Letter

In response to The US has changed. Australia hasn’t. It’s time to talk about where the relation

Australia is moving away from US

Bruce Wolpe needs to catch up. Many Australians realised some time ago that Australia needs to distance ourselves from the US. The US has become unreliable and fickle. It is not just Paul Keating saying that we need to engage more with Asia. Take notice of the reader comments in mainstream papers plus in various podcast and you will see that that is exactly what is already happening.

One comment that is becoming more persistent is that Australia should revisit AUKUS with a view to considering an alternative. There is a strong view that AUKUS is not the direction that Australia should go to become more self-reliant and independent from the present policy of integration into the US defence forces.

This also means government being more transparent in defence matters unlike AUKUS, which was, and still is, totally opaque.

Perhaps it is time for Wolpe to catch up because the talk of changing the relationship with the US has been going on for some time. The country looks a bit different when you get out of the United States Studies Centre.

— Peter Sheehy from Blackheath NSW