The Liberal Party is no longer going through a short-term and cyclical downturn – it’s facing a continuing crisis of political identity, it’s lacking organisation skills which makes it more susceptible to extremist interest groups and, most importantly, its relevance is fading within the electorate. Despite losing two consecutive federal elections – badly – it’s still unable to decide whether a turnaround in its electoral fortunes will need moving closer to the centre of mainstream voters, or going further into the right-wing ideological pipe hole that has driven them away.

Recent opinion polling has the Coalition’s primary vote hovering between 17–24 per cent, with Newspoll currently showing 18 per cent, after a record low of 17 per cent in the previous month. This compares with its 41 per cent primary vote recorded at the 2019 federal election, just over seven years ago.

If a political party doesn’t offer anything meaningful to the public, it’s obvious that the public will start looking somewhere else and, even on this most basic level, the party hasn’t managed to work this out yet. One Nation has replaced the Coalition within the conservative part of the electorate, while Labor, the Greens and community independents have been able to take votes from the metropolitan seats that were previously held by the Liberal Party, and it’s unlikely that these seats will be returning any time soon.

There’s also leadership issues. Angus Taylor was installed as the Liberal leader in February this year, with the task of rebuilding the Coalition after its second consecutive federal defeat. Six months later, there’s almost no evidence that he’s established a viable political identity for himself or gained much traction with the national debate.

His personal ratings have been poor for a relatively new opposition leader, with the most recent Newspoll suggesting 34 per cent of the electorate approves of his performance, while 46 per cent disapprove. Prime Minister Albanese’s net satisfaction ratings are actually worse, but the problem for Taylor is that the dissatisfaction with the government hasn’t translated into support for the Coalition. And it also shows that voters can be both unhappy with the Labor government, while also knowing that the Liberal Party is failing to offer a credible alternative.

The current political environment should be providing the opposition with many opportunities. Housing affordability is still a big problem, cost-of-living issues are continuing, productivity is weak and public confidence in the government seems to be lukewarm, at best. Despite this, the Liberal Party is indulging itself in the internal factional battles and culture-war debates that very few people are interested in and engaging in facile arguments about issues that have little in common with the immediate concerns that are facing most people.

And this is on top of all the organisational problems that it’s currently going through. The relationship between the Liberals and Nationals continues to be strained, and their state divisions are divided between moderates, conservatives and an increasingly extremist religious right.

In South Australia, Senator Alex Antic’s right-wing campaign for the state presidency has become a battle over embracing a more populist and unhinged brand of populism that is trying to appeal to the people who have left the scene and defected over to One Nation. And here in New South Wales, the federal party has intervened in a chronically dysfunctional division which is now also being examined for possible corruption.

The corruption for the NSW Liberals keeps on going

The NSW ICAC, through Operation Rosny, is investigating allegations of corruption involving people associated with the NSW Liberal Party, former Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney, property developer Jean Nassif, hotelier Michael O’Hara, and several Strathfield councillors – among others – for possible breaches of electoral funding laws, including whether prohibited or undisclosed donations were channelled through to the Liberal Party.

Although Angus Taylor is not a subject of the investigation, he’s been drawn into the purview of the inquiry through the conservative Christian faction known as the Reformers, a group which is attempt to take over the control of the Liberal Party in New South Wales.

Evidence that has been aired during the hearings is likely to create a substantial political problem for Taylor, with messages sent between Reformers figures suggesting that Taylor had agreed to an initial contribution of $15,000, followed by payments of $3,000 a month.

Taylor has categorically denied that he paid any money, and others at the inquiry have suggested that the claims were part of internal Liberal Party bravado and exaggeration but, whatever the case is, it’s the politics of that matter that’s critical for Taylor, even if there isn’t a legal consequence at all.

Even if Taylor does survive, the bigger problem is how to deal with this Reformers faction, because their ambitions go far beyond fundraising efforts for the Liberal Party. It’s a group that’s recruiting large numbers of conservative Christians into the party, attempting to gain control of branches and state council positions, influence preselections and move the NSW division further to the right on the issues of abortion, voluntary assisted dying, transgender rights and same-sex marriage, issues which most people in the community would assume had been decided some time ago.

The problem for the Liberal Party isn’t just this situation of conservative religious activists wanting to move it further to the right – that is a big problem in itself – but the fact that too many Liberal figures continue to firmly believe that the pathway back to government lies in attracting these kinds of groups to the party and fighting the same cultural battles that have caused then to lose election after election.

Pro-business, anti-low income people

Even when the Liberal Party turns to an issue of immediate public concern, it continues to remind voters why they rejected it. Housing in its current state all around Australia should be one of its biggest opportunities for a political party – it’s the link between the pressures of population growth, migration, intergenerational inequality, construction costs, insecure renting and the broader cost-of-living issue.

Yet shadow housing minister Andrew Bragg used a major National Press Club address to propose reducing the National Construction Code from more than 2,000 pages to an 80-page “Basic Australian Standard”, as the solution to the problem, and then going on to suggest that people on lower incomes will need to accept “substandard” housing.

This, of course, means that developers gain the up-front benefit, while the purchaser of the house – the low-income purchaser – then has to deal with the longer-term costs associated with an energy inefficient house, something that needs regular repairs as it ages, primarily because standards that would have improved its quality, have been removed. It’s a false economy, but it’s in tune with modern-day Liberal Party philosophy: deregulation that supports big business and slams the consumer, especially those on lower incomes.

It’s this type of ideology that has cost the Liberal Party electorally – as well as an ideology that’s being shunned by the public – but one that the party keeps returning to and insists that it’s the correct formula that will bring electoral success.

And it didn’t end there: Bragg then went on to say that compulsory superannuation is a “repressive system” based on “communism” and “neo-Marxist” Labor policies, a system that is under the “control of unions” – even though there are no superannuation funds legally owned or controlled by trade unions. But why spoil a good story with the facts…

Bragg is from the Liberal Party’s moderate and liberal wing, but it shows how far backwards the party has gone when he espouses this sort of nonsense, and imports Trumpian rhetoric and conspiracies from the US Republicans that most Australians would have no clue about.

The Liberal Party continues to be squeezed from several directions at once – One Nation is taking its support from its populist right; community independents have captured parts of its former metropolitan moderate base; its state divisions are consumed by factional battles; the relationship with the Nationals is unstable; and senior frontbenchers continue to behave like an undisciplined rabble, instead of presenting themselves as an alternative government.

The danger for the party isn’t just another election defeat – federally at least – but becoming incapable of assembling a broader coalition of voters that they need, first of all, to win elections, and then, gaining the skills that are required to govern Australia.

The state of Victoria is considered to offer the Liberal Party the next best chance of winning an election, with recent polling putting Coalition ahead of Labor in the lead up to the November election, on a 55–45 per cent two-party-preferred lead. But even there, there’s no guarantee of an election win – the party needs to win 17 seats, is led by an inexperienced leader in Jess Wilson, and is still strongly influenced by a cabal of religious extremists.

It seems that everyone knows the trouble the Liberal Party is in – except for the Liberal Party itself. If they feel that reducing regulations is the solution to housing and social issues, or every problem in society can be resolved by making accusations that everything is “communism” or “neo-Marxism”, then there is no hope for the party.

It really needs to decide who it intends to represent in the electorate, what practical problems it intends to solve, and whether it wants to be a broad party of government, or just a rabble of aggrieved and combative ideological factions, better suited to an isolated debating club that no-one really wants to attend.

Until it answers those questions, every scandal, inquiry, factional takeover and frontbench gaffe will reinforce the same public conclusion: the Liberal Party has learned remarkably little from its many defeats and is still not fit to govern.

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s latest offerings in the AUKUS debate have once again revealed the big contradiction within Australia’s most expensive defence project ever: we are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to an ethereal submarine program which essentially will remain outside of Australian control and create a pathway for more US intervention in our military and political affairs.

Appearing before an independent public inquiry into AUKUS – established by a group of former MPs, retired military and naval officers, leading strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and union leaders, primarily because the deal continues to be shrouded in secrecy despite the incredibly high stakes and massive cost – Turnbull described the agreement as a “colossal mistake” and warned that it could leave Australia without an effective submarine capability during the 2030s.

His criticisms weren’t just directed at the extraordinary cost of the project – $368 billion – but the assumption that the United States and Britain will have the capacity and political will to deliver what Australia has been promised.

Under this deal, Australia is expected to operate eight nuclear-powered submarines by the 2050s, but this will depend on an unlikely sequence of events: first of all, extending the life of the ageing Collins-class fleet, training Australian personnel on allied submarines, acquiring American Virginia-class submarines at some point during the 2030s, and eventually constructing the British-designed SSN–AUKUS submarines in Adelaide.

Each of these stages has its own risks, but the immediate problem is the capacity of American production. The US needs its own shipyards to produce an average of 2.3 submarines each year to replace its own fleet but its current output is around 1.3 boats, a shortfall of one boat.

Also, US law requires its president to authorise that the transfer of submarines to Australia won’t affect America’s capabilities. This essentially means that the Australian delivery of its own submarines isn’t guaranteed just because our government has signed an agreement and began transferring copious amounts of money in 2022. If the US decides that its own operational requirements are the priority – and why wouldn’t they – Australia will end up waiting indefinitely for submarines that will never arrive.

The Albanese government’s decision to acquire three in-service Virginia-class submarines, rather than the proposed combination of two used boats and one newly built vessel, is essentially an acknowledgement of those constraints, although no one in government is prepared to admit to this, with Defence Minister Richard Marles presenting the change as a “good news” story – a far simpler arrangement that should reduce costs and ease pressure on American shipyards.

Yet it also means that all three of Australia’s initial nuclear-powered submarines will have already been used by the US Navy – and who knows for how long – which means that their age, remaining operational life and eventual maintenance requirements will depend totally on decisions made in the White House, and at the whim of a future US President.

Supporters of AUKUS argue – and most of those are within government – that focusing on today’s production rate ignores the billions of dollars being invested in American shipyards and the time available before the first transfer, currently expected in the early 2030s.

Australia has already committed US$3 billion towards the US submarine industrial base, while Australian personnel are already training inside the American military. Sure, there’s a chance that production may improve significantly before the submarine transfers are due, but that’s not a guarantee, and Australia has limited power to enforce an outcome in its favour anyway. The revised arrangement might end up making the delivery easier, but it doesn’t remove that condition that American military requirements will always come first at every single occasion.

Turnbull has also raised serious doubts about Britain’s capacity to deliver the SSN–AUKUS design on which Australia’s longer-term fleet depends. Describing British naval shipbuilding as an “industry in disarray”, he argued that Britain may struggle to produce enough submarines for its own navy, let alone sustain a joint program that’s also meant to supply Australia.

Critics of Turnbull are suggesting that his criticisms are based around the cancellation of the French submarines deal that he set up while he was Prime Minister – and that might be one of his driving motivations – but with hindsight, we can already see that the deal with France and the Naval Group was far superior, cheaper, and had more certainty attached to it.

A silent US invasion

Even if the promised submarines do eventually arrive – and that is a big if – AUKUS is already producing something far more politically significant than any issue related to submarines: an ongoing American military presence in Australia, and that’s something that the public has never been asked about.

From 2027, the Submarine Rotational Force–West program is expected to bring up to five foreign submarines to HMAS Stirling on Garden Island, just off the coast of Perth. Different ministers keep emphasising that these vessels will rotate through an Australian-owned base rather than be permanently stationed there, but it’s an argument that doesn’t hold much substance when we look at all the administrative structures, human resources, and the services are being developed to remain on a more permanent basis.

In May this year, the US Navy formally established Naval Support Activity Stirling in Perth, stating that this exists to support “the fleet, family and fighter”, and its relocation material provides information for American military personnel and civilian employees moving to Western Australia, including where to find the best local schools, support for housing, healthcare and recreation facilities for a “positive family life”. That doesn’t seem to be a temporary arrangement, as the government keeps insisting.

By around 2030 – just four years away – the American presence associated with submarine operations will include up to 2,300 service members, civilian employees, contractors and dependants. This isn’t just to support an occasional naval visit: it’s the development of a substantial American military community with the administrative system that required to sustain it for a long-term or permanent time.

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy briefly added to the confusion last week – deliberate double-speak or otherwise – by calling the arrangement only a “five-year commitment”, before also suggesting it would be an “enduring element” of AUKUS. It’s either one or the other – it can’t be both – but the government is using a wide range of weasel words – “rotation”, “access”, “support activity” and “enduring presence” – to avoid the more politically unpalatable description of what is actually taking place here.

