Welcome to the art of Australian politics in the age of a US tyrant — a time when a US president uses the power of the state to damage those who displease him.
Australia’s PM Anthony Albanese has a stock phrase:
“We’ll make a decision as the Australian government, as a sovereign government in Australia’s national interest.”
On the ABC’s 7.30 last night, he used that and variations a dozen times as he was pressed on if, when and how his government might recognise a Palestinian state.
Losers never prosper
It’s been the case for decades that Australia has kept close to the US on the issue, but there’s a new factor in the mix: that Donald Trump, acting out of megalomaniacal impulse, will take revenge. This is a rational fear.
The US — and now the world — is strewn with the victims of Trump’s especially nasty form of vindictiveness. Latest on the list is London Mayor Sadiq Khan who Trump described this week as “nasty” and “doing a terrible job”. Others have lost careers and livelihoods.
The insidious aspect of fear is that it leads people to pre-emptively buckle, a phenomenon which perversely feeds into how a savvy politician should behave. Or at least that’s how it works in the “Canberra bubble”.
Tricks of the trade
Yesterday the Nine newspapers surmised that any move towards Palestinian recognition could threaten US-Australian trade talks. This was based on Trump’s furious reaction to the announcement from Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney that he planned to recognise a Palestinian state. Trump lashed out on a social media post saying it “makes it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them” and promised a 35% tariff as punishment.
According to The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald, the possibility of copping higher tariffs “raised the stakes” for Albanese as he navigated the “growing global push to advance a state of Palestine”. They said it “complicates the dynamic”, which seems a nice way to put it. But hallelujah! This morning Trump kept US tariffs on Australian goods at a friendly 10%, rather than the feared 15% or 20%. What a guy.
Revenge is sour
The fear of retribution via tariffs has been constant since Trump took office and decided to rule the world by royal decree. In March, former PM Malcolm Turnbull was asked on the ABC if it was wise for him to disparage the AUKUS agreement (Turnbull called it a “bad deal”) while Trump was still formulating his “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. In one of those awkward moments for all concerned, Turnbull expressed his dismay that the ABC of all outlets would suggest Australians needed to “muzzle” themselves.
The presence of former PM Kevin Rudd as Australia’s ambassador to the US was also allegedly a white-hot threat to Australian trade interests, given Rudd’s sharp criticisms of Trump.
If not tariffs, there’s the ongoing threat of what Trump might do with AUKUS as a way of punishing Australia for stepping out of line. We learnt today that fear of AUKUS reprisals has apparently worked its way into the deliberations of the Victorian Labor Party. Operatives have been working overtime ahead of the state conference tomorrow to alter the terms of an anti-AUKUS motion which “could cause US officials” to question Labor’s commitment to the pact.
The Nine mastheads report that the current motion states Trump is a “demagogue” who’s a “danger to peace and security”.
Weapon of choice
The fear of AUKUS reprisals has also hovered over decisions on defence spending, as Albanese resisted US demands for a near-doubling of Australia’s commitment.
The idea of the AUKUS pact being used by the US as a weapon against Australia has been in the media since Labor gained office in 2022. This year the threat has been more or less a permanent fixture as Trump took power again. As The Politics wrote yesterday, a review by undersecretary for defense policy Elbridge Colby has blown out from 30 days to six months. This is a long time for Australia’s political leaders to walk on eggshells lest it cause displeasure. But does anyone imagine that six months will be the end of it?
The benighted opposition parties, aided and abetted by their media backers, have played their role in injecting fear of Trump reprisals into the public debate. But it hasn’t been a winning strategy. In the meantime we’d better get used to Albanese’s careful Australia First shtick.
How many more $800 million payments are scheduled in the six months it will now take for Elbridge Colby to review AUKUS from the America First perspective?
Seems like Australia and the US are having a Mexican stand-off – who will blink first and cancel AUKUS?
Albanese is petrified of the politics of cancelling AUKUS but, now matter who cancels it, he’s going to cop it from Angus, Little Jimmy Paterson, Hartcher, Sheridan, Karvelas and Speers. In which case it would look better if he showed strength and took the initiative, rather than be the victim.
Well put Doug – an in furious agreement!
Well stated Doug. I do wonder though, whether there isn’t a lucrative gravy train keeping AUKUS alive?
Not only those six Doug but the US lickspittle who sits behind him in the House.
