E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Originally published in the Australian Fifty years ago, Australia and Britain were hardly separate countries. It wasn’t just the same queen at the apex of our systems and the words “British subject” then still appearing on Australians’ passports. For Australians of my parents’ generation and beyond (think Clive James, Germaine Greer and Barry Humphries),…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… One of the upsides of being a recovering politician, indeed a former PM, is that you can say what needs to be said in ways that incumbents sometimes can’t. The AUKUS submarine deal, to provide Australia with British or American nuclear-powered subs, is the biggest decision any Australian government has made in decades. It…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Originally published in the Spectator Normally, if the response to a speech of mine was that it had been a ‘despicable and insane performance’ from a ‘failed and pitiful politician’, I’d question what went wrong. But since the comments came from Chinese communists about an address I’d made in Taiwan, it’s hard not to…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Two years back I hesitated to attend this conference lest that provoke China. But since then, Beijing has torn-up the “one country, two systems” treaty on Hong Kong; put upwards of a million Uighurs into concentration camps; boosted cyber spying on its own citizens; cancelled popular personalities in favour of a cult of the…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Your Foreign Minister has this week spoken frankly with the Australian people about the prospect of invasion so I will do my best to speak with equal candour. For a retired free world politician, there maybe no more telling place to be right now, because this is where liberty and tyranny are most at…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Originally published in the Australian The world’s “emerging democratic superpower” is how I habitually described India as PM. With the world’s other emerging superpower becoming more belligerent almost-by-the-day, it’s in everyone’s interests that India take its rightful place among the leading nations as quickly as possible. And because trade deals are about politics as…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… There’s nothing like some serious pressure to test whether our actions really-do-match our beliefs, and this pandemic has certainly dispelled any notion, that at least for a rich country, you can always get what you need, when you need it, from a globalised economy. Like so many, Australia discovered early on just how dependent…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… After 14 months of lockdowns, travel bans, and economic back-sliding, these have been the worst of times for most of us – even here, where closed borders have largely prevented the deaths suffered in other parts of the world. But ass Humphrey Bogart said in African Queen, things are never so bad that they…
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Australia’s PM Scott Morrison has said that there’s a whiff of the 1930s about these times. Others have said that we’re on the brink of a new Cold War. I’d prefer to hope that nothing more ominous than a Cold Peace now exists between China and the West but, however described, it’s by far…