Penny Wong vs Marco Rubio on defence spending at the Quad
WONG HEADS TO WASHINGTON
Penny Wong is heading to the United States today ahead of the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington, where she will meet her American counterpart amid the never-ending commentary over defence spending.
The AAP says Wong and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will hold a one-on-one meeting as the Albanese government also continues its attempts to secure an exemption from Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Speaking ahead of her departure, Wong said: “This will be the second Quad foreign ministers’ meeting within six months, reflecting the importance of our partnership and the strategic circumstances confronting our region and the world.
“The United States is our closest ally and principal strategic partner. Our alliance contributes to the peace, prosperity and stability of our countries and the region we share. We will continue to work together to further our important economic and security partnership and advance our mutual interests.”
Reuters highlights the US State Department has said the Quad summit will aim to increase efforts to ensure “a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific”.
The newswire also recalls a recent report in The Financial Times, which claimed Japan had cancelled a planned meeting on July 1 between Defence Minister Gen Nakatani, Foreign Affairs Minister Takeshi Iwaya, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Rubio after abruptly being told by the US to spend more on defence.
The West Australian points out that Wong will also hold one-on-one meetings this week with Iwaya and India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Meanwhile, the AAP (as every publication continues to daily) highlights the obvious elephant in the room whenever any Australian government minister meets their American counterpart these days — namely the questions over when the prime minister might finally get around to his.
The Australian Financial Review has led overnight on the news Republican Michael McCaul and Democrat Joe Courtney “have issued a bipartisan plea for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to prioritise a White House visit”.
As we’re all very aware by now, the Trump administration has told the Albanese government it needs to increase its defence spending to 3.5% of GDP — something Albanese has been quick to dismiss — while the Pentagon is also conducting a review into the AUKUS submarine pact.
Speaking to Sky News at the weekend, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the Albanese government had had “mature, decent, respectful conversations” with the US over defence spending, but ultimately it would make its own decisions on behalf of Australia’s national interests.
“Our guiding principle in all of this is, what do you have to do to be able to keep Australians safe? And so we start with the capability. We don’t start with the dollars,” Burke said. “It is true, around the world now, that the world is a less stable place than it was. That means the conversations you’re having now about capability are different to what you would have had even four years ago.”
Shadow defence minister Angus Taylor was also on Sky News yesterday and accused the government of ignoring the advice from its defence strategic review.
“Forget the pressure being put on by the United States,” he said. “If we are to play the role we need to play in ensuring we have peace through deterrence in our region, the spending is too low, and the government’s plan demonstrates that.”
The Australian reckons Chinese ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian has warned Albanese, who is set to visit Beijing next month, that increasing military spending would undermine economic development and impose a “heavy fiscal burden” on the budget.
The AAP says the continuing debate over defence spending comes as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report calling for security for sovereign research to be increased. “Foreign states have actively targeted Australia’s research ecosystem, seeking to influence research agendas, extract sensitive information and exploit institutional vulnerabilities,” the report states. “However, the threat landscape hasn’t remained static; it has evolved, and rapidly.”
As the Australia-US talks continue this week, the Nine papers highlight “Trump’s tariffs are as big a risk of higher inflation than the supply chain disruptions that drove up prices during COVID”, saying there are signs Australian businesses “are already paying the price of the US president’s economic plan”.
The report flags that the Bank for International Settlements has argued in its annual report that interest rates may have to be pushed up if Trump’s actions result in higher inflation.
TAYLOR ON LIBERAL LEADERSHIP
Aforementioned shadow defence minister Angus Taylor also made headlines this weekend by failing to rule out another bid at running for leadership of the Liberal Party, after narrowly losing the recent ballot to Sussan Ley.
Which, look, is hardly surprising.
In terms of what he actually said, Taylor told Sky News when asked about his leadership ambitions: “Well, I do want to lead defence in this country. That is my job right now in terms of the shadow role and I would like to be the defence minister of this great nation.”
On the leadership of the Liberal Party, he added: “Look, we’ve had our leadership ballot and now we’re getting on with the job and we’ve got a big job to do. We’ve got a lot of work to do to understand what went wrong at the election and how we can fix it … and I’m going to work with my colleagues to make sure we do that.”
On Friday, the topic of quotas continued to dominate the party’s coverage, with Taylor denying he was at odds with Ley, the Nine papers report. He said they both “absolutely agree on the importance of making sure we are attracting talented women”, the newspapers say, adding the shadow defence minister also “doubled down on his opposition to quotas”.
Taylor earlier told ABC Radio National: “The Labor Party will do things their own way. And they do subvert democracy, and that’s a matter for them, at the end of the day, if you’re going to have quotas, it means you are going to subvert democratic processes.”
Guardian Australia reports Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek criticised the opposition to quotas within the Liberal Party, telling the ABC: “They’ve got a quota of National Party MPs that have to be on the frontbench,” she said. “So they’re happy to have quotas for National Party MPs. It’s just quotas for women that they’re not prepared to use.”
The site reported over the weekend that the Coalition reckons it will adopt a more empathetic approach to migrants, which the report says draws a line under the “harsh anti-immigration rhetoric deployed under Peter Dutton”.