Labor needs to ditch Marles ASAP & accept the consequences which i doubt would be overly threatening to Labor generally
Here, here!
Trish, that was meant to be hear! hear! I hope….
phrase of hear
used to express one’s wholehearted agreement with something said, especially in a speech.
With the alleged investment by the spouse of Richard Marles in Pengana, wouldn’t this be corruption and a conflict of interest????? It fucking should be !!!!!!!! Richard Marles appears to be a right-wing Cold War warrior who has traveled through time from the 1950s to our present day. He is another Captain Sam Benson, who was expelled from the Labour Party in the 1960s, due to his fanatical support for conscription and our genocidal involvement in the Vietnam War, as unprincipled and gutless lackeys of the USA. Remember ‘All the way with LBJ’?
Yes, Marles has to go.
Our collective safety is dependent upon keeping our options open, not closed.
Toned Ab’s the has been, once referred to the US as “family”.
Maybe, but very distant cousins.
We need to conduct our own ‘review’. I’ll help. It’s Scomo’s baby. It’s expensive, has zero guarantees, it has a never-never timeline, it’s DUMB. Scrap it. NOW.
Totally agree, the fact that it was Scomo’s idea is reason enough for me to get out. A silly idea in the first place.
I believe deep down in albos heart he knows it’s wrong. He’s not a stupid man. Wily and bit niece maybe but if he reads the winds ,he should scrap it. It’s so untenable and unrealistic he will eventually be seen as on the right side of history. Just like the opponents of Vietnam war
Well said
“…he’s going to cop it from Angus, Little Jimmy Paterson, Hartcher, Sheridan, Karvelas and Speers..”
He’s seen it all as Manager of Govt Business in the RGR years, and seen them off.
👍🏿
Ha Ha by the time those submarines arrive submersible drones will be available at a fraction of the cost .
BTW did I hear Netinyahoo liken the images of those starving children like scenes from the Holocaust.
The fact that has not escaped my attention is that it is Congress that controls the tariff levies by the constitution rather than an individual.
Albo will be respected if he refuses to buckle to a tyrant who would give no more thought to reneging on an agreement than farting. With a huge majority Albo can ignore the all too predictable winging LNP. What does Albo do if Trump jacks up the price of Scotty’s disastrous AUKUS
Why are we worrying about Tariffs, of goods we export. Its the importer who pays, and in the end the Consumer. We have to look at sending our goods elsewhere, before the American market tanks, Which it will.
We could start by making our own steel David
Correct David and what’s more is they buy more off us than we sell.Surely in the market turmoil that is being created there will be many selling opportunities for our goods.
Opinion polls seem to show that Australians still want the alliance, just not the current US leadership.
The US has invested a great deal in manufacturing consent, with a web of thinktanks, exchanges of personnel and academic scholarships that have deeply influenced not just the politicians but opinion shapers in the media, public service and universities.
Nevertheless, I believe that there is an intrinsic cognitive dissonance among many in the wider community about the US of imagination and the US as it is developing today, frightened about what a post-US Australian foreign policy would look like without a new protector against Asian threats. Australia’s politicians know this and fear an electoral price if they tell the country what it does not want to hear or, in the case of the Coalition, employ this card to stop Labor deviating from the status quo. I fear that it will take a major catastrophe to force recognition of reality, with Australia possibly being dragged into a conflict in which the US suffers a major naval defeat.
Isn’t the really big question here: what exactly is Australia getting out of its alliance with the US? Traditionally, many would have answered: a guarantee of our security under ANZUS. Personally, I don’t think that’s been the case for a long time, but under Trump, does anybody at all still believe that? Intelligence sharing under Five Eyes? Who would know, since we’re not allowed to see it, and are asked to take it on trust. Anything I’ve missed?
The FBI setting up an agency in New Zealand, those talks were held this past week with Patel on the basis of spying on Australia.
Once again, Albo and Labor negotiate a fair deal for Australia. Sure the various right and left Oppositions and the rest of the FUD merchants (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the media will now switch to alternative shade rhetoric to damn the outcome.
But, seriously, the outcome passes the Pub test and will be welcomed in mainstream Australia.
I hear you Michael, and don’t disagree, but it’s interesting that so many of us now think a 10% deal is ‘fair’, when we charge no tariffs on US goods entering Australia. An indication of how the goalposts have shifted under Trump.
