Nice scoop today from The Diplomat alumnus Hans van Leeuwen at the AFR with ScoMo on the trade war: “There are clearly challenges in the global economy, and that means there are conflicts and challenging issues to discuss. I wouldn’t confuse that with tension. We’re dealing with pretty complex issues at the moment,” he said.
Australia is fantastically ill-prepared for the historic challenge that is upon us. The shift from the globalisation regime to one of an unwinding Chimerica evokes the classic strategic parable: At first you go bankrupt slowly, then all at once. It did not need to be this way. We should have prepared for the inevitable Chinese showdown from the beginning. We
Via Domain come a pack of &[email protected]#$^ cowards: Pop star and activist Denise Ho has accused the National Gallery of Victoria of censorship after an event about the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests was cancelled. Organisers say the venue cited security concerns as the reason for not allowing the event to go ahead, and that it was
There’s nothing like the smell of Green’s immigration hypocrisy. Recall last year’s Facebook post where The Greens attacked NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s sensible call to halve immigration: As I noted at the time, we truly are living in Bizarro World when the self-proclaimed defenders of the environment and social justice champion the very policy – mass
Via Domain: In late July, the United States Studies Centre and YouGov polled 1,820 Australians and 1,800 Americans. We find Australians strongly prefer a Democratic win in 2020, a result replicated across almost all demographic and political groups. Only about one in five Australians prefer a second term for the Trump administration. Indeed, fewer than
Blood sucking globalists unite! First up, Jennifer Hewitt at the AFR who’s only role is to endorse Davosian values with elegant prose daily: The latest Twitter rockets from Trump lambasting the Federal Reserve and raising tariffs on Chinese imports sent the stockmarket reeling on Friday rather than allowing Wall Street types to relax into the
Via the ABC: Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo gave $100,000 in cash to a senior Labor Party official, in breach of electoral funding laws, an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiry has heard. The ICAC is beginning six weeks of public hearings to investigate whether NSW Labor received money from illegal sources. Scott Robertson, the Counsel
Via the ABC: Foreign espionage is taking place in Australia at a greater rate than any other time in history. It comes after revelations Rwanda has an alleged network of spies suppressing political dissent in refugee communities in Queensland The stark warning from the nation’s domestic intelligence agency follows accusations the east African nation of
There’s lot’s to recommend doing so. As things stand, Australia is caught on the horns of an economic versus strategic dilemma. Caught as it is between prosperity and freedom, the future is going to be one of constant anxiety as we get squeezed between our two Great and Powerful friends. If we were to explicitly
Has it twigged? Via The Guardian: Labor is claiming that Peter Dutton has lost control of Australia’s borders, saying 80,000 people have arrived by plane to claim asylum since 2014. The new line of attack against the Morrison government – spearheaded by the home affairs spokeswoman, Kristina Keneally – comes as the ALP prepares to
It’s MSM China madness today and about time. Crikey leads off with a new push to support hawkishness from John Fitzgerald, Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Social Impact at Swinburne: Senior Australian political figures can curse the American president as often as they please without fearing Trump will halt shipments of Australian beef or tell
This is where we don’t want trade wars to go. Via Herald Sun: Australian iron ore is suspected of being used to help build China’s next-generation nuclear-powered and ballistic-missile attack submarines, according to security and industry experts. Consignments from Australia’s booming iron ore exports to China are likely being diverted by Beijing into the steel
And it is this. Australia is buggered. It is at the tail end of a thirty year boom that has been on life support for the past eight years, kept alive only by running mass immigration into an economy bulging with over supply and under supply in all the wrong places. The labour market is
Yesterday the MSM finally tore the scab off the international students wound MB has been picking at for years. The driver was a CIS report that made plain what MB readers have long known, that Aussie uni’s have whored themselves horribly to Chinese international students, via The Australian: Universities are “taking massive financial risks” through overexposure to
It’s not often that the people get their revenge in this god forsaken land but today they did, at News: George Pell has lost his bid for freedom with his appeal against child sex convictions dismissed in court this morning. By a majority of two to one, Victoria’s Supreme Court dismissed the appeal ordering Pell
