Is it time for a new foreign policy approach, away from the USA?
DOES AUSTRALIA NEED A NEW APPROACH?
As the Albanese government continues to be hounded with questions over Australia’s relationship with the US under Donald Trump, there are calls for the country to take a new approach to its foreign policy.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong concluded her Quad meeting and bilateral talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, but as the AAP points out this morning, “the future of defence spending, tariffs and Australia’s nuclear submarine agreement with the US and UK remain unclear” after the Washington visit.
Wong revealed Australia’s military budget wasn’t even discussed during the talks, and while the other topics were, “there was little sign negotiations had progressed”, the newswire added.
With Australia — and the rest of the world — still trying to navigate the new world order dictated by this Trump administration (Wong conceded during her visit that the US president has “made very clear to the world that he envisages a different role for America in the world”), experts have called for a change of direction from Canberra.
Trump’s pause on tariffs ends next week — around the same time the Pentagon’s review of the AUKUS alliance concludes — as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese continues to call for no tariffs and rejects pressure to up defence spending.
La Trobe University’s international relations Emeritus Professor Joseph Camilleri told the AAP the government hasn’t been able to coherently handle the differences between the administrations.
“It just tries to deal with foreign policy as best it can in small pieces,” he said. “They are hemmed in by powerful pressures on different sides, and to think through a coherent alternative would require a very bold initiative. Most governments, this one included, are not taken to bold initiatives.”
Speaking about the Quad summit, Professor Camilleri added: “What Australian governments — this one included — struggle with is a lack of coherent foreign policy, and that then shows itself in these meetings.”
He said Australia should work to clarify how its relationship with Washington relates to its South-East Asian neighbours on one hand, and with China on the other. Camilleri claims that could then feed into the position the government takes on issues like the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, AAP adds.
The Australian this morning says Wong dismissed the prospect of a new trade deal with America during her Washington visit. Speaking after meeting with Rubio, she declared “We have a free-trade agreement and we would like that to continue to be honoured.”
The broadsheet reckons there is a “sense of resignation” within the Albanese government that Australia will not be able to escape the 10% baseline tariff it has been designated. The paper says Labor sources believe Australia previously made concessions with the US to achieve reciprocal tariff-free market access and further compromises shouldn’t be made now to achieve a lesser outcome.
The Australian also highlights Wong said there were no plans to abandon the news media bargaining code after Canada dropped its plans for a digital services tax in an attempt to restart trade negotiations with America.
My colleague Anton Nilsson reported yesterday how media executives in Australia have been watching what happened with Canada. “The industry hopes Trump doesn’t bully the Australian government like he did to Canada,” one executive said, while another declared: “Now is the time for the Albanese government to stop talking and show how serious it is about making the tech giants pay media companies for the content they’ve been monetising for years. Let’s see how serious this government is about the news bargaining incentive.”
Meanwhile, The Australian Financial Review reports: “The powerful chief lobbyist for US tech giants has drawn a sharp distinction between Canada’s digital services tax and Australia’s bid to force platforms to pay local news publishers, signalling the US may not take as hardline a stance against Labor’s agenda.”
As the breathless reporting and commentary on the attempts by the Albanese government to deal with the endless chaos of the Trump administration shows no sign of relenting (let’s be honest, it’s not going to until the 79-year-old’s time in the White House is done), the opposition continues to try and make a meeting with the US president some kind of national emergency.
Opposition acting foreign affairs spokesperson Angus Taylor (aren’t we hearing a lot from him these days…) claimed Wong was “coming home empty-handed” and declared it was “absolutely crucial” the PM meets with the US president soon, The Australian highlights. “This government and this prime minister is better able to and more interested in getting a meeting with the president of China than the president of the United States. It’s time to get serious about this,” Taylor said.
UKRAINE FEARS AND GAZA UNCERTAINTY
Ukraine has expressed fears over the White House’s decision to halt weapon shipments and said it risks encouraging Russia to prolong the war.
The Guardian reports shipments of US Patriot air defence systems and other precision weapons to Ukraine have been halted due to concerns that US stockpiles were running too low. The site adds the decision was taken last month by the Pentagon’s policy chief Elbridge Colby (who is also conducting the review of AUKUS), but only revealed this week.
The BBC says Ukraine’s foreign ministry has said in response that “any delay or procrastination in supporting Ukraine’s defence capabilities would only encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror, rather than seek peace”.
US President Donald Trump infamously declared before he was elected that he would resolve the Ukraine war within 24 hours, as he desperately seeks the apparent real validation he wants — a Nobel Peace Prize
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the decision to suspend the assistance was taken “to put America’s interests first”, while Colby said the US Defense Department was “rigorously examining and adapting its approach” to providing Trump with options to continue military aid to Ukraine, “while also preserving US forces’ readiness for administration defence priorities”, the BBC adds.
The announcement of the decision to suspend the weapon shipments comes only a week after Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met at the NATO summit, where the former said he was weighing up sending additional Patriot air defence systems to Kyiv.
Yesterday, Trump took to Truth Social to also claim Israel had agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza.
Reuters reports today that Hamas said it was studying new ceasefire offers received from mediators Egypt and Qatar, “but that it aimed to reach an agreement that would ensure an end to the war and an Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip”. The newswire adds that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, called for the elimination of Hamas, with Reuters saying the statements gave no indication as to how an agreement could be reached.