Agree!
But, not allowing the perfect to get in the way of getting a satisfactory result is not a part of my DNA.
But double negatives are?
Please remove one of the double negatives.
My bad!
Pres. Kennedy back in the early ’60s told a senior Australian, that the US didn’t believe in that any more.
Anything from Trump that has the word “deal” attached to it is a prostitution of that word.
What “outcome”?
It’s nice to have a personal blowfly.
1. Australian Aluminium is a specialist product. Importing it directly to the West coast of the USA is cheaper than shipping same from the East coast. Price goes up to the US consumer!
2. Australia hasn’t imported US beef for decades. Just because they can import now does not mean Australians will buy their product. Australian Beef trade exports are up about 25% this year. Result is a Maca goes up a $1 in the US. Hit us with a feather. Please!
3. PBS not changed.
Apart from the purity aspect, Australia is a winner.
Three temporary situations that are almost certainly happening mainly by chance and could and may well be changed on a whim by Trump constitute laudable outcomes?
Rolling a six on a die would be roughly as admirable.
And if you don’t like blowflies, spread less shit.
Did you know that if you pull the wings off a blowfly, they go totally deaf.
One can understand a reluctance to provoke the infantile but vindictive President but my sense is that the majority of Australians now recognise that under Trump, the US is no longer an ally in any sense that we want to be in any way beholden to. I feel a similar sentiment towards any suggestion Albanese should bend the knee or kiss the ring of the bumbling idiot by trying to negotiate tariffs or defend AUKUS. Of course the stupidos in the Opposition, the Muckrake rags, Sky and even Ch9 stoke the fears while seeming to want that bended knee so they can either criticise him for kowtowing or accuse him of still not doing enough. On AUKUS it is self-evidently such a stupid idea that only real idiots could complain if we walked away. The fact that some of those idiots are in the ALP and in Parliament should not deter Albanese from recognising he was slightly silly to endorse the Morrison land mine so eagerly and would now be wise to ether order the review he should have done at the start or, taking a leaf from the Morrison playbook, renege on the deal outright.
Totally agree that Albanese should not negotiate on tariffs or AUKUS. I’d go further. I don’t want to see him even meet Trump. What’s the upside? Obviously, we’d get no special deals that don’t conform to ‘America First’. The downside is that if Trump is in a bad mood that day, Albanese gets the sort of treatment meted out to the Ukrainian and South African leaders. Sounds like a no brainer to me.
Or maybe Trump doesn’t want to see Albanese.
Trump’s got more to lose than Albanese at that meeting.
Australia only has to throw a sideways glance at the European Military Industrial “soup” for the US MIComplex to start to go weak at the knees.
Just look at what our PBS has done to US big pharma, they’re been fighting this battle for decades. And lost every time.
And just remember, Australia asked the US to come here in 1941, they didn’t offer.
Trump and his flunkies won’t cancel.
Why would they?
As it is now, AUKUS is classic Trump. Money for nothing.
Albo cancels AUKUS and he’s looks like a winner for doing what the majority think, tell the USA and Trump to piss off.
The added bonus will be the fuses being blown at Sky no News
I believe deep down in albos heart he knows it’s wrong. He’s not a stupid man. Wily and bit niece maybe but if he reads the winds ,he should scrap it. It’s so untenable and unrealistic he will eventually be seen as on the right side of history. Just like the opponents of Vietnam war
With the alleged investment by the spouse of Richard Marles in Pengana, wouldn’t this be corruption and a conflict of interest????? It fucking should be !!!!!!!! Richard Marles seems to be a right-wing Cold War warrior who has travelled through time from the 1950s/60s to our time. In fact, he is another Captain Sam Benson, who was expelled from the Labour Party in the 1960s, due to his fanatical support for conscription and our genocidal involvement in the Vietnam War, as unprincipled and gutless lackeys of the USA. Remember ‘All the way with LBJ’?