Of course, the government is correct when it says that HMAS Stirling remains Australian territory and it will be an Australian naval base. But that doesn’t mean that the United States won’t have de facto control over these operations, in the same way that it controls bases in Cuba, Denmark, the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, and Pine Gap in Central Australia.

And these are the question ministers continue to avoid. Who will have the real control over this base? Could Australia realistically deny American submarines access to HMAS Stirling during a future conflict that it does not support? Could it refuse the use of Australian maintenance, communications or intelligence infrastructure for these purposes? What if Australia takes a different position to the US over a confrontation with Taiwan or other country within the South China Sea region?

Before suggestions are made that it could never come to this, Australia should look to Okinawa islands in Japan for an indication of where this could all be headed: for sure, Western Australia is not under American occupation – although some might like to dispute this – and the scale, history and concentration of US bases in Okinawa are vastly different.

However, the experience of Okinawa shows how a foreign military presence initially justified by a post-war strategy can become deeply entrenched and extraordinarily difficult for local communities – or even a national government – to change. Residents in Okinawa have spent decades dealing with aircraft noise, military accidents, environmental contamination, unauthorised land use and crimes committed by US military personnel. Could these same issues be experienced by the people of Perth? There’s no guarantee that they would but if they ever did, there’d be very little that local communities could do about it.

The surrounding areas of HMAS Stirling – Rockingham and Safety Bay – will be expected to absorb all the additional demand for housing, schools, roads, healthcare and other public services. Some local businesses – mainly hotels and restaurants – might benefit from the increased defence spending and presence, but experience shows that those gains are rarely distributed evenly. There are many legitimate concerns about infrastructure, safety and environmental issues that any community should be entitled to ask before a large and enduring foreign military presence arrives on this level, but it’s almost as though governments have forgotten to ask or don’t even care about, because it’s all a forgone conclusion.

We also have to remember that AUKUS is not occurring in isolation. It’s building on the joint intelligence facility at Pine Gap, expanded access for US aircraft across northern Australia, the deployment of US Marines in Darwin, and a higher level of integrated military planning.

Of course, Australia has hosted these US forces and facilities for decades – Pine Gap was opened up in 1970 – but this AUKUS deal takes the relationship into a new phase by making Australia’s most important future military capacities dependent on high-level integration with the United States, as though the two military forces will be indistinguishable. And this is all taking place with almost no parliamentary debate. This is the price Australia pays for a bipartisan understanding between Labor and the Coalition, which has insulated Parliament from any form of scrutiny on these decisions, and left the public in the dark.

The submarines – whether they arrive or not – are almost irrelevant, as is the large sums of money that are being wasted here. The even bigger danger is that AUKUS is slowly and silently reorganising Australian territory, infrastructure and strategic policy around the needs of the United States way before the public has been given an honest account of what the consequences are.

By the time Australians are finally able to see the full effects of AUKUS, most of it will be too deeply embedded to change anything at all – just ask the people of Okinawa – and that’s why every political leader who has been involved with the charade of AUKUS should be condemned and hounded out of office.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion commenced as an examination of prejudice and “social cohesion” – the Prime Minister’s most favourite phrase – but is now developing into an attempt to hijack Australian educational institutions and redefine acceptable political debate, according to the diktats of a very small, powerful and influence group.

The Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, is pushing for antisemitism educational curricular of a particular kind to be introduced into early childhood programs, all the way through to higher education. It’s an outrageous overreach and should be resisted at every opportunity.

In response to the Bondi Beach shootings in December 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the Antisemitism Education Taskforce to be chaired by David Gonski. It’s unclear how an education taskforce was meant to deter radicalised and potential shooters in the future, but it covers every level of the education sector: early childhood education and care, primary and secondary schools, universities and the wider higher-education sector.

This was the first part of access to the educational system, but the reach of this is extraordinary – curriculum, teacher training, school regulation and university policy within a national structure, essentially dedicating itself to one specific form of discrimination, and ignoring all the others.

Segal has also announced the establishment of the National Centre for Education Against Antisemitism, an organisation that will be independent of government, but able to influence government and education departments, and will deliver training and educational materials to governments, schools, businesses, law-enforcement agencies and not-for-profit organisations.

In quite an audacious statement, Segal told the Royal Commission that education needs to reach younger age groups because younger children are more open to changing their views, while university-aged students were more likely to be fixed in their opinions. This is really troubling, and sounds more like an adventure in proselytising: children’s willingness to absorb new ideas should be based on a balanced education and the ability to develop critical thinking, not force-fed with the ideas coming in from Zionist zealots, who are intolerant of any criticisms of the state of Israel.

While this curriculum hasn’t been developed and is yet to be implemented, the real question is why this is being allowed to proceed without any serious political or public scrutiny.

The problem of political advocacy within education

It could be argued that all state-based education and curriculum verges on propaganda, as it defines the acceptable behaviours and thinking for future generations, based on what our educational leaders believe is in their best interests and that of society. But at least in modern educational settings, critical thinking has replaced the style of old-fashioned rote learning, enabling students to acquire skills that will allow them to become more adaptable in an ever-changing world. Segal’s proposals would do the opposite.

Holocaust education already has a place in Australian schools, mainly within secondary history, particularly in Years 9 and 10, as part of the study of the Second World War, Nazism, racism and genocide, while some schools do include age-appropriate material in Years 5 and 6.

There’s no serious argument being put forward against the teaching of the Holocaust as a major historical event, and there’s no question that students should understand the rise of Nazism, the systematic persecution and murder of millions of Jewish people and the political and institutional conditions that made those crimes possible, to ensure that it never happens again.

But Segal’s proposals go far beyond the historical understandings of the Holocaust: it includes Jewish history and civilisation, the positive contributions of Jewish people to Australia, and what she describes as modern forms of Jew hatred, including anti-Zionism, online conspiracies, and political hostility directed towards Israel.

And it’s at this point where her proposals move from education about discrimination – and only the one form of discrimination – and into the field of propaganda and agitprop. Segal wants to include the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which includes making statements that describe Israel as a racist project, comparing Israeli policies as fascist or Nazism, or denouncing Zionism.

The IHRA definition has been criticised by many legal scholars, human-rights organisations, Jewish academics and civil-liberties advocates, precisely because it includes anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel within its definition of antisemitism, and potentially criminalises the act of speaking out against the actions of Israel in Gaza and West Bank, which presumably would include accusing Israel of genocide, apartheid and war crimes.

If this type of framework is embedded in schools, universities and professional training, students and teachers – and even toddlers – could be placed in the position of having to interpret discussion of Israel and Palestine through the lens of educational bodies that are committed explicitly to Zionism and the defence of Israel. This is unacceptable, totally.

Israel is accused of severe breaches of international law in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, and has been for some time. Its government has overseen the devastating genocide, ecocide and scholasticide of Gaza, the displacement of most of its population and restrictions on food, medicine and humanitarian assistance.

Israeli settlements continue to expand across the occupied West Bank – and this has been determined as an illegal act by the world community – while Palestinian communities are displaced, their homes demolished and their land absorbed. This didn’t commence on 7 October 2023: this has been the story of Israel’s behaviour ever since it was formed in 1948, if not before.

These are not just abstract disputes or religious disagreements that date back thousands of years: these are modern-day questions about military power, occupation, dispossession, human rights and American interference. Students and academics – and toddlers in early education settings – should be free to analyse these issues without having to demonstrate that their conclusions comply with a bizarre and ill-defined definition of antisemitism.

There’s also a question of proportionality to this debate. Australia had approximately 4.16 million students across all of its schools in 2025. Jewish students comprise around 0.4 per cent of the national school population, and a substantial proportion of Jewish school-aged children – around 53 per cent – attend Jewish day schools. In most Australian schools, Jewish students represent a very small part of the student population – around 0.2 per cent, or, on average, one student in a school enrolment of 600 students, which is the average size of a school population across Australia.

Before we are accused of antisemitism yet again, this does not mean Jewish children are undeserving of protection, far from it. Every student has the right to attend school without being abused because of their religion, ethnicity or identity, and that goes for all students. But it does raise legitimate questions about why one community’s history, civilisation, social contributions and contemporary political concerns should become the subject of a specialised national program going across every level of education, especially for such a small cohort.

Why should every Australian student be required to undertake dedicated education about Jewish history, civilisation and exceptionalism? If this is the principle we are going to accept, will there be equivalent programs be created for Islamic civilisation, Chinese history, Greek culture, Lebanese migration, Italian, Slavic, Indian history and the contributions of every other community to Australian society?

The curriculum would quickly become a collection of programs designed to satisfy the political and cultural demands of particular organisations, leaving less space for Australian history, Indigenous dispossession, democratic institutions, economics, science and the practical knowledge students already struggle to receive.

The issue is not whether Jewish history is worthy of study (see previous note about accusations of antisemitism) but why should every student across Australian preschools, primary schools and high schools be forced to know this history?

And what would this history involve? Harry Triguboff defacing many Australian cities with his Soviet-style apartment buildings over many decades? Frank Lowy creating the Westfield shopping centres that crippled so many business operators through high rents and unfair bargaining power? Or would it be antisemitic to balance the “positive contributions” with the more deleterious effects?

Would this history also point out that Sir Isaac Isaacs did indeed become one of Australia’s finest Governors–General but that he also warned about the dangers of political Zionism and that recognising Israel at the expense of Palestine would lead to ongoing war and destruction?

This is a real problem. Australia shouldn’t have a specialist organisation acting like a star chamber that decides – at the behest of a government-appointed right-wing envoy – how millions of students across the country will be taught about Jewish identity, Zionism, and the state of Israel.

Protecting a community or restricting political debate?

The latest analysis from the Pew Research Center suggests that 79 per cent of Australians have an “unfavourable view” of the state of Israel (49 per cent very unfavourable; 31 per cent somewhat unfavourable), and this has deteriorated remarkably since their last poll on this issue was performed in 2013, when the figure was 48 per cent unfavourable – still high, but nowhere near the levels of today.

Despite the desires of the Segals of this world to think otherwise, these results can’t just be dismissed as evidence that most Australians have become antisemitic. They haven’t. The figures indicate the widespread opposition to the behaviour of the state of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, and growing public recognition of the humanitarian catastrophe that has been inflicted upon Palestinians by the state of Israel.

This presents the Albanese government with a big dilemma. At the same time public hostility towards Israel is increasing, his government is creating institutions that want to redefine that expression of hostility as antisemitism. Albanese could just say “no” and rule these outlandish educational proposals out right now, but we know that he won’t, because he wants the favour of everyone within the establishment class, even the extreme Zionists who come knocking on his door. And, as we’ve seen since October 2023, every political leader in Australia is only too happy to throw out the rule book for democracy and acquiesce to the will of these extremists, even if it comes with a high political cost.

When extreme definitions of antisemitism are catapulted into every part of society – schools, universities, workplaces, government agencies and professional bodies – we can see that it’s less about discrimination and more about regulating what people can say about Zionism, Israel and Palestine.

And we can see exactly what the outcome will be: teachers will avoid discussing Gaza because they fear complaints and reprisals. Universities will call in the police and remove protesters, rather than risk the accusation that they failed to provide a “safe environment”. Students will be expelled for using or saying political slogans the antisemitism envoy disapproves of. Employees will say nothing, rather than risk the allegation that their criticism of Israel has created an antisemitic workplace.

No appointed envoy or organisation should be placed in a position where they can determine the educational requirements of the entire country. That is totally unacceptable in a modern democracy, but it’s the path that we’re currently going down and it’s going to be very difficult to turn around.

Yes (and yes, we do have to point this out again and again), antisemitism should be confronted wherever it occurs. Jewish students should be safe at school, at university and be able to participate in public life without being blamed for the actions of a foreign government. But combating antisemitism doesn’t mean keeping the scrutiny away Israel, and treating Zionism as an unquestionable principle.

The danger isn’t just that these proposals will restrict the criticism of Israel: it will weaken the fight against genuine antisemitism, because when everything is antisemitic, then nothing is. Australia doesn’t need a curriculum that approves opinions about Israel. It needs an education system that teaches students to examine history, recognise propaganda, oppose racism and question power – whether it’s coming from our own government, or another one in a faraway location.

A real education teaches students how to think, but an ideological education tells them what they are allowed to think. There’s a key difference. If Segal’s proposals cross that line between the real and the ideological, they’re not going to strengthen Australian democracy or add to “social cohesion”. All it’s going to do is try to protect one community so it can regulate and restrict the political thoughts of everyone else.

