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defence
indigenous affairs November 18, 2023
Life in the time of polycrisis
Why does so much feel like it’s going wrong, all at the same time? Why do so many of us feel this sense of impending doom? According to experts, we are living through a “polycrisis”, a tangled mess of multiple crises, all happening at once. In the...
defence November 4, 2023
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s statement to United States President Joe Biden during his recent visit to Washington, DC, that “Australia has his back” has unfortunate echoes. It is almost 60 years since then prime minister Harold Holt made a...
defence October 28, 2023
Can America be trusted on submarines?
Australia’s defence force should be focused on defending Australia, not threatening our neighbours. This seems like an obvious statement, but it is in fact highly contentious within defence leadership and directly contrary to the conclusions of...
defence September 16, 2023
Albanese’s historic duty in China
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is finalising a trip to China in early November, following a successful meeting with Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit. The timing offers an excellent opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary...
defence July 22, 2023
Afghanistan: the illegitimate war
“Those who failed to ensure that Australia’s participation in this war was legitimate should not escape their share of culpability for the atrocities in Afghanistan.”
defence June 10, 2023
How Albanese is commanding the global stage
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s speech in Singapore last week deserves more attention. Not only was it his first major foreign policy statement on the global stage, it was a profound and nuanced expression of the challenges Australia faces in...
defence March 25, 2023
Paul Keating has a point on AUKUS
The bottom line of the AUKUS deal is that it locks us into the US military strategy even further, to the point where if the US again does something stupid, such as to support Taiwan in a military confrontation with China, it would be likely that we...
ir March 25, 2023
Labor rift over submarine deal
Paul Keating’s verbal torpedoes aimed at the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal have begun hitting their targets in the Labor Party. Keating – often and correctly described as a “Labor icon” – has been joined by two of the party’s more influential figures...
defence March 18, 2023
Albanese and the AUKUS booby trap
Make no mistake: Anthony Albanese, in the bright Californian sun this week, was doing more than putting the nation on an economic and strategic war footing; he was rendering his political opponents back home defenceless. The domestic politics of the...
defence March 18, 2023
What the nuclear-powered subs deal really means
The deal is done. On Monday morning in San Diego, the leaders of the United States, Australia and Britain jointly revealed the key details of Australia’s road to becoming a nuclear power – of sorts. President Joe Biden announced that the US will...
defence February 18, 2023
The most profound shift in defence in two centuries
Our Defence minister, Richard Marles, likes to talk big. When he and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were handed the final report of the government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) this week, he called it the “single most important re-evaluation of...