It’s a pity that Albo the little grey dormouse didn’t show some backbone (unlike his namesake, Francesca Albanese!!!!!). In fact, now that they have a substantial landslide and mandate for progressive and strong policies under their belt, rather than sucking up to Gilead, with its fanatically racist Sinophobia, and bigoted Islamophobia, as Richard Marles, who seems to be a right-wing cold war warrior who has travelled through time from the 1950s/60, to our time, seems very keen to do, (and largely created by Genocidal Joe Biden), so allowing Daffy Donald Dump to win a khaki presidential election. This makes Gilead (aka the USA). Still, the planet’s No. 1 rogue state, by the way, both little grey dormouse canary-coloured Labour jellyfish and the simple superstitious Sus(s)as/dopey Dave toxic totalitarian LNP Political gangsters, are enthusiastically complicit in making Australia a henchman and hitman for the gangsters running Gilead. Don’t forget that it was that gutless amoeba and totally unlamented piece of fish food, and shark snack, Harold Holt, who said, “All the way with LBJ”, so getting us into the disastrous Vietnam quagmire. The only results from our slavish arse licking to Gilead, which is the world’s number 1 rogue state in both its mendacity and brutal imperialist aggression, (before that it was the geriatric Colonel Blimp run and controlled UK, whose smelly brown stained backside we licked!!!), have been uncritical and unquestioning involvement in wars designed to promote and protect Gilead imperialist and capitalist interests from Korea, through to Vietnam. Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Palestine, against people who are not our enemies and who are no threat to us.
The whole shebang of so called western ‘democracy’ is predicated on the unholy dollar.Our so called’representatives’ are no more than the pawns and puppets of the neo liberal corporates, who pull all the strings, protestations notwithstanding.
Nothing is going to change until the shit coming down the highway engulfs as all .Take a look out the window.
Our justified gripes are meaningless…like pissing into the wind. You’re welcome.
PM Albanese was the Manager of Government Business during the RGR Governments. As such he did all the negotiating of Govt Business through the House.
He’s seen various of all this during his Parliamentary career.
Yet a craven Media, obviously beholden to the LNP, has rarely had the intellectual wherewithal to objectively look at his period then and how he operates now.
And the Media bemoans the young and not so young, moving further and further away from the traditional Media lines.
There are very few Journalists out there, most of them are mere “reporters”.
I agree with you except where you say that the majority of journalists are “reporters”. Many of them are propagandists and / or conspiracy theorists.
More like mere stenographers!
Trump is illegally imposing tariffs, it should be Congress for them to be legal. The US democracy and position in the world is rapidly declining under Trump and his cohorts and I do not understand why other countries, including Australia, are kowtowing to Trump. The sight of EU leaders fawning on Trump was disgusting and wishing the US would go back to the way it was is illusionary.
I believe we should join Canada and various other strong minded countries in mostly ignoring Trump and the US. Australia can find many other countries to trade with, on more favourable terms than with the US.
Australia should also refuse to pay any more to this stupid AUKUS ”deal”. Since AUKUS was announced I’ve been wondering what Scott Morrison gets as a ‘reward’ for his part? It’s such a bad deal for Australia that there must have been a sweetener for Morrison.
The best way to deal with a narcissistic* (*toddler in an adult body), “tyrannical”, “egomaniacal”, vindictive bully (whether internationally, nationally, domestically or personally)is to go “no contact”. As Australia does not have the option of no contact with the self-proclaimed ‘King of the USA’, the second best option is “grey rock” which I’m quite sure is the method PM Albo & Labor are, thankfully, employing to deal with the orange, fascistic tyrant currently residing in the White House.
Cool, calm adult heads are what is needed for Australia at present and a view to the long game. tRump won’t be around forever. Either age/death, US democracy/voters or a US civil war (hopefully it won’t come to that) will catch up with him.
It should not be hard to back out of AUKUS. Consistent with Albo’s insistence that our navy’s use of Virginia subs would be governed by “our national sovereignty”, he might ruminate publicly that, if we had the subs today, we might deploy them in the eastern Mediterranean, off the Gaza coast, to protect shipping in international waters. That should do it.
There is only one way to deal with a bully, and that’s serve it straight back up to them!
That’s the one thing they fear the most as they can dish it out but can’t take their own medicine, so its way past high time that his bluff was called and back up with serious enforcement of its own, including the enablers.
At the end of the day, Trumps health is declining fast and surprised that Article 25 has not been affected before now as the oligarchs are losing this race and fight big time; there’s only so much more money and grift that they are prepared to forgo.
The ghost of Epstein haunts every waking, quacking moment of Trumps days and nights and he’s more than implicated, hence the rush to give Maxwell a pardon, she’s dynamite and he knows it.