Politics is disappointing, but does it always have to be this disappointing? It’s a question that we’re always asked at New Politics and becomes harder to avoid after a week in which the Prime Minister attended an exclusive fundraiser at a Point Piper mansion, Labor members gathered at a national conference to debate policies the parliamentary leadership will end up ignoring, and Victorian Labor descended into another leadership crisis only months before a state election.

These events are not directly linked, but they expose the same failures: political parties that increasingly facilitate access, participation in democracy for the select few, and even leadership as instruments for maintaining power, rather than using it effectively in the public interest.

It would be naïve to imagine there was once a golden age when Australian politics was pure, democratic and untouched by money or vested interests, because those days have never existed. Political influence has always been applied inconsistently, parties have always cultivated and worshiped wealthy supporters, and governments have always attempted to neuter and diminish their party memberships. But democratic government has always depended on the goodwill and sound judgement of the people occupying public office, and if that goodwill can no longer be guaranteed, stronger legislative safeguards need to be implemented.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing legitimate questions over his attendance at a fundraiser held at a billionaire’s Point Piper mansion, where guests were encouraged to contribute $10,000 each. The objection isn’t that Albanese shared a meal with wealthy people – prime ministers need to meet with different business leaders, community representatives and citizens from every part of society, even the parts that we might not necessarily agree with.

The problem is that only one class of Australian can afford this special type of political access. A renter struggling with a 20 per cent increase, an exhausted nurse, a disability pensioner or a casual worker can’t pay $10,000 to sit in a magnificent private home and explain their concerns directly to the Prime Minister. Political access shouldn’t be like an auction going to the highest bidder, yet neither major party is willing to demand or implement stronger restrictions on political donations, lobbying and fundraising.

These same barriers were also visible at Labor’s 50th national conference, albeit in a different form. Here we had Labor members invited to travel to Adelaide, debate, negotiate amendments, applaud speeches, and congratulate themselves on their attendance. But it’s primarily a political theatre and pantomime. Members can express their views on Gaza, AUKUS, gambling advertising, gas exports, corporate power and voluntary assisted dying, yet any proposal that flies in the face of the dictatorial parliamentary executive is softened up, deferred, or put into the “for review” bucket, and never seen or heard of again.

A democratic party does need some flexibility when it gets itself into government, and there needs to be a response to changing circumstances – an issue that has a high level of support at this kind of conference and ends up in the Labor Platform might end up being too politically contentious and difficult for a government to achieve. But there has to be a meaningful relationship between the people who sustain a political movement and the government that’s operating in its name. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Another form of detachment from the public is now appearing in Victoria, where the Labor Party has decided that four months before a state election was the best time to remove Premier Jacinta Allan, and create a level of instability that will more than likely seal the fate of the Victoria Labor government in November, despite the poor state of the almost unelectable Liberal Party. Labor should have a good story to tell Victorians, with Melbourne being the third most desirable city in the world to live in, and a massive infrastructure program that will benefit the state in the short-to-medium term.

But there have been many allegations of corruption and organised crime associated with this program, and Allan hasn’t been politically astute enough to manage the crisis or establish an inquiry to resolve them. Instead, the allegations were allowed to fester for almost two years, and that ultimately cost her the leadership.

This is the story of long-term governments in contemporary Australia, and it seems that the timeframe for administrations maintaining their competence is becoming much shorter as time goes on. In previous eras, governments commonly remained in office for long periods: the Coalition governed federally for 23 years between 1949 and 1972, while state governments sometimes lasted for 24, 27 or even 32 years and, more or less, were competent for much of that time, certainly by today’s standards.

The modern era has been different though. The NSW Labor government held office for 16 years between 1995 and 2011, but much of its final eight years was marked by insufferable instability and corruption. The Coalition then went through a similar decline during its 12 years in office: broadly competent in its first half, disastrous in its second. Federally, the Coalition displayed a high degree of incompetence pretty much across all three terms between 2013 and 2022.

Has governing simply become too difficult? Is the best the public can expect is a few years of competent administration before the rot sets in and then a governing party becomes more concerned with its own survival than the public interest? Is that the stage the Albanese government is now entering? Or is our political system no longer sophisticated enough to deal with the complexities of the modern world and the pace of rapidly changing circumstances?

The incentives against good government

Australia isn’t badly governed in the sense of being unstable, authoritarian or corrupt. Sure, there are pockets of corruption, but it’s not comprehensively corrupt and, eventually, the Eddie Obeids of politics will always be caught out. Elections are generally competitive without too many dramas, compulsory voting produces a high participation rate of around 90 per cent, transfers of power when a government loses office are peaceful, the judiciary is professional, the Senate can place a handbrake on governments, and the public service still has the ability to administer complex programs, in most cases. These are substantial democratic achievements and should never be underestimated or dismissed.

But Australia is badly governed in more infuriating ways. This is a country that has the wealth, institutional history and administrative abilities to solve many of its most persistent problems, but repeatedly chooses the measures that are just small to do this. Governments promise to make housing more affordable, while protecting the tax concessions and rising property values that make it unaffordable.

They promise cheaper energy through useless and expensive rebates, without confronting the energy corporations; a promise of higher wages without addressing the workplace imbalances between employers and employees; a promise to provide better services without raising enough revenue; climate action while continuing to approve fossil-fuel expansion; and gambling reforms while remaining dependent on gambling taxes.

This is currently a system that rewards caution – which Anthony Albanese has taken full advantage of – the management of political messaging, and accommodating vested interests and concentration of power, more than it rewards problem solving. Mining companies, banks, property interests, gambling corporations, consultants, defence contractors and large media organisations don’t need to directly bribe governments, because it’s almost as though they’re a de facto part of government anyway – they have privileged access, the capacity to directly lobbying governments at any time, they can make political donations without any fear of being caught out or compromised, they have control over investment and employment, media influence and the ability to finance campaigns against the policies they don’t like and don’t want to see introduced.

The consequence is not so much the overt corruption but the expectation that governments will obey their instructions, or face the consequences. Governments then understand which proposals will provoke a costly political attack, so any proposal or policy recommendation is diluted well before the public gets to see them. Reform is then reduced to what the vested interests will allow.

Changing the costs of political failure

We’re always ready to identify all the problems that currently exist within politics and because we always bellow about it – possibly too often – it might appear that the entire system is so broken that it’s beyond redemption. But the good news is that the ready-made solutions already exist, if only there was the will to implement them.

As we’ve discussed many times before, the immediate reforms are available right now: real-time disclosure and tighter limits on political donations; comprehensive registration of professional and in-house lobbyists and restrictions for how much access they can gain with ministers; publication of ministerial diaries; enforceable cooling-off periods for former ministers; stronger whistleblower laws and protections for journalists; truth-in-political-advertising, effective and workable Freedom of Information rules and a properly resourced National Anti-Corruption Commission operating with greater transparency than what it has shown over the past three years.

All of these measures currently exist on some level – a weak truth in political advertising Bills was introduced into Parliament in 2024 but not passed – but they’re piecemeal, not backed up with any meaningful legislative powers, and have little or no consequence if they are ever breached.

In the longer-term, there needs to be a change in the distribution of political power, including proportional representation through multi-member electorates, stronger democratic processes within political parties, parliamentary control over war powers and major treaties, citizens’ assemblies, reducing dependence on external consultants and providing sustainable support for independent and public-interest media.

Of course, none of this could ever happen by itself, and it’s not just a matter of finding better politicians: it’s a matter of making the existing politicians perform to a higher standard, if we’re willing to demand it from them.

The objective is, first of all, to change the cost of political failure: to make it more politically costly for governments to ignore renters than property investors; more costly to ignore workers than employers; and more costly to serve donors instead of the public. These should all be self-evident and obvious truths, yet too many politicians act contrary to the public interest.

Change can always happen, but it will take a great deal of organised pressure outside of Parliament, as well as mood for change within. Australia is functioning in a least-worst position politically, because that’s where its leaders want to position the country. Of course, we should be thankful that Australia avoids political violence and dictatorships, but what a depressingly low bar that is to set for such a wealthy, largely peaceful, and highly educated country.

Politics won’t improve because leaders suddenly discover courage in a quiet moment of reflection: it will improve only when citizens rebuild the organisations and democratic institutions that have been allowed to fall by the wayside. Those institutions became weaker because the leaders who benefited from their decline allowed it to happen. Restoring them will require sustained public pressure, stronger civic participation and a willingness to demand more from out political leaders.

Australia could be doing so much better – but only when political timidity and weakness starts to carry a far greater price than implementing meaningful reform. Making that happen is the task that lies ahead for all of us.

One Nation’s support has suffered a drop in opinion polls, although it is too early to tell if it’s already reached its high-water mark and will drop down even further. The latest Roy Morgan poll shows One Nation in third place behind the Coalition, and this fall is consistent with most other polls that have been recently published.

In a Labor–One Nation contest, Labor leads by 55-to-45 per cent after preferences, and between Labor and the Coalition, Labor leads 56-to-44 per cent. Of course, these are only opinion polls, but it suggests the Labor Party would easily win an election – if it were to be held today – and despite the ongoing clamouring and promotion of right-wing causes by the mainstream media, One Nation would be nowhere near the levers of government, and rightly so.

This decline coincides with Pauline Hanson’s extended European junket, during which she addressed two conservative conferences in Britain, appeared with far-right anti-Islam activist and convicted criminal, Tommy Robinson, and was later photographed poolside, lapping it up with mining billionaire Gina Rinehart at the five-star Grand Hotel San Pietro in Italy. Hanson says the trip did not cost taxpayers “one cent” – it’s money or support coming from either Rinehart or Seven West Media – but she refuses to say who, even though she’ll have to inform the Parliamentary Registry of Expenses within 28 days.

At CPAC Great Britain – a conference of conservative has-beens and non-entities who are unhappy that the rest of the world is not championing their collection of insane far-right ideals – Hanson told her small audience that she was “sick of hearing about white privilege”, would “not apologise for being white” (even though no-one has asked her to), and feared for England’s future. Her assessment of the “British decline” was built around those familiar themes of the international populist right: migration, multiculturalism, Muslims, transgender people, net-zero policies and the supposedly malign influence of “globalists”. And, apparently, Australia is next to travel down this same road if it doesn’t watch out.

Let’s leave aside for the time being that many of Britain’s current issues are the results of over 40 years of neoliberalist policies, a continuous circus-act of incompetent governments, and the Brexit decision of 2016 – but it was an odd argument for Hanson to export from a country whose multicultural cities continue to perform highly by international standards. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2026 Global Liveability Index, from the over 4,000 recognised capital cities in the world, Melbourne was ranked third, Sydney was fourth and Adelaide was eighth.

This doesn’t mean that Australia doesn’t have issues that need to be dealt with – housing is increasingly unaffordable, wages have struggled to keep up with the cost of living, public services are constantly under pressure, and governments have repeatedly failed to plan adequately for population growth. But these are issues to do with government competence and economic policy, not evidence of cultural diversity causing the end of civilisation.

The company Hanson chose to keep when she was overseas was also problematic. Among the delegates were the former British 49-day prime minister Liz Truss, the failed Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and other desperadoes from the international right. Hanson’s separate appearance with Robinson was more even more concerning. Robinson has an extensive criminal record, including convictions for assault, fraud-related offences and ongoing contempt of court. Being interviewed by a controversial criminal might not be inherently terrible, but Hanson appeared as a sympathetic political subject in the same grievance-based world that Robinson lives in.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised Hanson for travelling overseas to “denigrate and talk down Australia”, which is exactly what she did. That’s a justified criticism but it’s also another reminder of the wider hypocrisy within conservative politics. The politicians most likely to describe themselves as “patriots” are increasingly willing to appear in front of foreign audiences and depict Australia as a broken society that’s been captured by hostile influences, even when the evidence suggests otherwise.

Another one of these hypocrites is Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie, who is keen to show the world – literally – that she is not going to be outdone by One Nation. Speaking at the same CPAC event, McKenzie declared that conservatives were “at war” with “leftwing globalists”, mass migration and “woke institutions”, and summoned conservatives across the English-speaking world to mobilise against these people. And if that wasn’t enough, she described Australia as becoming the “most woke” country in the world, before also attacking migration policy, transgender rights and net-zero. It’s pretty insane stuff.