Good grief. Stop the kow towing, Paul: The past is a foreign country replete with false trails for the future. The two worst false trails for Australia in dealing with China are that the world is seeing a new Cold War, and that the emerging China threat will finish in a 20th-century style “victory and
Via The Australian: A confidential submission to the party’s post-election review from the Labor Environment Action Network, obtained by The Australian, expresses “anger and disappointment”, and also “grief”, over the party’s failure to win what was expected to be an unlosable election. The submission is brutal about policy, political and leadership failures. “Labor was unable
Here we go again. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for left-leaning activist group, GetUp, to be registered as a political party: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has hinted at launching a fresh bid for an inquiry into GetUp’s political independence, calling for the group to be “straight up” with voters. Members of the coalition have long
Via Domain: Ambassador Cheng Jingye told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that the affairs of Hong Kong were “solely the internal affairs of China”, warning that any effort to “mess up” the former British outpost was doomed to fail as pro-democracy protesters there again gathered en masse on Sunday. …The intervention follows escalating
The ScoMo Government is a masterful fake. It is currently pretending to cut immigration, pretending to reform banking, pretending to build infrastructure, pretending to be a good economic manager, pretending to care about weak wages, pretending to care about energy prices, pretending to care about anything and everything other than rising house prices. This we
I was short and dirty, via The Australian: The Coalition’s commanding electoral lead over Labor has slipped, in a sign the post-election honeymoon for the government has ended amid growing concerns over the economy and a clash over climate change. An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows the Coalition has lost its post-election gains
What is a democracy to do with a protest movement against itself? The Fake Left Saturday Paper sums up the problem: In Clive Hamilton’s view, these are serious matters. “Events like these give pause to the public that is not formerly focused on the issue of CCP influence to say, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ” says
Via the ABC: A pro-China rally planned for Saturday in Melbourne to condemn the clashes in Hong Kong has been postponed after a letter claiming to be an event permit from the Melbourne City Council was confirmed to be fake. A well-known local Chinese media outlet, Australian Red Scarf, first announced the pro-Beijing protests in
After Monday’s damning audit from Infrastructure Australia, which warned of intractable infrastructure bottlenecks and rising costs, and claimed that $40 billion in annual infrastructure spending was needed as Australia’s population balloons to a projected to 31.4 million people by 2031, the government announced that it would launch a ‘powerful inquiry’ into Australia’s immigration program. The announcement
This is simply corruption, at the New Daily: Christopher Pyne opened negotiations over a lucrative defence consultancy while he was still serving as defence minister in Scott Morrison’s cabinet. The revelations are outlined in a submission to a parliamentary inquirylodged by his new employer EY Consulting on Tuesday. Mr Pyne has previously been cleared of any
Yesterday’s dire Infrastructure Australia audit, which warned of growing infrastructure bottlenecks and rising costs across roads, rail, schools, electricity and water as Australia’s population balloons to a projected to 31.4 million people by 2031, has finally prompted both major parties to question their bipartisan support for mass immigration and a ‘Big Australia’. The Morrison Government has announced
Few have done more to damage the Australian national interest than “Tiny” Tim Wilson. After years of poisoning the science of climate change, enjoying red carpet rides into positions of power he wasn’t qualified for, distracting the nation from historic policy reform with marginal social issues, running corrupt bucket shops to get elected, and lying on
Yes, it has happened, via Domain: Clive Hamilton has slammed left-wing activists on Australian university campuses as “useful idiots” of the Chinese Communist Party, after a Greens student group belatedly reversed its opposition to a protest against the Confucius Institute’s impact on academic freedom. The outspoken author has also called on intelligence authorities to investigate
When I and other graduates arrived at the Australian Treasury in 2003, we were inducted by Secretary Ken Henry and his deputy secretaries who drilled into us the Treasury’s rich history of giving “frank and fearless” advice to the federal government, based upon rigour and evidence. We were told to examine issues rationally with a
No wonder trust in Australia’s politicians and institutions is at an historical low. From 10 daily: Labor and Coalition politicians stitched up a deal to protect themselves from being kicked out of Parliament. In April, in the dying hours of the last Parliament, with the Federal Budget being debated and the election about to be
