraordinary moments in politics in the last five years has been watching Anthony Albanese, notionally from the left of Labour, adopt, without any internal democracy within the Labor Party, without any public investigation of it, adopt wholeheartedly Scott Morrison’s AUKUS plans… It’s perhaps one of the most extraordinary betrayals of the Continue reading »
-
Campbell’s AUKUS appointment was probably justified
Criticism of Kathryn Campbell’s appointment a year ago to a $900,000 a year job to assist with implementation of the AUKUS agreement is mostly based on hindsight following the adverse comments about her performance in DHS and DSS by the Robodebt Royal Commission. To be fair to those who made that decision, it is important Continue reading »
-
Australia – an international nuclear wasteland?
The spectre of an international nuclear waste dump in Australia hangs over AUKUS and what this secretive agreement commits Australia to. Does it oblige us simply to dispose of spent nuclear reactors from our submarines if and when we get them? Or is there a hidden agenda whereby we also take the expired nuclear reactors Continue reading »
-
What have you done for US lately?
If Albanese is such a buddy of Biden’s, why is Assange still in jail? Especially after our titanic strategic favours. Continue reading »
-
Stop dissembling: International Climate Emergency Mobilisation is essential – now
Whilst some incremental progress has been made following the 2022 change of Federal government, evidence confirms that both main political parties lack the imagination, courage and leadership to adequately address climate change. Continue reading »
-
Seven deadly sins in the Defence industry
If previous defence acquisitions are any guide, the enormous cost of nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy will almost certainly escalate well beyond the estimated but un-itemised initial price of $A368 billion. The record of corruption of the two US submarine builders suggests that the project will also probably suffer from mismanagement. The final Continue reading »
-
Leaders still long to entice Nato Eastward
From Vilnius, Lithuania, NATO cast its eyes east to the Ukraine. For the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, there was a desire to look even further east beyond the Ukraine. He, some NATO members and invited guests, remain undeterred in their desire to bring NATO into Asia. Continue reading »
-
The USS Canberra: A crass PR stunt
The commissioning of the new USS Canberra in Sydney amid accompanying fanfare and blanket Australian media coverage provided ample testimony to the extent that we are increasingly being taken for granted by the US civil and military leadership. Continue reading »
-
AUKUS dissent won’t prevail at ALP conference
An attempt by a branch of the ACT Labor Party to protest the tripartite AUKUS security pact was blocked over the weekend in what members believe is a consequence of Anthony Albanese wanting to quell dissent on the issue, writes Phillip Coorey in the Australian Financial Review Continue reading »
-
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Korean War – lest we forget
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The ‘end’ of the Korean War. Two anniversaries that almost intersect. At the end of WWII, a new order was imposed on the world. Today, as those anniversaries are marked, there is little to celebrate. Continue reading »
-
Australian War Memorial – Leave those kids alone
Any activity trying to create an inherent ‘goodness’ about engaging in warfare is in no way an admirable activity. Creating game-play interactives of real-life devastation of civilians that invite children to ‘compete’ is reprehensible. Doing so with no realistic acknowledgement of the human cost is utterly, deeply contemptible. Continue reading »
-
Will Port Adelaide, Fremantle or Port Kembla be the Australian Chernobyl?
While most discussion of the AUKUS Agreement has focussed on the geopolitical implications for Australia’s standing in the world, the escalation of the risk of war and the crippling cost of the nuclear submarine purchases when less expensive and more sensible non-nuclear options are available, little has been said of the risk to the civilian Continue reading »
-
Robo Debt shows we need an Independent Inquiry into AUKUS
The Royal Commission into Robo-debt has provided significant insights into how a cavalier government can ignore fundamental processes of good governance by ignoring accepted standards of decision making to pursue its ideological agenda. Continue reading »
-
Paternal Western interference in Solomon Islands drives Honiara towards China
In the last few years, Australian and US foreign policy toward the Pacific has been framed as a benign influence, couched in money terms, offers and suasion. But in such offers comes that bit of intrusive steel, a less than subtle threat that gravitating into the orbit of another power, most notably China, will come Continue reading »
-
Ukraine: Putin’s war or proxy war?
The claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a proxy war is not borne out by recent history, nor supported by Russian democrats, Ukrainians of all stripes nor most Western Russia specialists. They mostly see its roots in an authoritarian Russian state and the revanchist views of Putin and his acolytes. Continue reading »
-
An Australian battery Industry, or a dodgy AUKUS scam?
Australia is now at a key point in our Defence major project acquisitions planning. We are looking at a very dodgy AUKUS scam which will be the driver of our largest ever Defence expenditure. Brian Toohey in this publication recently pointed out some of the serious problems of buying obsolete 2nd hand nuclear submarines from Continue reading »