McKenzie’s speech is of more consequence than Hanson’s because it came from the Senate leader of a party that sees itself as part of Australia’s mainstream alternative government. The Coalition’s election defeats in 2022 and 2025 should have prompted serious policy development on housing, insecure work, regional services, energy, climate adaptation and declining living standards – the issues that affect people in a material way every single day – instead, McKenzie – and Hanson – are gallivanting around the world in a self-indulgent talkfest and importing this far-right culture war garbage that believes that behind every policy problem is a mysterious international conspiracy of wokeness.

Developing workable policies that makes people’s lives better requires solid research, negotiations in parliament, trade-offs and an admission that some problems in this world are difficult. But who’s got time for that when there’s a luxurious Italian poolside to swim in or a suave fashion show to attend? All culture-war politics needs is an easily found enemy of hate, inflammatory language based on lies, and a social media campaign to force the issue.

For sure, this all mobilises anger and gets the attention, but how many new houses will be built by destroying the “most woke” country in the world? How many hospital waiting lists will be cut by attacking transgender people? How will engaging in a war against “leftwing globalists” improve schools or deliver infrastructure? Or better still, where do we find these leftwing globalists and when will this war against them commence?

Hanson’s return to Australia produced more of the same. At a leadership breakfast in Perth, she defended her trip, praised Rinehart as a “very proud, patriotic Australian” and said the billionaire supported One Nation because she recognised the same qualities in the party. Hanson presents herself as the friend of “the battlers”, but the battlers are very unlikely to share an Italian holiday resort with the likes of Rinehart, or attend the high-end Dolce & Gabbana fashion show.

Here we have the supposed champion of Australians abandoned by elites, relaxing poolside with a billionaire and mining magnate, while warning that the country was being stolen from under their feet. One Nation keeps telling voters that it’s the privileged establishment and elites that are responsible for their woes, while maintaining close relations with the most powerful economic interests in the country. Migrants, Muslims, climate advocates and transgender people – the other – are always at the centre of Hanson’s political story, while the business-as-usual of the concentration of wealth and corporate influence remains in place. And it’s this big gap in rhetoric that’s beginning to catch up with her.

Ultimately, Hanson is being exposed as just another politician – she said the dismantling of the White Australia policy was when Australia’s immigration system started to go wrong, but then denied she ever called for its return, despite calling for immigration to be stopped from “radical Islamic countries”, Gaza, and countries where women wear the burqa.

This raises obvious questions: would exclusions be based on nationality, religion, birthplace, individual security assessments or the political conduct of a government? Or would it be up to Hanson to decide?

The Department of Home Affairs suggests that a large proportion of overstayers come from China and the United States – not from the Muslim-majority countries that dominate Hanson’s rhetoric. Most of these people arrive lawfully and overstay temporary visas, and the government already has legal procedures for identifying, detaining and removing the very few unlawful non-citizens who exist in Australia. There is no need for a local US-style enforcement agency, because one already exists and there are very few unlawful non-citizens. But none of this matters to Hanson: it’s all about discussing an inflammatory issue, identifying a problem that doesn’t exist, and suggesting an extreme solution to that non-existent problem.

All these inconsistencies and ongoing foolishness doesn’t prove that One Nation’s support will continue to fall. There’s always going to be a receptive audience for this material, and it’s also easier for political figures from the right to manufacturer the outage, than do the hard work of developing policies that will make peoples lives better. During the week, we had a classic “man-bites-dog” story, where One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce appeared on the ABC’s 7.30 program, only to start shouting at one of his dogs mid-sentence, before returning to his endless list of grievances and complaints about the state of the world.

Of course, the media focussed on assessing why Joyce shouted at his dog, and how this became a viral social media moment – but nothing at all about the content of what he said in the interview. That’s why One Nation festers on: an environment where style is valued over substance, and the man barking at his dog is remembered for the bark, and not for his justification for why his party leader – Pauline Hanson – decided to meet with a known criminal in the UK, share a luxury hotel with a billionaire, or would want to bring back the White Australia policy.

But voters eventually expect politics to produce more than imaginary enemies, create endless culture wars, or offer solutions to problems that don’t even exist. One Nation will never be able to turn resentment into a credible policy – and if the Coalition continues following it deeper into an imported culture war – both will end up withering on the vine for a long time to come.

The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is – yet again – descending into a forum of “hurt feelings” from anonymous speakers, and advancing the political agendas of Zionist groups in Australia, at the expense of everyone else. The Commission was ostensibly created to address antisemitism in Australia and strengthen that favourite catchphrase of the Prime Minister – “social cohesion” – when, in fact, it seems to be working in the opposite direction, and fewer people understand what this social cohesion is meant to achieve.

As we suggested earlier this week, the latest evidence provided by Special Envoy Jillian Segal is a prime example. Segal has called for an independent body to scrutinise the ABC and SBS over their reporting of Israel and Palestine, arguing that the broadcasters should adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and, by implication, substantially alter their editorial approach to the conflict. More troubling is the suggestion that Australia’s public broadcasters should report more of “the good things Israel does” because their coverage has been “too negative”, as if the media should only operate in an environment where human interest stories and the supposed goodness in the heart of Israel should be presented to the Australian public.

But why should the media go searching for the “positive news” from Israel – under the direction of a body created by Segal – when all it’s going to do is to support a colonial–settler enterprise that’s stolen the land of Palestinians and destroyed so many lives? A state which has killed at least 70,000 people in Gaza – figures which Segal has disputed, even though the state of Israel broadly agrees with the number – and, according to some epidemiological assessments, up to 680,000? Where can this “positive news” be found?

Ironically, Segal’s broader criticism of Australian media is difficult to reconcile with the coverage that has actually been provided. If anything, mainstream reporting has frequently reflected official Israeli perspectives while devoting relatively little attention to the humanitarian consequences of the war in Gaza. Yet even this level of reporting is now regarded as excessively “negative” of the state of Israel.

Segal’s term as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism expires in July next year, and it’s unfortunate that we’ll have to tolerate her misinformation and the promotion of an extremist ideology for the next 12 months. A better outcome for social cohesion would be achieved if her tenure was terminated immediately, but given the current state of affairs and the Prime Minister’s lack of backbone on anything to do with Israel–Palestine affairs, that’s unlikely to happen.

The other hearings at the Commission have also shown a similar imbalance. Of course, genuine incidents of antisemitism need to careful examined but what exactly are we hearing at the Commission? What legal checks and balances are being used to verify the evidence, given that most of is being revealed under the cloak of anonymity?

Among the evidence presented was the testimony of a UNSW academic, who described four students allegedly performing Nazi salutes towards him during a business class in 2024, before going on to suggest that it wasn’t clear if they knew he was Jewish, or not. How carefully was this evidence scrutinised by counsel assisting? Other students claimed that friendships dropped off when they revealed themselves as Zionists and supporters of the state of Israel – as if, somehow, we’re meant to try really hard to maintain the relationships with those who condone the actions of a state that’s been committing genocide, war crimes and apartheid since at least 1948. Life is not as easy as that.

Of course, if this is what people are feeling and experiencing, that is real and it can’t be denied. But these are feelings and this is a Royal Commission, not an intimate counselling session where the feelings of hurt can be listened to by a paid psychotherapist, remain unexplored and not interrogated in any way.

Compare this with the material presented by co-convener for Students for Palestine Yasmine Johnson, who was continually questioned by counsel assisting. Johnson said that Israel is a “political project”, and that Zionism is an “ideology which supports the existence of the state of Israel, and that is a racist project”, and every piece of evidence provided by Johnson – who is Jewish – was constantly stalled, interrupted and queried. Of course, this is what a Royal Commission should do, but why is it that the information that runs counter to the narratives supported by Zionist groups is always carefully scrutinised, but no such scrutiny for the endless hurt feelings of Zionists who feel that any opportunity to portray themselves as the victims in their quest for an exclusive supremacist greater Israel project always needs to be taken up?

Nobody should feel that they are being harassed in a university environment – or any environment at all – but we need to get real about this. Although the Royal Commission has tended to focus on evidence of “hurt feelings”, the presence of Johnson – and the testimony provided last week by Sarah Schwartz, human rights lawyer and executive officer at Jewish Council of Australia – shows that there is a broader understanding and different opinions of the Israel–Palestine question within the Jewish community in Australia, than the ones that we are being led to believe through this Royal Commission.

So why do we mainly hear from the extremist elements within the Jewish community? Soon after Schwartz provided her testimony, News Corporation predictably lead the attacks on her, and this follows on from criticism from Zionist lobby groups describing her as “a self-hating Jew”, a “traitor”, as well as distributing memes depicted her as a rat. Why is this behaviour never called out?

And while there’s been a big focus on the hurt feelings on campuses in Australia, not all campus experiences around the world are the same, and these have received very little attention during these proceedings.

Since October 2023, Gaza’s education system has been devastated on a scale without precedent in modern times. Many experts and international human rights organisations have described this destruction as “scholasticide” – the destruction of an entire education system through the killing of students, teachers and academics and the demolition of schools and universities.

During this time, more than 18,000 students, around 780 teachers and education staff, and at least 120 university academics have been killed. Around 97 per cent of school buildings have been damaged, more than 430 school buildings have suffered direct hits from the Israel Defense Forces, and around 92 per cent now require major reconstruction or a complete rebuild. Gaza’s higher education sector has effectively ceased to exist, with 22 of its 38 university campuses completely destroyed, another 14 seriously damaged, and 195 of 206 university buildings are now unusable.

UN experts have also suggested that these attacks will have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental right to education, culture and freedom of expression for an entire generation of Palestinians, as well as creating long-term trauma. It’s a pattern of destruction that amounts to an intentional effort to erase Palestinian educational and intellectual life altogether, which is one of the clear and internationally recognised definitions of genocide.

But despite this scholasticide perpetrated by the state of Israel, can we still be friends? And please don’t call this out, because something that might have resembled a Nazi salute on campus – can’t be too sure, your honour – really hurt my feelings.

This catastrophe has barely been featured in a Royal Commission ostensibly concerned with social cohesion. The destruction of an entire education system, the deaths of thousands of students and hundreds of academics, and the elimination of Gaza’s universities raise profound questions about human rights and the application of international law. Yet, here in Australia, we have a public forum for some of the most privileged people in society, oblivious to the detrimental and genocidal actions of the state of Israel that they dearly love, complaining that nobody wants to be their friend anymore. It’s absolutely pathetic.

We also heard evidence – if that’s what it can be called – from Professor Josh Keller, representing the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A), who claimed that using the word “anti-Zionism” with a hyphen is anti-semitic (oops, my mistake – that should be antisemitic) but then failed to explain how this could ever be detected in the spoken language, rather than text on a page.

Yes, we’ve reached the realm of the truly bizarre and insane, where even the innocuous hyphen that has endured without charge since the 1600s, is now apparently guilty of antisemitism. Let’s see what the good professor has in store for the en dash, em dash, and other forms of punctuation, for their alleged crimes against the state of Israel.

This is now extreme overreach – as well as foolish – and the danger is that social cohesion and the opinions that we are told that we need to listen to are gradually being redefined according to the political priorities of particular interest groups, rather than existing as a universal democratic principle. A Royal Commission established to reduce division is now moving towards a situation where criticism of the policies of a foreign government is itself becoming subject to official scrutiny.

Australia’s democratic institutions depend upon free and open independent journalism, open debate and the ability to criticise governments – whether Australian or foreign – without fear of political sanction. If those principles are weakened in the name of “social cohesion”, then the Commission will ultimately reach the opposite of what it was established to achieve.

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy was right to argue at his National Press Club address that Labor should not surrender patriotism, defence or national security to the conservative side of politics. He was also right that Menzies’ record on appeasement is considerably more complicated than the polished version preserved by the Liberal Party. But once the debate shifted from saying Menzies supported appeasement towards Nazi Germany to describing him as an “appeaser”, and then suggest that he was a “coward”, the historical argument gave way to the standard fare of political theatre. And that’s a distinction that really matters.

Appeasement itself is a judgement about policy. Cowardice is a judgement about character, and in the case of Menzies, it brings up one of the ugliest episodes in Australian parliamentary history.

Conroy’s National Press Club speech wasn’t really about the 1930s, it was meant to be about national security today. By invoking the spirit of Labor leaders from Andrew Fisher to John Curtin, he argued that progressive politics has its own patriotic tradition and that Labor governments have repeatedly defended Australia in moments of crisis. These historical references were intended to strengthen Labor’s contemporary defence credentials, particularly around AUKUS.

That, of course, is a perfectly legitimate political undertaking. But history reconfigured to serve the purposes of current-day politics is often simplified until it becomes a part of a myth. Menzies is particularly vulnerable here, because there are really three versions of him.

