The Groveller-in-chief has been had:
Australia will suspend its case at the World Trade Organization over China’s tariffs on wine imports ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first trip to the country next month.
China will undertake a review of its wine tariffs that’s expected to take five months, Albanese’s office said in a press release on Sunday. During that period, Australia will suspend its WTO dispute over China’s actions.
Now, it is off to Bejing to celebrate 50 years of Labor kissing the ring.
The propagandists are back in full voice. Peter Varghese of UQ fame has done as much as anybody to damage Australian liberalism, which the AFR cheers on:
He is agnostic whether in the next 20 years the US will still be the primary power, but he baulks at the idea of writing off US resilience and questions whether China is on an inevitable, upward trajectory.
He is keen to stress Australia is not yet handcuffed to US policy, but he doesn’t want to see that happen either. Mainly “because the US might make a decision to protect or advance its primacy, which makes sense in Washington, but may not make much sense at all in Canberra”. Exhibit A of this mentality is the thread of argument in Washington “which says that to preserve primacy, we should thwart China”. Varghese is emphatic: that’s not in Australia’s interests.
Err, that very much depends upon what China becomes.
If it is liberalising, multilateral power, then sure. But it’s a regressive, autocratic power determined to take the world backwards under its skirts.
The Australia/China split is structural. We are liberal. It is not. Fractures can be papered over by grovelling but cannot be fixed.
Albo and Varghese are just more conflicted China cheerleaders who have the gall to blather about policy first principles while selling them out.
Having failed to heed the lessons of recent history, when the fractures widen once again, Australia will face precisely the same shock as it did last time:
Only next time, it may well be permanent. This is made all the more likely by other leg of Albo’s grovelling world tour:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be “urging support” for all legislation needed for the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal to go ahead during his four-day visit to Washington next week.
Raising the risks on both sides of Australia’s great power allegiances is not adding insurance, creating balance, or neutralising risk.
It is leveraging into an imbalance, raising risks on both sides.
Thus, any conflict between the US and China will result in Australia blockading its own ports and shipping routes with its own nuclear subs, delivering an economic disaster.
It is beyond stupid. It is treason.
