Does anybody recall “Pig Iron Bob”. Sir Robert Menzies’s pejorative moniker that he took to the grave?
The name sprang from the Dalfram Dispute:
In 1938, Australian waterside workers refused to load pig iron onto the ship Dalfram, destined for Japan, which was then at war with China. This was due to the workers’ concerns that the pig iron would be used to make weapons.
Robert Menzies, as Attorney General at the time, was seen as unsympathetic to the workers’ concerns and took action against them. This led to him being nicknamed “Pig Iron Bob”.
At the SMH there is no memory as former China hawk turned groveller, Peter Hartcher, can’t get enough.
The high drama of Donald Trump’s tariffs on Australian exports are “as a pimple on the bum of the iron ore trade,” Garnaut says. Trump’s tariffs are high-risk but for another reason beyond Australia’s direct trade with the US – they threaten to destabilise the world economy.
Bob Hawke’s 1984 trip was important for China, too. The high-quality Australian grades of ore, replacing China’s low grade domestic ore, were the feedstock that allowed China to become the world’s dominant steel maker.
Today, China stands at a similar threshold. Beijing has decided that it will achieve net zero by 2060. The other big customers for Australian ore – Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – have their own deadlines. “They all know,” says Garnaut, “that they have to get to green iron pretty quickly, or they won’t get to net zero in time.”
So why not make their own green iron? Because they don’t have enough renewable energy of their own to achieve decarbonisation, and the cheapest and most feasible way of decarbonising their metals is to have it done in Australia. In China’s case, the unfolding prospect is to import green iron from Australia, and then process it into green steel in China.
The question is not only one of money. In fact, not even one of the money.
It is one of national interest values. Not values abroad. Values at home. A question of how we want to live.
Do we want to be a vassal state of China, serving it green pig iron with which to build the green navy to dominate the world and end our democracy?
Or, do we want to protect the liberalism that is the heart of Australian liberty and economy?
We can’t have it both ways forever.
Either we start behaving like an ally, which includes boosting defence spending to 3.5%, and following the liberal hegemon and supporting it in whichever conflict it deems needed, or we do not, and it abandons us to our fate.
Which will mean either being a Chinese vassal, with a one-party Labor state, social credit scores, Pilbara labour camps etc.
Or it will mean spending 10% of GDP on defence and getting poorer regardless.
