Let’s call it the “China syndrome”. This describes a condition that is a bit compulsive and not always rational.
Australia’s response to China’s continuing rise mixes anxiety, even a touch of paranoia, with anticipation of the riches that derive from the sale of vast quantities of commodities.
Economic dependence on China is two-edged and potentially policy-distorting. (more…)
The annual meeting of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum – dubbed as “Russia’s Davos” – on May 25, which traditionally promotes foreign investment in the Russian economy, ended this time around as a major political event signaling a renewed bid by President Vladimir Putin for détente with the West. (more…)
How do you plan a high-stakes meeting between a freewheeling American president and a paranoid Asian dictator? The world is about to find out. As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, officials from both countries are working overtime to prepare for aJune 12 nuclear summit in Singapore. The event is unprecedented: A sitting U.S. president has never met with his North Korean counterpart. Kim had never even met with a fellow head of state before a March visit to Beijing. In theory, traditional diplomatic protocols will apply. In reality, anything could happen. Here’s a look at some of the issues organizers are grappling with as they scramble to arrange this extraordinary meeting:
Freda Whitlam, a formidable educator and church leader, was principal of a prominent Sydney private girls school, helped establish the University of Western Sydney and the University of the Third Age, and became Moderator of the Uniting Church of Australia. She died on Wednesday, May 30, at the age of 97.
Like the leaves of a diseased and dying tree, the One Nation senators continue to fall. (more…)
In a remarkable and somewhat unprecedented rebuke of the US administration, India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has announced that India will not respect unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran and will recognize “only the UN sanctions.” Bound to raise tensions with Washington, India’s brave decision reflects both India’s political evolution and the primacy of her own national interests. It’s also another setback for the White House’s hawkish anti-Iran policy, which has already alienated key European allies who are struggling to preserve the Iran nuclear deal without the United States by offering Iran a package of incentives in the near future. Adding real bite to her major policy announcement, Swaraj then went on to meet Iran’s visiting Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is seeking to shore up global sanctions-busting support through a flurry of diplomatic trips. (more…)
Waves of foreign investment and trade have been essential features of Australian development since 1788. The waves began with the UK, then the US, then Japan and now China. In each of these waves the Australian government has consistently managed the economic and strategic ties that were involved, despite difficulties from time to time . In our burgeoning relationship with China, we have for the first time an agency of the Australian government deliberately doing damage to our major trading partner. (more…)
We have had enough of Barnaby, and it is obvious that his own colleagues have too. The sooner he retires to his fractured love nest the better. (more…)
auDA – the organisation charged with managing the Internet domain name space on behalf of the federal government – is currently undergoing a review of its operations. As we approach a Special General Meeting to be held on 21 July 2018 I decided to throw a few pertinent questions at CEO Cameron Boardman. As I’ve previously written, I simply can’t see how any further public displays of disunity are helping the situation, but it is also important that we decide the future of the organisation based on facts. (more…)
Scorching report on poverty finds ‘systematic attack on welfare program’ will leave millions deprived of food and healthcare. (more…)
The country’s most right-wing government since Mussolini is determined to test the euro’s limits. (more…)
New figures show that government funding increases have massively favoured private schools over public schools across Australia since 2009. Total government funding per student in public schools was cut between 2009 and 2016 while large funding increases were provided to Catholic and Independent schools. Even during the Gonski funding period of 2013-2016 funding increases for private schools far outstripped the increase for public schools.
The Productivity Commission’s recommendation that all superannuation funds have an independent chairman and board seems reasonable, yet industry funds are vehemently opposed to it. Meanwhile the industry funds, on average, clearly outperform their retail opposition, but the Liberal Party has been explicit in its desire to undermine them and lift the retail funds’ market share. (more…)
The debate over foreign influence in our domestic politics and policymaking is an important one for our country – too important for political point-scoring and manipulation by vested interests and political vendettas. (more…)
If the Cuban Missile Crisis is any indication, today’s leaders may be dangerously misinformed about the nuclear crisis.
By crushing us Europeanist Greeks in 2015, Germany sowed the seeds of a bitter harvest: an Italy that might leave the EU. One of the most common mistakes European leaders make in interpreting US President Donald Trump’s hostility toward America’s traditional allies, or the alacrity of his administration’s efforts to blow up the international order, is to assume that all of this is unprecedented. Nothing could be further from the truth.