Three Menzies, three different legacies

There is the pre-war Menzies: brilliant, ambitious and intellectually formidable, but still finding his political footing. Then there is the post-war Menzies: the founder of the Liberal Party, a builder of modern Australian conservatism and still Australia’s longest-serving prime minister. Then there is the memorial Menzies: the sacred Liberal ancestor, invoked by today’s members whenever the party needs legitimacy or a tradition to lean on.

The third version of Menzies is the one that dominates modern politics, and the Liberal Party is more interested in preserving this part of him, rather than examining his full legacy. But it’s the first Menzies who matters most in this current debate. In 1939, Menzies did support British appeasement towards Nazi Germany – sealed by Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s so-called “peace in our time” declaration. It doesn’t mean he necessarily admired Hitler or wanted Germany to prevail, but it meant that he shared the assumptions of much of the British political establishment, which believed negotiation might preserve peace while the military preparations continued behind the scenes.

Those assumptions also reflected the trauma of the First World War, the weakness of the League of Nations and the widespread fear of yet another European catastrophe, so soon after the previous one. Australian foreign policy remained deeply tied to Britain, and Menzies naturally viewed Australia’s interests through this imperial perspective.

When Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war in 1939, Menzies announced that Australia was also at war. His famous broadcast reflected this imperial loyalty that was common at the time, but not sympathy for Nazism.

However, his private correspondence reveals that the appeasement thinking lingered after the war had begun. Writing to Stanley Bruce, Australia’s High Commissioner in London at the time, Menzies speculated about possible German peace proposals and questioned whether Britain and France could sustain a prolonged war over Poland. His remark that “nobody really cares a damn about Poland as such” remains a sore point. So too does his suggestion that Britain should not dictate what form of government Germany ought to have. But these comments don’t make Menzies a Nazi sympathiser, rather they show that he continued trying to understand Hitler through conventional diplomacy when events had already demonstrated that Hitler could not be managed by conventional diplomacy.

That is the real historical criticism. There are other areas where Menzies commentary proved to be controversial – in 1938, as Attorney–General, Menzies went on an extended tour of Europe, suggesting that Hitler was “a dreamer, a man with many good ideas”, and observed that there “is a good deal of a real spiritual quality in the willingness of young Germans to devote themselves to the service and well-being of the state”. He also went on to address audiences in Australia by describing as a positive “the exalted and almost spiritual worship of the state by many Germans”, and that he looked forward to a system of democracy where “we can have real discipline and real efficiency and real cooperation”.

This is where Conroy’s argument is strongest when carefully framed, and weakest when exaggerated. Saying Menzies supported appeasement is historically defensible. Suggesting he remained open to negotiation after the invasion of Poland is also defensible. The more accurate statement is also the stronger argument: Menzies supported appeasement, seriously misjudged Hitler’s intentions and entered the war as the loyal leader of a British dominion. That is serious criticism without descending into caricature.

The word “coward”, however, belongs to an entirely different historical argument. The origins lie in one of the most vicious speeches ever delivered in the Commonwealth Parliament. After Prime Minister Joseph Lyons died in April 1939, Earle Page refused to serve under Menzies and launched a deeply personal attack. Rather than criticising Menzies’ policies, Page questioned why he had not served overseas during the First World War., where Menzies had remained in Australia while his brothers enlisted abroad, a decision made within his family.

Page transformed that private decision into a public accusation, suggesting Menzies lacked the courage necessary to lead Australia in another war. The speech horrified Parliament and even Labor members came to Menzies’ defence. And ironically, Page damaged himself far more than his intended target. Before the speech, Menzies was often regarded as brilliant but aloof. Afterwards, he appeared dignified under attack – Page has unintentionally given Menzies something he had previously lacked: public sympathy.

The lessons modern politics refuses to learn

Today’s Labor Party doesn’t need to question Menzies’ courage, as it already possesses a stronger historical case based on his political record. The greater irony is that the real Menzies is far more interesting that the mythical Menzies. The first Menzies ended his term as Prime Minister as an abject failure, suffering the ignominy of losing government from the floor of parliament rather than through an election, ultimately resigning in 1941. Yet it was these failures that the laid the foundations of his post-war success.

The second Menzies learned from defeat: he realised that anti-Labor politics required more than just parliamentary numbers. It needed institutions, a new form of political language, organisation and a social coalition that could withstand the test of time. His famous “Forgotten People” speeches reflected lessons learned through political failure as much as ideological conviction. His authority and influence over Australian politics arrived not because he had never been wrong, but because he understood why he had failed.

That is the greatest lesson that the modern Liberals have forgotten: learning from their failures.

Today’s Liberal Party invokes Menzies constantly while forgetting the qualities that made him successful. Menzies did the hard work of building institutions, rather than slogans. He understood building coalitions within the community was far more important than the politics of grievance.

However, Labor shouldn’t become complacent on all these issues either – it has its own tendency to transform history into political mythology, and is very good at it. John Curtin was undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest prime ministers, but he also had many flaws and shouldn’t become just a symbol used to legitimise every contemporary defence policy proposed by Labor.

Curtin’s greatness wasn’t based around patriotic rhetoric but in his willingness to rethink Australia’s strategic position when circumstances demanded it. He broke with old assumptions because Australia’s security at the time required independent judgement.

Conroy is right to argue that Labor possesses a serious national security tradition stretching from Fisher and Curtin, through to Chifley, Evatt, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. Progressive politics has never been incompatible with patriotism, despite what the conservatives want everyone to believe.

But reclaiming that tradition requires more than invoking names from the pages of history. Placing AUKUS within Curtin’s legacy doesn’t suggest AUKUS itself is strategically wise, affordable or genuinely enhances Australia’s sovereignty. However, the left should claim national security by doing what conservatives too often refuse to do: to think historically.

That means understanding alliances without worshipping them, recognising the threats without abandoning independent judgement – as Curtin did during the Second World War – and treating defence policy as part of a broader democratic national project rather than political symbolism.

Menzies deserves criticism, and a lot of it. He supported appeasement, seriously misread and misjudged Hitler and approached the war primarily as an imperial loyalist rather than the leader of an independent Australian nation.

But that isn’t the whole story: he also rebuilt Australian conservatism after a devastating defeat, created the Liberal Party, developed a political language that shaped Australia for a generation, and managed to transform his personal failure into enduring political success.

To acknowledge those achievements is not to endorse his style of politics or his ideology: it’s really a matter of taking history seriously, through the prism of its unvarnished truth. And that is what Australian politics too often refuses to do.

The current controversy initiated by Conroy serves a useful purpose. It reminds us that “coward” is the wrong word to use in the case of Menzies, because it repeats a discredited personal attack dating back to Earle Page. It reminds us that “appeasement” is a serious historical judgement that requires the correct evidence and context. And it reminds us that history becomes most dangerous when political parties transform it into mythology.

Menzies doesn’t need protection from history, as he becomes a far more interesting character when history is allowed to speak honestly, even if he’s not valued highly from the perspective of the left. What we know is that the first Menzies failed, and the second Menzies learned from that failure. The memorial Menzies teaches us almost nothing. That is the Menzies we are too often prevented from remembering – not because the facts are hidden, but because the myth is politically more useful.

Labor’s task isn’t to replace one myth with another. It’s to do something much rarer in Australian politics: tell the truth carefully.

There are two answers to the question of whether Angus Taylor is finished. The first is the usual Canberra answer, which is the least interesting. No, he’s not finished in the narrow sense: he’s still Liberal leader, and his deputy still backs him, which is what we’d expect him to say, publicly at least. His colleagues haven’t walked into the party room and removed him. Not yet. Politics is filled with leaders who looked terminal one week and indispensable the next, and the Liberal Party is hardly overflowing with alternative leaders capable of uniting its factions, of rebuilding its suburban vote and confronting Pauline Hanson and the threats from One Nation at the same time.

But the second answer is more important. Taylor might not be finished as leader, but he is perilously close to being finished as a plausible alternative prime minister. Opposition leaders can’t just simply survive; they need to define the political contest. To be effective, they must make governments react to them and convince voters that they represent the next government. At the moment, Taylor doesn’t look like that leader. Instead, he appears to lead a once-dominant political movement that has lost both its political argument and its emotional connection with voters, while increasingly finding itself dragged behind One Nation, despite the fact they hold 42 seats in parliament, One Nation with just the two.

The great opposition leaders who became prime minister did more than exploit government fatigue – they redefined Australian politics according to their will. Robert Menzies rebuilt the non-Labor side around security, enterprise and stability after the war. Gough Whitlam modernised Labor around education, cities, culture and national confidence. Kevin Rudd defeated John Howard by making Labor appear competent, moderate and ready to govern.

That is the standard by which Taylor must be judged on. The question is not so much whether he survives another bad poll or another week of internal criticism: it’s whether he’s making the Coalition look like a government-in-waiting. He isn’t and, instead, he leads a diminished party still trying to work out how much of Hanson’s politics it can adopt without admitting they’ve become dependent upon her.

From opposition to political emergency

The latest polling indicates the scale of the crisis. A primary vote in the high teens is not just a bad result; it’s an emergency. Labor remains comfortably ahead, One Nation continues to poll strongly, and Taylor now trails not only Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister but also Pauline Hanson. That should concern every single Liberal strategist out there. The party that once regarded itself as Australia’s natural party of government is now struggling to remain as the main force on the non-Labor side of politics.

To be fair, Taylor inherited a party already in a steep decline. The Liberals have been losing inner-city moderates to teal independents, younger voters to the Labor Party and the Greens, and many outer-suburban and regional voters to One Nation, and it’s a damage that stretches back well before his leadership commenced. The party never fully recovered from the Morrison years, when political marketing replaced trust, culture wars overshadowed basic competence and political management increasingly lacked any form of imagination at all.

Nor can this be blamed on Tony Abbott, however tempting that might be, who became leader in 2009. In opposition, Abbott engaged in a nihilistic and permanent state of political warfare – extraordinarily effective as an opposition leader, but dragged this behaviour into government, and never really articulated a coherent vision of what Australia could look like. His priorities were ideologically driven, and he struggled any form of trust with the electorate.

The leadership of Malcolm Turnbull offered an opportunity for the Liberal Party to reconnect with a modern and multicultural Australia, yet he also failed to bridge that gap between aspiration and political reality. He understood many of Australia’s long-term challenges but possessed neither the authority nor the determination to carry his party with him. On issues such as climate policy, energy and institutional reform, he appeared trapped between personal conviction, party constraints and political caution that seems to afflict prime ministers once they get to their cherished goal. Scott Morrison ultimately held the Coalition together longer than many expected, but his emphasis on marketing, resentment and permanent campaigning further narrowed the party’s appeal rather than renewing it as a broad and acceptable government.

That’s the crisis that Taylor has inherited and now confronts. He’s attempting to lead a party that has spent years encouraging distrust of moderation, expertise, compromise and institutions and it’s hardly surprising that many conservative voters now decided that if they want the politics of grievance, they may as well go to the original supplier. One Nation doesn’t need to get into government to inflict lasting damage upon the Liberal Party – all it has to do the emotional home of the anti-Labor vote.

To Taylor’s credit, he is totally correct when he says the trust with the electorate needs to be rebuilt. Since the pandemic commenced in early 2020, many conservative voters felt that governments had become too intrusive and dictating how people should live their lives. Some of those concerns might be genuine, others have fallen into the deep hole of conspiracy theories and following the grievances pushed by media, but they are politically significant. Taylor is attempting to speak to these voters without surrendering the agenda of the Liberal Party entirely over to Hanson. It’s an incredibly difficult balancing act and there is no easy path.

The multiculturalism test Taylor couldn’t pass

Leadership is judged not by whether the circumstances are difficult but by whether leaders still understand the country they are seeking to lead. Taylor’s handling of the recent debates over multiculturalism suggests he cannot. Australia’s multicultural makeup is not some kind of abstract slogan that can be sneered at by the far right, but exists as a lived reality: it’s who we are. It’s visible in our schools, in workplaces, businesses, sporting clubs, religious communities and families all across the country. It’s not an optional addition to an older Australia; this is modern Australia itself.

That is why Taylor’s equivocation has proven to be so damaging to his standing. It wasn’t an issue about trying to avoid Labor talking points, it was as issue about whether he can speak comfortably about the country as it exists today. Instead, he appeared trapped – by Hanson, by internal party pressures and by fears that any defence of multiculturalism would be interpreted by sections of the right as a sign of weakness. For a Liberal leader, this is a serious political problem, and the party that once claimed to represent aspiration across all communities now appears uncertain about the social reality of contemporary Australia.

