Category: Politics

“I urged your predecessor [Malcolm Turnbull] repeatedly to honor his commitment to clean energy. From where we are sitting, we cannot imagine how the interests of any single industry can be placed above the welfare of Pacific peoples and vulnerable people in the world over.

“Consensus from the scientific community is clear and the existential threat posed to Pacific island countries is certain,” Bainimarama said. Pacific island nations are on a precarious front-line of the climate change debate as rising sea levels sink portions of their land masses and wreak havoc on their coastlines. (more…)

Imagine if almost six per cent of the Coalition reckoned they’d lose their seats at the next election so switch to Labor. 

Chances are they wouldn’t be piped aboard, as ship jumpers are not favoured in Australian politics, distrusted by the party they betrayed and the one where they seek to stowaway.   (more…)

Today is supposed to be historic, one of the most epic moments in the long life of the Westminster parliament. So why does it not feel like that? The tabling by a British prime minister of an agreement on the terms of withdrawal from the European Union ought to feel much bigger than this. Some of the reasons are obvious enough: the sheer tedium of the journey; the tragicomic chaos that undermines the desired solemnity; the lack of any great drama attaching to the immediate outcome of the vote; the knowledge that this decisive moment will in reality decide nothing.   (more…)

As the Brexit chaos continues, it is worth reflecting on the background that led Britain to where it is today – with no ending in sight. The root cause lays in how the Westminster system is failing to serve the people.

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The president’s desire to disentangle the country from costly overseas conflicts must be encouraged. (more…)

In the frequent denunciations of Huawei and ZTE the inference is that these Chinese corporations are existing, or potential espionage agents of the Beijing Government and a threat to all who have been foolish enough to acquire their products.  These threats, moreover, are held to be of a type that are politically, legally and ethically enjoined by the Five Eyes community and it is these axiomatic principles which distinguish it from others less scrupulous. To believe this requires a deposition of the type of religious faith which Voltaire saw resulting from the first knave’s encounter with the first fool. An examination of three propositions might suffice to indicate that Five Eyes’ protection involves a preference for an intra-alliance schedule of threats, costs and risk, which are never made explicit over another schedule of an external nature, not the absence of threats.   (more…)

Last January, the Doomsday Clock was moved to two minutes to midnight — the closest it has ever been, matching the acute sense of crisis of 1953. The primary explanation for the heightened threat alert was disturbing developments in the nuclear realm.

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Claims about western values usually include praise for the freedom enjoyed through governments’ respect for freedom of speech. Yet, even in democratic states, those principles are being treated as outmoded, not least in regard to criticism of Israeli policies towards Palestinians. Other countries also ride roughshod over freedom of speech. Control of the media and suppression of dissent is spreading like wildfire in Sudan, Serbia, Hungary, China, Russia, Egypt, India and elsewhere. Reference to the disregard of free speech in these other countries needs to be made in anticipation of the response, ‘When examining human rights abuses, why single out Israel?’  I am doing so because widening interpretations of anti-Semitism, designed to protect Israeli policies from scrutiny, represent a serious challenge to western commitments to freedom of speech. (more…)

According to a recent assessment Australia is the world’s 11^th most vulnerable country in terms of its exposure to internet security threat.  This is the general case.  The particular case, articulated by the Five Eyes signals intelligence agencies, is that China is to be feared the most because Huawei, the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, and ZTE, China’s second largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, are both attractive suppliers technologically speaking, and a definite national security risk because they cannot conceivably be regarded as independent of the Chinese Government.   (more…)

Washington’s policymakers at last understand that China is a serious strategic rival. For the first time since the Soviet collapse, they recognise that a major country is trying to expand its power and influence at the expense of US global leadership. (more…)

President Trump’s characterisation of asylum seekers from Mexico as illegal criminals and rapists threatening American citizens is a cynical distortion of reality. Drug runners and criminals both from Mexico into the United States and vice versa represent a tiny fraction of the flow of one million people who legally cross between the two countries every day to work, shop or visit relatives. A much larger proportion of criminals, from many origins, enter the United States by air.   (more…)