PUTRAJAYA: Wan Azizah Wan Ismail’s childhood ambition was to become a doctor and cure disease. Now that she is Malaysia’s most powerful female politician, she says her mission is to improve women’s rights. (more…)
Australia’s China policy is flawed. Diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing are strained, to the extent that Australia’s prime minister and foreign minister have not been welcome to visit the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Yet at a time when Australian leaders have been frozen out, leaders from countries experiencing far more serious issues with the PRC than Australia have been visiting Beijing. The poor state of the relationship is a result not so much of what Australia has done as what Australia has said and signalled.
The United States has a China problem—and pundits and politicians are making it worse. China is an increasing problem for the United States. But the latest reactions and assumptions about China among America’s political-media leadership class hold every prospect of making China-related problems much worse. How can this be? It involves the familiar tension between short-term political shrewdness and longer-term strategic wisdom. (more…)
The democratic contract is broken. The freedom of Australians to go about their daily lives without being watched by their government has vanished with barely a whisper of protest. (more…)
The “pre-negotiation process” going on between the US and North Korea is volatile and opaque, but a few points seem to have emerged.
James Bond novels used to feature a sinister Soviet organisation called SMERSH—short for “Death to Spies” in Russian. The twists and reversals in the process that may lead to a Trump-Kim summit have been so extreme that they could be called “Death to Forecasters”, or commentators. But a few points can be made. (more…)
Iranian president to be hosted in Qingdao next month as Beijing and Moscow-led bloc looks to protect business interests. As European companies react with trepidation to the Trump administration’s efforts to blow up the Iran nuclear deal, pulling out of business deals in the face of looming sanctions, Chinese and Russian firms wait in the wings.
When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the creation of the massive new Home Affairs portfolio in July last year, he called it “the most significant reform of Australia’s national intelligence and domestic security arrangements — and their oversight — in more than forty years”. (more…)
President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to run away from a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should not be a surprise to anyone. The White House is encouraging the notion that China’s Xi Jinping is to blame for souring the notion of a U.S.-North Korean summit and for toughening Kim Jong Un’s negotiating position, and the mainstream media is doing its predictable best to validate such a self-serving explanation. In actual fact, the Trump administration was never prepared to discuss any issue that resembled arms control and disarmament, and national security adviser John Bolton, the formidable chairman of the new “war cabinet,” was never agreeable to the idea of U.S.-North Korean diplomacy.
President Obama had to put a ‘gag order’ on Admiral Harris because of his anti China attitude. Harris was initially slotted to be the next US Ambassador to Australia (more…)
Our understanding that the Mayans and other civilizations once used human sacrifice in their ritual observances sits and contrasts uncomfortably with our sense of civilization. Apart from written history, we have access to more visceral experience of the horror: Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” depicts both the individual impact, and the larger scale trauma of the practice. Who, having seen it, can forget the scene of the terrified hero of the movie stumbling across a valley of literally heartless corpses, sacrificed to appease the angry gods? (more…)
This is a government run on announceables.
Even without the Budget blizzard, so far in 2018 we have had major announcements on everything from the so-called Gonski 2.0 education reforms, the establishment of an Australian arms industry to compete internationally, and an investigation into the practices of Public Service. (more…)
As if the Public Service did not have enough pressure placed on it – over the past three decades it has been politicized, it has been continually downsized and its professionalism has been called into question by an homogenous collection of party hacks, consultants and lobbyists, perhaps picking up on a long-standing public disdain for the efficiency of public servants. If this is not enough, it is now under attack from John Lloyd, Commissioner, Australian Public Service Commission, and at times an IPA member. (more…)
The giant Pine Gap intelligence and military base outside Alice Springs consumes a great deal of electricity to operate its intelligence-gathering and analysis operations.
It now appears that the Turnbull government’s rejection of a $25 bn. bid for the NSW-government owned Ausgrid electricity distribution company on national security grounds from the Cheung Kong Consortium (CKI), owned by Asia’s second richest man, Li Ka-Shing, and State Grid of China (SGC) was prompted by concerns about Pine Gap, possibly including its electricity supply. (more…)
The issue of China’s influence in Australia is complex. It ranges from worries about national security, political donations and media infiltration to concerns about scientific collaborations, Confucius Institutes, the patriotism of Chinese students, and allegiance of the Chinese community. The most recent trope is China’s so-called “debt trap” diplomacy with Australia’s neighbours in the Pacific.