What would a leader of a mainstream political party seek to curry favour with such a dilettante, ignorant and uninformed politician such as Hanson? Her politics is divisive and historically dishonest, yet it remains emotionally coherent, despite it being a patchwork of thinking-out-aloud though processes. People know what she believes, whom she blames and whom she claims to defend. That clarity gives her political strength, even when the story she tells is misleading. Taylor, by contrast, hasn’t offered an equally compelling alternative. Instead, he has assembled his own fragments – removal of “toxic” taxes, smaller government, warnings about spending and cautious cultural messaging – but no broader national story.

This is Taylor’s greatest weakness – it’s a cliché, but he lacks a cohesive narrative. The Albanese government has genuine vulnerabilities, with cost-of-living pressures severe for many people, housing affordability continues to deteriorate, and health, education and aged care all face significant challenges. On top of this, Labor’s caution and timidity on policy frustrates many people in the community. There’s so much material for a strong opposition leader to work with, yet the main political story today is not about Labor’s shortcomings: it’s all about the collapse of the Liberal Party and the rise of One Nation. That reflects poorly on Taylor’s leadership.

Survival is not the same as leadership

“Finished” is a dangerous word in politics. Hanson herself has repeatedly been declared politically dead before returning after an 18-year hiatus from politics. Albanese spent years being underestimated. Even John Howard, who once compared his prospects to “Lazarus with a triple bypass”, eventually became Australia’s second longest-serving prime minister. Politics is dictates by timing, circumstances – Harold Macmillan’s events, dear boy – internal factional movements and the absence of obvious alternatives.

Taylor may survive because there’s no rival who offers a clearly superior difference, in the same way that caused the insufferable survival of Peter Dutton: there is no alternative. Andrew Hastie might energise parts of the conservative base but that could further deepen the same strategic dilemma. A moderate revival might appeal to teal voters while further alienating conservatives drifting over to One Nation. The Liberal Party isn’t choosing between the good and bad options; it’s choosing among different versions of a decline, or the least-worst options. It’s such a bad political position for a party to be in.

That may ultimately be Taylor’s strongest protection – not public enthusiasm (because there is none), political momentum or confidence, but simply the absence of a more convincing option.

So is Angus Taylor really finished? Not yet, despite all the evidence that have been provided to support his removal. But the more significant question is whether he has already failed the essential test of leadership. He hasn’t made the Liberal Party appear ready for government. He hasn’t established himself as the obvious alternative prime minister. He hasn’t contained the rise of Pauline Hanson: if anything, he wants to become Hanson. He hasn’t forced the government onto the defensive. Above all, he hasn’t given disillusioned voters a good reason to return to the Liberal Party fold, rather than continue that slide towards degenerative grievance politics.

Taylor might yet recover. Might. Menzies and Howard are the constant reminders that political comebacks are always possible. But the odds are increasingly against him.

That’s the real danger. Taylor can remain Liberal leader while losing the only authority that ultimately matters: the authority of the electorate. He can retain his title while surrendering the political arguments over to One Nation. He can survive inside the party room while losing the rest of the country. And in doing so, he risks leading the Liberal Party into a vortex that’s becoming larger and deeper: a conservative politics in which One Nation supplies the anger, Labor supplies the government, and the Liberal Party supplies only the mirage.

Pauline Hanson is often described as angry, but the anger in itself is not the problem. We’ve seen historically that anger can be one of the great drivers of democracy: it has exposed the humiliation, exploitation and abandonment of people by terrible governments in the past, will continue to do so in the future. The question isn’t whether anger belongs in politics, but what that anger is hoping to achieve: is the purpose to shine a light on the behaviour of the powerful, or is there to hide the power? And is to identify who has caused these problems, or is it transforming this anger into resentment towards those who have even less power in society?

Hanson’s politics belongs firmly to the latter tradition. Rather than helping Australians understand the economic and political structures that have produced this sense of insecurity, it offers a simpler story in which migrants, Muslims, Indigenous Australians, trans people, public broadcasters, academics and assorted “elites” become the cause of a national decline. It’s a politics that creates problems without offering resolutions and solid grievance without an analysis, transforming genuine frustrations into suspicion of the people in the community who least responsible for creating them.

The common defence of Hanson is that she has identified real grievances but has misdirected them. But even that is being too generous. The grievances might be real, but her explanation of them was wrong from the beginning. Over the past four decades Australians have experienced insecure work, weakened unions, privatisation, regional neglect, housing speculation, declining public services and the growing power of the wealth class over democratic institutions.

Hanson has seen these developments over the years, but instead of identifying the political and economic order that produced them – and the underlying principles of neoliberalism – she has racialised their consequences.

The legacy of racial nationalism

In this sense, Hansonism didn’t emerge from nowhere in 1996. Australian political commentary often treats each eruption of right-wing populism as a shocking deviation from an otherwise tolerant national story, but the historical roots are much older. Australia was federated with racial exclusion close to the centre of its national identity, where The White Australia policy wasn’t a side issue of the newly created Commonwealth; it was one of its founding principles. Race, labour and nationhood were bound together through the promise that white workers would be protected, not by democratic control over economic power but by racial boundaries based around citizenship and employment.

Hansonism has inherited this tradition in a degraded form. It’s an style of thinking that speaks constantly of protection, but not protection from economic insecurity or concentrated wealth. Instead, it promises protection from cultural and demographic change, and nothing else: that’s it. The result is a politics that preserves existing economic arrangements while directing popular anger away from those who benefit most from them.

There is also a deeper lineage running through sections of the Australian far right, from the League of Rights and anti-communist conspiracies to the fear of international institutions, hidden elites and a betrayal of the nation. Hansonism is not just a continuation of those movements, but it draws upon the same political vernacular. Ordinary Australians are imagined as virtuous producers, constantly threatened by the external forces that do not truly belong: internationalists, bureaucrats, globalists, multiculturalists, human rights advocates or whichever group currently occupies the role of national enemy: they are not monoculturalists. The names change, but the structure remains the same.

Queensland provided much of the political theatre for this tradition. Former Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen demonstrated how anti-Canberra resentment, hostility to unions, suspicion of the ABC and an aggressive law-and-order politics could be repackaged as “common sense”. Hanson has inherited many of these instincts and adapted them for the age of television, talkback radio and social media.

Her rise coincided with the onset of neoliberalist thinking in the 1980s and 1990s, where protection for critical industries was removed, many public services were privatised, unions were neutered and employment became far less secure. At the same time, political leaders suggested that the third wave of globalisation that arose from neoliberalism was inevitable. Hanson’s “achievement” was to separate multiculturalism from neoliberalism in the public imagination, where she has persuaded many Australians to blame cultural diversity for economic changes that had little to do with migration and everything to do with political choices.

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This article continues by examining how Hansonism operates as a form of “racist neoliberalism”, why culture wars benefit powerful economic interests, the myth of a monocultural Australia, and what a genuine alternative to Hansonism might look like.

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For months, if not years, the world was told – mainly by the United States and Israel – that a confrontation with Iran was totally necessary and inevitable. When the attacks on Iran commenced in late February, the markets reacted accordingly, oil prices surged and the shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz were thrown into total chaos. At the time, there was a possibility of a wider regional conflict within the West Asia region and dragging the entire world economy into a catastrophe – and while there were several attacks on US bases in the region, the conflict has been limited to Israel’s unwarranted and illegal aggression in southern Lebanon and attacks on Beirut.

There is now a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran – and of course, we’ll have to wait until the conflict fully ends before we can believe that this MOU will actually end this war – but there’s an even bigger question that needs to be answered: what exactly was the point of this war?

Neither Washington nor Tehran has publicly released the full text of the agreement, which is due to be finalised in coming days and, as a result, much of this is speculation. However, there seems to be a broad outline from various diplomatic sources that frozen Iranian assets will be released, there’ll be less restrictions on Iranian oil exports, and new security arrangements over the management of the Strait of Hormuz will be implemented. The Iranian government is also pursuing compensation for damages from the United States, although it’s unclear how this would be achieved, or even if the US would be willing to proceed with such a reparation deal.

The US, of course, sees things differently – with a focus on reopening of the Strait of Hormuz (even though Iran did open it up, only for the US to close it down again for unknown reasons), stabilisation of global energy markets (even though it was their actions that created the instability in the first place), and guarantees from Iran that it won’t obtain or develop nuclear weapons.

On the evidence before us – and as been suspected for some time – this appears to be a massive loss for the United States (and Israel) and a major victory for Iran. And neither the United States or Israel have gone through the usual bravado of claiming a strategic victory – and certainly nothing like George W. Bush prematurely announcing “mission accomplished” in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq – and this comes after months of idle threats of escalating tensions and military confrontation.

US President Donald Trump has pushed the memorandum on Truth Social as a “diplomatic success”, but has wanted to move on from Iran very quickly, shifting attention back to domestic issues such as border security, infrastructure and economic policy. Yet the speed with which he appears to be “moving on” and eager to close off this saga raises a few uncomfortable questions for him.

If the outcome is a negotiated arrangement that allows Iran to continue exporting oil, gain access to frozen assets, avoid direct military action and remains a major regional power – and if anything, its power and stature in the region has increased – then it’s difficult to see what precisely the United States has gained through a confrontation, where the end result could have been achieved through diplomacy in the first place.

It’s even more difficult to understand the purpose of this war, when compared to the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump abandoned in 2018. At the time, Trump argued that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – agreed to in 2015 by the five permanent Security Council members of the United Nations, and the European Union – was fundamentally flawed, and promised a tougher approach on Iran. Yet this new agreement – if it comes to that – will delivers a deal that is significantly better for Iran than any previous deal. Once again: what was the point of it all, aside from acquiescing completely to the unrealistic and maniacal demands of Israel, the one country that might end up being the biggest loser out of this?

For years, successive Israeli governments have argued that Iran represents an existential threat requiring constant pressure, isolation and, when necessary, military action – a pissant country of 9 million people, demanding action from a country of 350 million, ultimately to be used against a country of 93 million people, and destabilising an entire region in the process. The assumption here is that Iran could be deterred, weakened and eventually forced into concessions, which of course, didn’t happen – and anyone with basic understandings of geopolitics and military strategy, could have easily predicted this outcome.

Instead, Iran has shown that it retains substantial military capabilities, significant regional influence – which has now been boosted – and enough leverage to force major powers back to the negotiating table. Whatever the effectiveness of Iran’s missile operations, the broader political outcome has reinforced Iran’s position as an important regional player, rather than an isolated pariah the United States has been telling the entire world for over 47 years.

Israel now also faces a deeper strategic problem. This conflict has drawn more international attention to the instability of the region, including the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, longstanding questions about the rights of Palestinian, and Israel’s current illegal invasions and military actions in southern Lebanon.

Increasingly, for global audiences, including those in Australia, the more the military escalation dominates the headlines, the more difficult it becomes for Western governments to maintain that deception about Israel’s “right to defend itself”, when the public can see for themselves which countries are causing this conflict. And for those in the electorate who are prepared to tolerate or overlook Israel’s assorted war crimes and invasions of neighbouring countries, they can certainly feel the effects of their actions at the petrol bowser or at the supermarket check-outs

The United States is also now finding itself on the outer in international circles, although for the current Trump administration, they’re possible not overly concerned about this. Most major European powers failed to support the US and showed little enthusiasm for a prolonged military confrontation with Iran. Of course, their lack of enthusiasm for conflict would have been based around self-interest, rather than any humanitarian concerns about Iranians or Palestinians – they understood that a major war in the region would threaten global energy supplies and have a significant economic impact – but the fact that they didn’t support the US at all, is quite telling.

These economic consequences also raise another uncomfortable issue that deserves far greater scrutiny, an issue that we previously explored in “The kings of chaos: Who really profits from war”. Major geopolitical crises such as this create enormous opportunities for speculation and profits, where significant movements in oil futures, defence stocks and shipping markets create winners and losers – mainly winners among the captains of industry – long before any diplomatic settlement is reached. Was this war all based around creating these winners in the United States? When will the important questions start being asked by the US regulators?

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the entire episode is how little appears to have changed despite the enormous risks involved. We’ve long argued that there was a distinct lack of a strategy in this attack on Iran. Many military commentators and experts were bemused by the direction of US action in the region, and could not quite follow the tactics, because it seemed to defy the history of successful military campaigns. There were some suggestions that Trump was utilising Richard Nixon’s madman theory of bizarre and unorthodox strategies to bamboozle and confuse the opponent, but in the end, it was the sign of a madman who simply didn’t know what he was doing.

