Trump’s coal spruiker down under, campaigner for Trump at every opportunity, has transitioned with narcissistic chameleon aplomb into a new role, helping Australia become an unincorporated territory of the US.
Nancy Pelosi must have caught by osmosis some internationally circulating furphy that Scott Morrison follows normal protocols of respect when he tells you stuff about his policies, albeit even after French President Emmanuel Macron came to realise that he’d been taken for a ride by a skilled marketing cardsharp.
Apparently Morrison didn’t have much difficulty in persuading Pelosi that Australia was “leading the way (on climate change) and that’s what we all have to do”. According to Pelosi, Morrison told her that “we’re not only addressing the Paris Accords — our slogan is we meet it and we beat it”.
It all seems very odd really, given Pelosi’s long experience with political monsters like Trump and his crew, but then again she’s probably not paid much attention to Morrison’s soulmate relationship with Trump, and most likely it didn’t merit her consideration that the prime minister of Australia would play deceptive word games with her.
To put it another way, she could have been taken in by Morrison’s “transparency and loyalty” in agreeing to become China’s frontline of attack whenever and “forever” if necessary, and handing over so willingly US control of Australian defence and foreign policy decisions to the White House and Pentagon.
What a “pal” to take a main hit from China in every which way, from hurting Australian trade relationship with China for US benefit, allowing the US to fill the gap of Australian beef, wine and agriculture exports being scrapped, to being a better missile target than the US mainland or Hawaii. Not to mention the neat opportunities Australia has now handballed to the US and other nations in trade with France.
Meanwhile, the Australian mainstream media, now mainly a coalition of Coalition PR agencies, including the publicly funded ABC, is waxing lyrical about Morrison’s Washington “success”, lauding the notion that the “fella down under” has done a marvellous job in becoming a newly welcomed addition to Joe Biden’s best pals club.
Sure he has. The baseball caps have been binned. Suits and ties are now de rigueur. Morrison returns from his sojourn in Washington converted to Biden’s clean energy policy agenda. Trump’s coal spruiker down under, campaigner for Trump at every opportunity, has transitioned with narcissistic chameleon aplomb into a new role, so appropriate to the chief functionary of a subject-state, a useful tool in the almost completed process of Australia becoming an unincorporated territory of the US, akin to Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.
In reality, whether Australians prefer to ignore it, or gloss it as “alliance”, there can be no doubting that Morrison’s “forever partnership” means a wilful and deliberate final transfer of Australian defence and foreign policies to Washington. Peter Dutton and Marise Payne might as well transfer themselves from Canberra to an office in the Pentagon, while Morrison himself — like Tony Abbott before him — makes the occasional trip to pay his respects, dropping into the Murdoch headquarters on the way, to finalise approval for whatever’s up for signing.
Meanwhile, flushed with grandiose conceit at his own brilliance in convincing the world that what he says in no way directly contradicts what he does, Morrison announced, with a well-practised straight face, that Australia would host a climate summit in 2022 “about pulling together a very clear work program as to how clean energy supply chains can be built up”.
In full flight, the world’s greatest lover of coal went on to bluster, “We know that if we can support developing economies to embrace and use the technologies that achieve net-zero emissions, and see their economies grow and increase their jobs, that is not only wonderful for those economies and their peoples, but it also is good for Australia”.
No wonder he fooled Macron and Pelosi. Out-trumping Trump has now become Morrison’s standout rhetorical characteristic on the world stage, as well as at home.
After all, can anyone seriously believe that the man who had a secret family holiday in Hawaii during the height of the bushfire catastrophe, couldn’t organise protection of aged care residents in federally-run facilities against the pandemic, couldn’t be bothered to accept his constitutional responsibility for quarantine, couldn’t organise vaccine supplies when required and couldn’t manage the logistics of their distribution, has any capacity or competence whatsoever to put together a clean energy supply chain?
Who will he handball that operation to? He won’t be undertaking any leadership role at home on the matter. Australia under his administration has opposed all avenues to developing clean energy and meeting net-emission targets. Morrison’s rhetoric about his position and plans in relation to climate change are designed to cloak evasion from responsibility, just another smokescreen of the moment, a performance and a promise without substance.
Back home from Washington Morrison glowed about giving Australians a Christmas present, an emergence from lockdown. But he and his government won’t be doing any heavy lifting to make that happen. That will be the responsibility of others. The states will be responsible and Morrison will seek the credit. That is guaranteed.
Where will Morrison have his secret holidays this year? At home or somewhere abroad where the pandemic would prevent most other Australians from going? It won’t be France.
How about Puerto Rico? A good place to go to investigate the benefits of being an unincorporated territory of the US.
Peter Henning was an activist small farmer in Tasmania who opposed the building of Gunns’ pulp mill in Tasmania, and the destruction of water catchments and agricultural land by MIS monocultural agribusiness and the industrial pulpwood industry.
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