The 14 conditions to end democracy are all about suppressing dissent and debate so that China can get back to doing whatever it likes in Australia and the region.
Albo has already done much of this under the spurious banner of stabilising relations:
- Instead of diversifying exports like everybody else, Albo has concentrated it in China.
- Instead of repatriating supply chains, Albo has concentrated them in China.
- Instead of building our military capability, he has hidden behind a shaky AUKUS.
- Instead of continuing the cleansing of clandestine Chinese influence in our parliaments, he has invited it back in.
- Instead of bringing sanitising sunshine to all transactions, he has buried them in yesteryear’s corrupt darkness.
- Instead of spending time at the G7 coordinating the China pushback a’la ScoMo, he goes to Beijing on his knees.
- Instead of saying “China” when we mean “China”, he has issued a fatwa against using the name.
- Instead of banning WeChat or TikTok, he appears on them.
Now, Albo is moving to muzzle the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the think tank that has so incensed China:
Prominent American politicians and military leaders have rallied behind an influential Australian think tank known for its hawkish views on the Chinese Communist Party and defence policy as the Albanese government considers overhauling government funding for national security research.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s department in February commissioned former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade head Peter Varghese to review national security strategic policy work.
Australia’s strategic policy community has since been abuzz with speculation the review was driven in part by a desire to rein in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra think tank established in 2001 and led by former Liberal Party staffer and public servant Justin Bassi.
Apologies to all for missing the original appointment.
Peter Varghese is Vice-Chancellor of UQ, perhaps the most happy-clappy of Australia’s China-captured universities.
He is also a notorious China soft touch:
The first reason for his concern is the most compelling because, Varghese stresses, “Whether the US can hang on to its primacy or not, at the end of the day, will have virtually nothing to do with Australia. It’ll turn ultimately on the quality of US leadership, domestic and international, and the quality of Chinese leadership, domestic and international.”
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.
These are weasel words. Cringing is common in Australia’s elite diplomatic corps but is neither hard-nosed nor well-considered.
The Australian national interest is best served by offering the strongest possible support to the US liberal imperium.
Anything short of this offers soft and hard power support to its opposite, the Chinese illiberal imperium.
There is no escaping this conflict’s binary nature and no recognisable Australia if China were to win it.
Elites like Varghese will be fine because they have positioned themselves to thrive either way.
But anybody else who may enjoy their freedom of speech and civil liberties will be shipped off to a Pilbara gulag if they step out of line.
Varghese is conflicted professionally, financially, and philosophically and should not be within a bull’s roar of this so-called “inquiry”.
Likewise, the Australian people should be shot of Albo at the first opportunity.