Just look at the results: Iran remains governed by the same political system, and while the regime change that Trump openly espoused resulted in the assassination of Iran’s spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, the government remains the same. The US is deeply entangled in the Middle East and can’t pull out, even if it wanted to. Israel is despised even further, not just in the region, but not all around the world, and remains locked in an even deeper competition with its neighbours. There’s still a wide range of disputes concerning sanctions, regional influence, nuclear technology and security issues that remain unresolved, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Nothing has changed. The rest of the world, however, has paid the price for this foolish intervention, through destabilised fuel and energy supplies, shipping and supply chains disrupted, and yet another period of global fear and uncertainty, as if the world hasn’t had enough to deal with over the past decade. And for what reason?

Of course, history will be the final arbiter of the merits – or otherwise – of Trump’s foolish war, but it proves that a show of strength and injecting a large dose of testosterone rarely wins the war, unless it’s supported by strong diplomacy. But this in itself, is an inherent contradiction: strong diplomacy in the first place would have avoided this conflict, but the likes of Trump, Peter Hegseth and Marco Rubio had other ambitions, which were not clear to anyone else, and perhaps not even to themselves.

The real losers here are those who occupy the White House and the Knesset, and the war mongers who were too stupid to save themselves from their own ignominy. And they will continue to convince themselves, and their supporters, that they really did win the war, even when all the evidence suggests the opposite. For all the talk of imaginary victories, the final verdict is very easy to make: a massive amount of damage was done to the global community and economy, a great deal of unwanted risk was created, and in the end, America’s idiot king has arrived back to the point where he started. That really is a special skill.

Has AUKUS only ever been about the submarines? For many years, this is what the focus has been on: new/old submarines, will they arrive/won’t they arrive… and during this time, the political class and mainstream media has corralled the discussions in a child-like way towards the costs, delivery timetables, industrial capabilities and whether the United States will ultimately provide the nuclear-powered submarines that successive Australian governments have been promised. Yet underneath this charade – which has primarily been led by defence minister Richard Marles – is a much bigger development that has received almost no public attention at all.

And it’s something that we do need to pay more attention to and be deeply concerned about, because, if it all proceeds, it could be the end of Australia’s independence and sovereign defence capabilities, and a one-way funnel of taxpayer funds to prop up the US–Israel military industrial complex(es) that continues forever.

There’s a new provision before the US Congress at the moment – Section 224 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act – and it proposes a significant expansion of defence technology co-operation between the United States and Israel. Known as the “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, it will establish new frameworks for joint research, development, testing, production and integration of military technologies across a broad range of emerging defence sectors, including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems such as drones, cyber warfare, missile defence, quantum computing and networked military operations.

It means that even simple Israeli innovations such as “skunk water” – a liquid spray with an odour worse than raw sewage and excrement combined, and can linger for weeks after being sprayed from armoured water cannons – can be used equally on the streets of the West Bank or at a No Kings protest in Minnesota, as the circumstances require.

This might seem like the logical extension of a nefarious and clandestine defence relationship that has existed for decades, certainly since the Second World War, but it will make the Israeli and US defence forces almost indistinguishable. Of course, the proposed legislation has been strongly supported by pro-Israel and Zionist organisations in the US, but there’s something more disturbing about this that’s taking place.

Since the state of Israel was created in 1948, the US has transferred over $330 billion in military aid directly to its defence forces, including two additional support payments of at least $34 billion since October 2023, authorised by US President Joe Biden, and continued by Donald Trump.

While their defence forces will technically remain separate if the Act is passed, the legislation will remove that requirement that Congress needs to approve any expenditure or aid granted to Israel, military spending essentially becoming a line-item in the US defense budget that can be increased at whim – and at the behest of the US Defense (War) Secretary, as though Israel exists as a special (and expensive) military outpost of the United States. And like a spoilt and demanding nepo-baby, the state of Israel will no longer need to ask for the funds to perpetrate its endless genocides, it will just take.

This is also an outcome that will fast-track Israel’s expansion into other parts of the West Asia region as well, something we’re already seeing in Gaza and southern Lebanon – at last count, 3866 civilians have been killed by the IDF; in response, just four Israeli civilians have been killed by Lebanese forces – and it will also bind the two countries’ defence industries, research programs and technology ecosystems together for decades to come, if not permanently.

It’s a strategic partnership so deeply embedded through a de facto merger that it would be extremely difficult for any future government to unravel. And after US President Donald Trump’s statement to Israel to say that “he is the one calling the shots” – a US president who was genuinely calling the shots would never need to make such a statement – it’s clear which country would create the difficulties if the United States ever sought to bring the arrangement to an end.

That’s where the issue lies between US and Israel, but it’s not where it ends. For Australia, that distinction about who is calling the shots might not matter too much, because it might end up being a case of Australia receiving the shot calls from either the United States or Israel. And this is the bigger question for us: what happens when Australia increasingly embeds itself so deeply into the American defence ecosystem at the same time that the United States is seeking a deeper integration into Israel’s defence systems? It’s also where AUKUS becomes a key part of this narrative, although it’s clear that it’s not one the Australian government wants to speak very openly about.

Since it was announced in 2021, AUKUS has gone way beyond submarines. Pillar I covered the much-maligned nuclear-powered submarines that we are never going to receive, but Pillar II encompasses the far broader agenda involving AI, autonomous systems, cyber capabilities, sophisticated undersea warfare and advanced military networking. These are exactly the same kinds of technologies outlined in Section 224 of the Act that’s now being discussed by the US Congress, and it’s not a coincidence that Pillar II is almost a replica.

The Albanese government, like the Morrison government before it, has argued that Australia must become “more interoperable” with the United States, in response to a “deteriorating strategic environment”, which has deteriorated only because they keep saying it has, ably supported by the hawks of hack journalism at the Sydney Morning Herald and News Corporation.

“Interoperability” has become one of the key buzzwords of Australian defence policy and it’s the word that Marles and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese like to keep using in the context of AUKUS: it might seem like a fancy and innocuous piece of defence terminology, but it also means that Australian defence forces will be communicating, operating and fighting seamlessly alongside US forces and, if the Act is passed by Congress – which is becoming increasingly likely – alongside Israeli F-35 fighter jets as they bomb yet another village of innocent civilians in southern Lebanon, or decide to revisit Gaza and continue with the genocidal campaign there. Or perhaps expand into the other areas that are outlined within their Greater Israel project.

This is what “interoperability” is in reality, and it’s something that has never been clearly discussed with the Australian public. According to Pew International, 79 per cent of the Australian public has a negative view of the state of Israel, including 49 per cent who hold a “very unfavourable” view. Before the accusations of “antisemitism” start to appear, the Australian public also has a similar view of the state of Russia – 79 per cent hold a negative view – but the Australian government is not about to forge a permanent military alliance with the Russian defence forces.

How would the Australian public react if its government did ally with Russia to perform massacres in the Ukranian cities of Mariupol, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia? Or ethnically cleanse the regions of Donbas or Crimea? Swap these Ukrainian regions with the Palestinian regions of the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis – or many of the hundreds of cities that have obliterated from the map by Israel – and this is what “interoperability” will look like for the Australian Defence Forces after 2027, if this Act is passed by the US Congress.

When military systems become so deeply interconnected, decisions that are made in one country increasingly do affect smaller partners elsewhere. Australia will never have the stature or relevance within the AUKUS deal – or Pillar II – to be able to object to the involvement of its forces in any US- or Israel-led war activity anywhere in the world. It will be a case, to paraphrase former Prime Minister Robert Menzies, where if the US or Israel declare war upon any country in the world, as a result, Australia will also be at war.

If the United States proceeds with deeper defence technology integration with Israel, Australia will also be directly connected to those same systems, programs and industrial systems developed by Israeli technology and expertise. Of course, this won’t mean that Australia will instantly become responsible for the actions of the Israel Defence Forces, but it would mean that it becomes a part of a defence system that reaches far beyond the Indo–Pacific region. And this is the reality that’s likely to become increasingly controversial within Australia once the public finds out what this AUKUS – Pillar II deal is really leading us towards.

Public attitudes towards Israel – as shown by the Pew International research – have shifted dramatically across much of the Western world since the beginning of the Gaza war. Allegations of war crimes, collective punishment and breaches of international humanitarian law have generated intense criticism from governments (not many but definitely not Australia), many human rights organisations and large sections of civil society. Whether these allegations are upheld by international courts is, of course, a matter for the respective legal systems, but the political controversy surrounding Israel’s conduct is undeniable.

For Australians who oppose the policies of the Israeli government – and it seems that 79 per cent of the population does – this deeper integration between the United States and Israel raises some serious questions. If Australian military systems increasingly rely upon technologies developed through joint American–Israeli programs, what level of political scrutiny should become a part of that process?

Should Australians have a say in whether their defence infrastructure becomes connected to partnerships extending into the Middle East/West Asia region, especially for a country they view so unfavourably? Shouldn’t Parliament be the national forum where the implications of these issues are debated and fully inspected before they become so deeply embedded that we’ll never be able to get away from them?

This is the issue that needs to be explored and it’s really concerning how little attention and coverage both AUKUS – Pillar II and the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act have received in Australia. Sure, the Act is an American piece of legislation debated in faraway Washington but the consequences – unintended or otherwise – will have great long-term implications for Australia.

The future of AUKUS isn’t just about boats in the water, or even not in the water. This is about how much autonomy Australia really has in its defence capabilities, and how much its government is prepared to inform its own public on what it’s just about it embark upon. And before these foundations become permanent and are set in stone, the public deserves to know exactly what we’re in for before it’s far too late to do anything about it.

It’s clear that Israel’s war and genocide in Gaza – now rapidly expanding into southern Lebanon and beyond – has revealed the cowardice and complicity of the Albanese government, but it’s a political issue that’s becoming harder to keep hiding away from in the hope that it all just goes away.

Every atrocity and war crime that the Israel Defense Forces have inflicted in the region – whether it be the destruction of entire villages, killing civilians, medical staff or journalists – is waved away as Israel’s right to defend itself, a brief show of concern or serious concern (depending on the gravity of the situation) or, in the case of IDF’s killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, a phone call of feigned outrage to the Israeli ambassador. And then, a few days later, it’s back to business as usual: running cover for the state of Israel and the Zionist cause, which seems to be the true purpose of political leaders, not just in Australia, but in the United States and many other Western nations around the world.

The result is the perpetual caution the Albanese government is well known for: expressions of concern, calls for restraint, carefully worded statements about humanitarian suffering, and repeated appeals for diplomacy that no-one seems to listen to, or barely do anything about it. Even when it comes to Australian citizens, the government can be depended on to avoid the issue entirely, and so it came to be when serious allegations of rape and sexual violence were made last week against military personnel from the IDF.

The allegations made by filmmaker and activist Juliet Lamont, following her detention by Israeli authorities after participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, should change what many leaders in Canberra would prefer to forget about and regard as a distant foreign policy issue, and turn it into a serious domestic political problem. But we just know that it won’t happen: the Australian government is just too compromised by Israeli and Zionist interests to allow this.

Lamont has publicly alleged psychosexual abuse, torture and rape while in Israeli custody. And she’s not the only one – ten other Australian participants in the flotilla have reported beatings, mistreatment and sexual abuse, and have submitted their evidence to the International Criminal Court.

For the Albanese government, this creates a dilemma it has largely avoided, and will do its best to keep avoiding. Supporters will argue that the foreign minister Penny Wong has described the actions as “shocking and unacceptable” and “reinforced the government’s displeasure” to the Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman but, as we saw in case of Zomi Frankcom, there’ll be no follow up and certainly no further action. Wong will wait for the issue to blow over and continue to support Israel and the right to defend itself.

During the case of Brittany Higgins – who was sexually assaulted in Parliament in 2019 by Bruce Lehrmann – Anthony Albanese said in Parliament that “women who come forward should be believed… I encourage women to speak out”. And this always has to be the case. But here we have at least 11 Australian’s who have made the claims of sexual violence and abuse by Israeli military personnel, and the Australian government doesn’t have too much to say about it. It’s obvious that for Albanese and Wong too, wearing the keffiyeh or supporting the cause of Palestine nullifies that right for women to be believed or the right to speak out and be heard.

