If someone had said at the start of the year I would be going to China, Gough Whitlam’s aide Graham Freudenberg recalled, I would have said going to the moon would be more likely.
“So what’s the plan?” asked an investor after I had spoken at the Lonsec Symposium about Australia-China relations. Days earlier, Defence Minister Peter Dutton talked war over the Taiwan Strait. His former department head said our “warriors” were ready to go fight. (more…)
In past upheavals, Americans at least all shared the same news. Now there is an apartheid of the national spirit that is creating deeper divisions than ever…If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness? (more…)
Australia’s leaders are playing with climate policy, pitching a nationalist and populist message to their base. (more…)
Systemic voter suppression and rules still being set for an election within days – this is American exceptionalism.
In the 50s the head of CIA counterintelligence James Angleton said Russian stratagems were like “a wilderness of mirrors”. The same phrase captures the maze of the US constitutional and electoral system, a wilderness of mirrors that can warp, even falsify, the choice of voters on November 3.
It took one lunch with George W. Bush in 2001 for John Howard to agree to dropping ratification of Kyoto, without a word to his ministers. We became the president’s closest friend in resisting climate change.
Australia may be sailing perilously close to being cast by Biden’s team with other climate resisters Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
The Morrison government’s post-Covid recovery commission has called for an astonishing level of support for a declining carbon fuel.
“Don’t sell your soul for a pile of soybeans,” warned US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a year ago, when Australian foreign affairs and defence ministers met their United States counterparts. (more…)
Australia’s recovery will be driven by gas says the prime minister. A task force headed by Andrew Liveris- a business figure with career doused in carbon- recommends subsidies to ramp up the industry.
The best reading on the state of Australia-China relations is in documents we can’t see. That is, in the cables sent from Canberra to their capitals by ambassadors of Asian nations. (more…)
Can we deal with a pandemic and global warming at once – both urgent, one an immediate hit, the other a decade-long burn? Well, yes, because – even with front pages dominated by COVID-19 – last month saw an astonishing concentration of decisions by international corporates to ditch carbon. And they slipped by, with the world looking the other way.
Pearls & Irritations is unique, indispensable, provocative and refreshing. It really does make a difference. (more…)
The Canberra hawks hope that our tough stance on China will encourage US resolve. But that underestimates the flightiness of Donald Trump. (more…)
Bob Carr Tribute to Paul Whelan October 31, 2019.
Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr paid tribute to his Police Minister Paul Whelan for his achievement in implementing the Wood Royal Commission recommendations to reform policing in NSW. (more…)
The Syrian Kurds were more than allies. They were a US client, recruited by the Obama administration for house-to-house combat against the Islamic State caliphate. This America, however, cares little for core relationships and sweeps them aside. The decision shatters the US reputation in Arab states already doubting the reliability of Trump’s pro-Sunni gestures.
But this abandonment of a good friend will not go unnoticed in Asia. (more…)
The speech arrived on the Premier’s desk already clipped into the black leather folder. Did my staff realise that coming from the pen of the master and being a speech of welcome to a US President I would be disinclined to change a word? If so, their instincts were right. Two weeks after Bill Clinton in 1996 had been re-elected as President he and Hillary were in Sydney and without effort or fanfare- or even a word with me- Graham Freudenberg served up eight paragraphs that met the occasion of an official welcome speech with grace and historical resonance. (more…)
Between 2012 and 2030, China will add 850 million people to its middle class. This is unprecedented in human history, even exceeding the numbers of the European, North American and Japanese industrial revolutions. It is the biggest rolling back of poverty within any nation. China deserves to be taken seriously and have its international personality assessed on available evidence, not framed in advance as something inherently disruptive. (more…)
In a contribution to Pearls and Irritations published on April 16 I took up a point made by Gareth Evans who argued in March that “in Australia a new form of Sinophobia is emerging.” He said this was one of the reasons Chinese-Australians are underrepresented in senior leadership. (more…)
Australia sticking its neck out for the US on the issue of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei will not stop America from striking a trade deal with China that could result in Australian exports suffering
| A new burst of messaging on China Panic has been unleashed by Four Corners and newspapers, again giving the impression that hostile forces are threatening Australia. Last month former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans noted “a new form of Sinophobia is emerging.” He said this is one of the reasons Chinese-Australians are underrepresented in senior leadership. (more…) |
The ban on Huawei itself isn’t the problem, but the way that some arms of the government rubbed China’s face in it. (more…)
Why in a sports-mad nation, with football as an overarching religion divided into different denominations, has the promise of two new stadiums been such a vote loser? (more…)
If Gladys Berejiklian wants something as much as a day without stadiums, it is one without a mass fish kill. (more…)
The letter was in the bulging file marked ‘Premier’s Invites’. The invitation was to an annual dinner where a peace prize was presented to a person chosen by the Sydney Peace Foundation at Sydney University. This year they had decided to present the award to Hanan Ashrawi. I knew her from CNN and had been impressed by her dignity. (more…)
That the mob always gets it right is cornerstone wisdom of Australian politics, often confirmed by polling that shows the public’s deeply rooted common sense. (more…)
Imagine the crucial byelection had not been in Wentworth but in another Sydney electorate, Barton. Instead of a 12 per cent Jewish population, it is one with a 34 per cent Chinese population. And imagine that, in the context of this byelection and after lobbying by the Chinese community, the federal government had announced it was considering a shift in Australia’s position on the South China Sea. Perhaps by way of an article in a Chinese language paper. (more…)
Alexander Downer chewed ruminatively on his steak: “If you want a cold war with China, you will get a cold war with China.” (more…)
The letter was in the bulging file marked ‘Premier’s Invites’. The invitation was to an annual dinner where a peace prize was presented to a person chosen by the Sydney Peace Foundation at Sydney University. This year they had decided to present the award to Hanan Ashrawi. I knew her from CNN and had been impressed by her dignity. (more…)