Australian Politics

Kelly’s cowards lose their leader.

Chinese abuse continues unabated: The Chinese embassy has accused Scott Morrison, Australian politicians and the media of “misreading and overreacting” to a fake social media post shared by senior Beijing official Lijian Zhao and harming the chances of a reset in the relationship.

View News: One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has renewed calls for Australians to boycott Chinese products this Christmas, as relations between the two countries plunge to new lows.

Via CNN: A group of frontline medical workers, likely exhausted, stand huddled together on a video-conference call as China’s most powerful man raises his hand in greeting.

A few anodyne words from Labor is the best we got in response to the Chinese attack: “Australia’s condemnation of this image is above politics,” Albanese told the lower house of parliament.

Lol.

For nearly a decade, MB has been the only media voice warning of the unsustainable path of Australia’s Chinese engagement.

The nice way of saying it is that Hugh White has painted himself into a corner by declaring China the winner before the game was afoot.

Via Murdoch: Exclusive: It was set up to attract the best and brightest from around the world, but Australia’s Global Talent visa program has become a farce, attracting hairdressers instead of rocket scientists.

Via The Australian: Scott Morrison has flagged government support for producers hit by China’s trade sanctions as Australia moves to lodge a formal protest with the World Trade Organisation.

Alexander Downer was never the sharpest cross-dresser in the shed, at the AFR he declares: China’s aggression will, in the end, prove to be entirely counterproductive.

Kelly’s cowards returned on the weekend to demand Scott Morrison prostrate himself before Xi Jinping.

Via the AFR: Questions over clinical trial data for AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine have not derailed plans to begin immunising Australians from March, Health Minister Greg Hunt says.

This is a piece I’ve been meaning to write all week but as I’ve been distracted by CCP whack-o-mole Bernard Keane has beaten me to it: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has exhibited an emerging pattern of behaviour based on an apparent assumption that she’s above the rules that everyone else has to comply with.

Pull out that supply chain, via Reuters: Foxconn is moving some iPad and MacBook assembly to Vietnam from China at the request of Apple Inc, said a person with knowledge of the plan, as the U.S.

Via The Australian: The Australian coal flotilla stuck off the Chinese coast has swollen to more than 80 ships carrying blacklisted cargo worth more than $1.1bn, prompting the ­Morrison government to raise concerns about “discriminatory action”.

There appears to be a new strategy afoot for Australia’s heretical strategic mind and CCP enthusiast, Hugh White.

Sir Fomo McSpruikerson is an expatriate billionaire and proud proprietor of The Strayan, a vanity media project designed to boost his assets.

Matthias Coramnn’s job application to run the OECD is not going well.

Several of the recent demands made by China for the end of Australian democracy landed directly upon the media, from which it required silence: Your ABC has been delivering in spades.

At the New York Times today Fu Ying, a former ambassador and vice foreign minister of China, and the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy and an adjunct professor at Tsinghua University.

ScoMo continues his sensible path on Chinese aggression, at the AFR he writes: …economic interdependence and openness has created unprecedented wealth and prosperity, and lifted billions out of poverty.

I just bought a case of Tahbilk wine.

From Roy Morgan Research: In November, support for the L-NP Federal Government is unchanged since October with a narrow lead of 50.5% cf.