The BBC says a Palestinian official familiar with Hamas’ negotiations with the mediators claimed the new proposal offered no substantive changes to one that was rejected last month. “The core issues remain unresolved,” they said.
Health authorities have said the director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital has been killed in an Israeli air strike on his home in Gaza City, along with several family members, the broadcaster also reports.
The health ministry says at least 139 people have been killed by Israeli military operations across Gaza in the last 24 hours.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A Virgin flight from Melbourne to Brisbane was delayed for two hours after a snake was found in the plane’s cargo hold on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.
The snake turned out to be a harmless 60cm green tree snake and was eventually removed from the plane by snake catcher Mark Pelley.
Speaking to Seven’s Sunrise on Thursday, Pelley said he reckons the snake snuck into a passenger’s luggage. “Someone has inadvertently packed a snake in their luggage and somehow it escaped during transport,” he said. “Then, when the staff went to pack the new luggage into the plane, there was a snake.”
Pelley said that if he hadn’t been able to catch the snake at the first attempt, it would likely have crawled behind panels within the hold, resulting in the plane having to be evacuated.
“I would have been with the engineering team pulling apart the plane. Thank God I got it the first time,” he said.
Once the snake was removed safely, the plane was able to continue on its journey.
Say What?
You want to write that, and I’m sure nothing I will say will stop you writing that.
Penny Wong
The foreign affairs minister tried to push back against the suggestion US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s lack of a clear answer over the future of AUKUS after their bilateral meeting in Washington meant Australia found itself in a rather tricky spot.
CRIKEY RECAP
OpenAI’s ‘productivity’ garbage is an age-old scam that’s long crippled Australia
This is the key point about Open AI’s report and the feting by the media and politicians of its spruikers: it is simply the same rent-seeking and influence-peddling that we’ve seen so often from the country’s biggest corporations over decades.
So much of the innovation and productivity of large firms in Australia — firms eager to increase their market share at the expense of competitors, reap the benefits of their incumbency and increase margins at the expense of customers — is devoted to trying to influence policymakers and distort the regulatory “market” in their favour ahead of rivals. The true competition in so many Australian markets is not the kind from which customers and other businesses benefit, but the competition to secure regulatory and taxation wins from government.
OpenAI’s effort might come dressed in the fashionable garb of digital services, but it’s the same rent-seeking shit underneath.
The Liberals are ditching Dutton’s migrant rhetoric. They’ll need to do more to win over multicultural Australia
Even though it seems to have taken two elections for Coalition politicians to finally notice — or at least to articulate — that migrants are “real people, real families”, it is still better late than never. While adopting a more empathic stance towards multicultural communities is a good start, perhaps one thing that is even more important than compassion is the acknowledgement that many people in these “diasporas” — and certainly the voters among them — are rights-bearing Australian citizens.
Scarr noted that “Chinese, Indian and other diaspora communities” had rejected the Liberal Party, but did not seem to realise that this could be largely traced to the Coalition’s inability to see multicultural communities beyond the framework of diaspora.
A few years ago, the then acting immigration minister Alan Tudge observed with regret that some communities were still seen by their countries of origin as “their diaspora”, whereas he preferred to see them as “proud Australians”. Tudge’s remark seemed to suggest that people have to choose: either you’re staying on as part of “their diaspora”, or you’re trying to become a “proud Australian”.
Lattouf was sacked ‘to appease the pro-Israel lobbyists’. Why are their identities suppressed?
Nine individuals brought an urgent application before Justice Rangiah, seeking orders suppressing their identities. The ABC didn’t oppose the application, and Lattouf’s lawyers accepted its appropriateness.
Justice Rangiah then issued an order that for the next 10 years, “on the ground that it is necessary to protect the safety of persons”, nobody can publish or disclose the names or other identifying details of the complainers.
In his brief reasons, Justice Rangiah said he was satisfied that there was a “substantial risk” that the complainers could face “vilification and harassment if their identities and contact details were available to the public at large”.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Khaled Sabsabi reinstated as Venice Biennale representative after independent review into dumping (Guardian Australia)
Scorching European heatwave turns deadly in Spain, Italy and France (BBC)
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs guilty of prostitution offences — but cleared of sex trafficking and racketeering (Sky News)
Dalai Lama says he will be reincarnated, and only his trust can choose a successor (The Sydney Morning Herald)
UK bonds slump on doubts over Reeves’ future after tearful episode in Commons (The Financial Times)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Many of us already knew the childcare sector was in crisis. The question is: What are we going to do about it? — Lisa Bryant (Guardian Australia): Education ministers, do you really think increasing penalties and improving information-sharing between jurisdictions are enough to keep children safe? In the very places families pay for — and governments fund — to nurture and protect them?
Or is it finally time for bold, radical action?
I know what I think.
Ley’s revelations about coercive control will help women. It’s a shame her party won’t do the same — Jenna Price (The Sydney Morning Herald): But Ley’s revelations were more astonishing because in her almost 25 years in parliament, she has worked alongside those who undermine women on a daily basis and who are doing so as we speak.
There is a history of the Liberal Party refusing to properly fund domestic violence services and pandering to extremists. How does she manage those internal contradictions?