Shadow immigration minister Paul Scarr is quoted as saying: “So [when] we talk about immigration, we talk about numbers in a macro sense, but we should never forget that we’re actually talking about real people, real families who have different, varying experiences.”
Elsewhere, the ABC writes “laws designed to put certain migrants behind bars if they are deemed to threaten community safety have effectively failed, the immigration minister has conceded”.
Appearing on Sky News, Tony Burke indicated the government “will effectively abandon efforts to use preventative detention measures against the NZYQ cohort of former immigration detainees”, the broadcaster reports.
“The reality is the legal thresholds that we are stuck with … are more difficult to be able to reach than I want them to be,” he said.
Finally, the Nine papers point out former Australian foreign minister and current United Nations special envoy for Myanmar Julie Bishop has been posting pictures on Instagram of her trip to the Kremlin.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
U2 guitarist The Edge has finally become an Irish citizen.
English-born David Evans took part in the ceremony last week and told reporters: “I’m a little tardy on the paperwork.
“I’ve been living in Ireland now since I was 1 year old, but the time is right and I couldn’t be more proud of my country for all that it represents and all that it’s doing.”
The New York Times reports Evans, who along with Bono, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr makes up U2, said he had “always felt Irish” after being born in Essex to Welsh parents before moving to Ireland as a young child.
“Honestly there were many moments in the past when I could have done it, with just the form to be filled out, but I’m happy it’s now,” he said last week.
“It feels more significant, it feels more meaningful.”
Say What?
The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive.
Elon Musk
The billionaire is still not a fan of Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Tony Abbott loves to fail — and it keeps impacting politics
Sometimes the symbolism in a situation is so prominent, so unavoidable, it feels downright needy. Per Guardian Australia, right-wing lobbyist group Advance is courting donations “from deceased estates with the blessing of former prime minister Tony Abbott as part of its latest efforts to fundraise for its campaign war chest”.
Having helped drive the Liberal Party into its electoral grave, Abbott and Advance have decided they might find riches there, now taking its sustenance from the dead, not just its ideas.
That Abbott continues to team up with the group that helped achieve what long seemed impossible — ending his own quarter-century in parliament — points to another persistent theme of Abbott’s time in public life.
Liberals reform over female representation threatens to cruel Ley’s leadership
And then there’s Angus Taylor, who is evidently still nursing a deep bitterness about losing to Ley, especially given one of her votes turned out to be not duly elected, and others are packing up and leaving parliament this weekend.
Taylor naturally wants more female MPs — don’t they all — but rejects quotas, going so far as to claim that the ALP “subverts democracy” with its quotas for women.
Well that’s one way of dealing with the fact that you got absolutely hammered in an election — claim the other side “subverts democracy”. What’s next from Angus — railing at the notoriously left-biased preferential voting system?
‘I felt degraded’: Abusers are using ChatGPT and generative AI for coercive control
Towards the end of last year, Molly ended her long-term relationship. Her ex-partner had been exhibiting various behaviours she was later able to identify — through the “assistance of opening up to my therapist, friends, and eventually a lawyer, via a community legal service” — as instances of coercive control.
She was gradually isolated from loved ones, “help” surrounding her finances became increasingly more restrictive and controlling, and she regularly found herself belittled and critiqued by her ex-partner, after what began as a seemingly positive, respectful relationship. To make matters all the more confusing, Molly’s ex-partner had begun to enlist the aid of ChatGPT in the final months of their relationship to further legitimise these actions.
Like a lot of people, the couple had begun to experiment with using the new technology in various ways after OpenAI released it to the world. “But then, AI was used as a tool of abuse in my situation, and that really shook me,” she told Crikey.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
‘One-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work’: Plan to save the NDIS billions (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Israel orders evacuations in northern Gaza as Trump pushes for ceasefire (BBC)
Bob Vylan and Kneecap comments at Glastonbury investigated by police (The Independent)
Trump considers forcing journalists to reveal sources who leaked Iran report (The Guardian)
Inside Seven’s secret plan to sack most of its brightest — and best-paid — stars (The Australian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump’s power fades — Charlie Savage (The New York Times): Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorisation from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war.
Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie’s political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, recently told her constituents that “we are all afraid” of Trump.
But while the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court’s ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking.
The best week of Donald Trump’s second presidency just got even better — Michael Koziol (The Age): And the Supreme Court ruling, while a “giant win”, as Trump put it, does not determine the constitutionality of any policies. Indeed, the matter that triggered the decision on injunctions, an executive order to end birthright citizenship, is set for determination in October.
But all things considered, Trump had a blinder of a week. At home and abroad, he demonstrated the power he wields — not just as the officeholder but as a muscular, unpredictable and unapologetic user of that office. He showcased American military might to the world and incurred not a scratch in return. And he put his best case forward for the accolade he has long coveted — the Nobel Peace Prize.
Following the Supreme Court ruling, Fox News anchor and Trump cheerleader Jesse Watters said: “Donald Trump’s best week ever just got even better.” For once, it wasn’t hyperbole.