This issue is no longer just about Gaza. It’s about whether Australia’s leaders are prepared to apply the same standards of human rights, justice and accountability to the state of Israel as they routinely apply to their adversaries. Israel is continuing its terrorist campaign into southern Lebanon and beyond – overnight, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu issued an instruction for Israel to attack the capital Beirut as well – and the world, including Australia, is just standing by and allowing these crimes against humanity to continue.

The search for accountability

The Global Sumud Flotilla was a humanitarian mission where more than 400 activists from around the world attempted to deliver much-needed food, medicine and baby formula to Gaza by sea, and were hoping to break Israel’s naval blockade of the occupied territory. This ended on 18 May when Israeli forces violently and illegally intercepted the flotilla in international waters and detained those on board.

According to those submissions lodged with the International Criminal Court, the activists have alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and other violations of international law perpetrated against them. Several of these people have publicly described physical assaults, degrading treatment and sexual abuse during their detention, and there are other statements from the flotilla organisers which claim dozens of participants suffered injuries severe enough to require hospital treatment, with some requiring further hospitalisation after their release.

Of course, Israeli officials have categorically denied these allegations, which is what they always do because Israel, apparently, has the most moral army in the world. But whether Israel disputes the evidence or not is immaterial: what matters the most is whether governments are prepared to treat such allegations seriously enough to warrant an independent investigation.

The involvement of the ICC changes this significantly, and substantial documentation to support these allegations has been provided to the Court. It’s up to the ICC to make a determination about these actions but we know that irrespective of how well and independently the Court proceeds with its work, Israel will always deny the charges – if it comes to that – and fabricate material on the background of judges involved in the case, or any other legal personnel who worked to support the allegations. Why? Because this is what Israel always does, and it abides by different rules, as adjudicated by itself and by the United States.

For the Australian government, the question is whether it intends to support those processes when they involve an ally, if, indeed, that’s what Israel is. Albanese and Wong have routinely been the grand champions of the international “rules-based order”, the authority of international courts and the importance of human rights protections and now is the time to show whether they really mean this or not.

The problem of double standards and hypocrisy

Since the onset of the #MeToo movement in the late 2010s and the sexual abuse committed against Brittany Higgins in 2019, many political leaders have rightly pointed out the importance of taking allegations of sexual violence seriously; that victims need to be heard, and that allegations need to be investigated, rather than dismissing out of hand, which, historically, institutions in Australia have tended to do. These principles have become embedded within public debate, although there has been predictable resistance from the right, most notably the free speech warriors over at News Corporation.

But the double standards have become particularly acute when it comes to Israel and Gaza. If these actions of sexual violence and rape had been committed by the militaries of Russia, China, Iran or another geopolitical adversary, the responses by the Australian government would have been swift, and the respective ambassadors would have been expelled before day’s end.

But for Israel there are no such issues: a quick phone call from Wong to the Israeli ambassador to reinforce the government’s displeasure, probably ending with a confirmation of dinner for two at the Water’s Edge on the foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin, just to make sure the Australia–Israel relationship is solid and the delivery of F-35 parts and explosives to Tel Aviv will continue according to schedule.

This is what our Australian government is supporting: silence on war crimes and sexual violence committed by Israel; silence on the supply of military parts and explosives to Israel that are then used to bomb civilians in Gaza (yes, a ceasefire is in place; but no, it’s not a real ceasefire), Lebanon and Iran. And who knows where there will end: Israel has made no secret of its Greater Israel project based on the biblical claims from 3,000 years ago that most normal and mature countries have grown out of. How much of Lebanon will Israel invade and annexe? When will they invade Iraq and continue up to the Euphrates? Or invade parts of Egypt?

According to the old proverb, possession is nine points of the law and once these territories are seized and ethnically cleansed, it’s very difficult to return those lands, especially when the international community is almost inactive to stop it from happening in the first place. Who will stop the government of Israel acting this way, the most aggressive, racist and maniacal government in the world, when it has its general elections coming up over the next few months?

These issues are becoming more apparent to more voters in many countries in the Western world, even if their political leaders won’t lift a finger to stop Israel and, in the case of the Australian government, actively support Israel’s genocidal actions and war crimes with the supply of military parts and explosives. These are the concerns that are becoming increasingly widespread among younger Australians, progressive voters and many multicultural communities.

And it’s an ongoing pattern: the case of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom remains symbolic of these concerns. Frankcom was killed in a deliberate Israeli strike in Gaza in 2024, prompting the expressions of “concern” from the Australian government but no consequence. And now, we have Australians themselves alleging abuse while in Israeli custody, and the same concerns have come up.

If this government believes in accountability, when will it demand it of Israel? There’s no accountability when Israel kills over 70,000 Palestinians, or reduces 80 per cent of Gaza to rubble. There’s no accountability when Israel deliberately targets an Australian aid worker, and then claims it was an accident. And it seems, there won’t be any accountability when Australian citizens allege torture, rape, sexual violence and mistreatment perpetrated by the IDF.

The real question has to be: what would it take for the Australian government to finally speak up against the many crimes of the state of Israel? If international law is worth defending – the so-called “rules-based order” – does that commitment extend to politically inconvenient cases?

Every new allegation, every new report from humanitarian organisations and every new civilian casualty increases pressure on governments to move beyond their rote expressions of “concern” and work towards responses that are far more tangible and meaningful. The longer governments refuse to act, the more their silence reinforces their complicity.

And this issue is becoming more difficult for Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to keep avoiding. It’s not going to go away, and they have to explain why they’re not prepared to defend Australian citizens when crimes are committed against them by Israel, as well as why they keep supplying the Israel Defense Forces with military parts and explosives that are then used to kill civilians.

They might feel that this is a distant foreign policy issue, but it’s becoming a domestic political test to find out who they really are, and if there’s any skerrick of moral consistency, political courage and credibility that still lives inside them.

The political fallout from the treatment of Gaza flotilla activists by Israeli authorities is becoming a much bigger issue than the actions of one extremist minister posting humiliating videos on social media. What occurred on the Global Sumud flotilla – where civilians were illegally detained in international waters, kneeling with zip ties around their wrists, while Israel’s extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir mocked them publicly – has exposed more openly what Western governments have spent nearly two years defending, or carefully avoiding confrontation with Israel over the destruction of Gaza and the broader collapse of international law.

For leaders such as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, the problem isn’t just about Ben-Gvir, it’s what he represents. Ben-Gvir is no longer the maverick outlier who can conveniently be dismissed as an embarrassing extremist operating on the fringes of Israeli politics. Whenever Albanese and Wong claim Israel does have a right to defend itself, this is the Israel that they’re also expecting us to defend as well.

What is frequently ignored is that he is a part of the Israeli government and holds enormous influence over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s splintered coalition and represents a growing concern within Israeli politics that’s becoming harder for Western leaders to explain away while still pretending Israel remains a beacon of democracy – the only one in the region, apparently – and supposedly operates within the boundaries of international laws and protocols.

Ben-Gvir’s behaviour is grotesque, but it’s not new: this is who this guy is. Public humiliation, dehumanisation and his theatrical display of dominance have long formed the main part of his political identity, and he humiliates Palestinians in the same way each and every day. Recently, he celebrated his birthday with a cake decorated with a golden noose, after he mandated the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians deemed to be engaged in “acts of terrorism”. And we know that in Israel, “terrorism” could mean anything, even a Palestinian child throwing a stick at a police officer after being arrested for an unknown and concocted criminal charge.

Ben-Gvir is heavily influenced by the banned fascist movement, the Kahanists, who openly advocate Jewish fascism and supremacy, violent nationalism and the expulsion of Palestinians. In 1994, one such Kahanist – Baruch Goldstein – murdered 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Ben-Gvir also displays Goldstein’s portrait in a prominent position in his home – an illegal settlement near Hebron – and has constantly lauded and admired him throughout his political career, claiming that “he is my hero”. These are the values Albanese and Wong want Australians to defend when they say Israel does have a right to defend itself.

What makes this difficult for Western governments to continue to ignore is that Ben-Gvir is not irrelevant within Israel, or some kind of fringe activist. Polling over recent years has shown significant levels of support for his rhetoric and actions among the Israeli public – according to Pew Research, 36 per cent of Israelis support his actions – and his party, Otzma Yehudit – Jewish Power (of course) – remains influential because Netanyahu’s government depends upon figures like him to survive. This destroys that convenient fiction frequently used by Western governments that Israel’s maniacal behaviour can simply be blamed on a handful of rogue extremists detached from broader Israeli political culture, when they are actually a central part of it.

Of course, Ben-Gvir has behaved in this way for many years, but the recent incident on the Sumud flotilla has placed a greater focus on his outrageous and unhinged behaviour. The Australians who were a part of the flotilla were stripped naked, assaulted, denied legal access and subjected to psychological humiliation. They were also held at gunpoint, hidden and beaten inside shipping containers, and terrorised after Israeli forces illegally intercepted the flotilla in international waters, just outside of Cyprus.

Israel – as it always does – has denied all allegations and insisted detainees were treated lawfully, while Israel’s ambassador to Australia – Israel’s propagandist-in-chief Hillel Newman, has dismissed all accusations of violence and abuse. Yet these denials are increasingly at odds with the reality of what people can now see directly through videos, the testimonies and the vast volume of independent reporting emerging from the region itself.

Why is it that we are expected to believe every single unsubstantiated word that’s uttered at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion – yet dismiss all the documented evidence and statements from over 400 people on the flotilla who were simply trying to bring much-needed aid to the people of Gaza?

We’re not expecting things to change that much – after all, the Australian government, like many others around the world, seems to have an infinite level of tolerance for the many crimes and misdeeds of Israel – but this could develop into a deeper crisis that all governments will need to face up to.

For decades, almost every Western leader has managed the domestic perceptions of conflicts within Israel–Palestine through lugubrious and slippery diplomatic language, massaging the media messaging and deliberately making it all seem too ambiguous for anyone to understand. And haven’t Albanese and Wong – along with so many others in Australia – been the masters of this, with different messages flying out from each side of the mouth on every occasion, with the key words filtering through to the leaders of Zionist lobby groups, because they are the ones who all of this language is directed towards.

Public outrage is softened through carefully crafted talking points about “both sides”, “security concerns”, “complex regional dynamics”, “difficult to judge”, and the classic go-to talking point: “Israel does have a right to defend itself”, a concept that isn’t afforded to many other countries in the region, and certainly not for the state of Palestine.

But as much as they will continue to show their weaknesses with these tactics, Israel’s actions Gaza and now in southern Lebanon have shattered that strategy and makes it more difficult to sustain. Social media, independent journalism and the unprecedented scale of destruction in the region have made that method of influencing public perception far more difficult, particularly among younger audiences who increasingly distrust mainstream political institutions and corporate media narratives. And because of this, the Albanese government now finds itself trapped inside this political balancing act that is becoming more unstable with each and every week.

Australia’s strategic alliance with the United States and longstanding diplomatic support for Israel sits on one side, but that’s becoming increasingly unpopular. On the other is the mounting public anger over the actions of the United States and Israel, a public that increasingly sees Western responses to the conflict, including Australia’s, as morally bankrupt and hypocritical.

This is why the situation in Gaza, southern Lebanon and now Iran has evolved into something far larger than a foreign policy issue, even if most people can’t fully comprehend these conflicts. It’s now cutting directly through to Australia’s domestic politics: universities, the media, arts organisations, sporting bodies, councils and workplaces are increasingly being drawn into a battleground over Palestine, protest rights, censorship, with the usual accusations of antisemitism and political intimidation.

That erosion of Australia’s legitimacy on these matters also carries enormous long-term consequences for the body politic, which seems to be so easily discarded by many countries around the world, in their quest to support the rouge and out-of-control state of Israel which, essentially is being governed by the likes of Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who are the modern day versions of Himmler, Rosenberg and the brownshirts from the Nazi era.

Once domestic populations begin to realise that governments are applying human rights, democracy and international law selectively rather than universally – bearing in mind that all politics involves a certain level of duplicity and double-speak – the damage to the body politic doesn’t end up being restricted just to the field of foreign affairs. That collapse of trust then begins to permeate through to other areas – if this hasn’t already been breached – the media, political parties, universities, courts and democracy itself.

That’s what makes the flotilla incident so significant in Australia. It wasn’t just about a few hundred activists who were illegally intercepted at sea, it’s a symbolic representation of the clash between two versions of events, and only one of those is being believed. In one version, Albanese and Wong – and others – will continue speaking the concocted language of diplomacy, alliances and restraint (i.e. the outrageous lies) primarily because they’re close to hopeless and know nothing better.

In the other version, millions of ordinary people are watching graphic evidence of war, occupation, starvation and humiliation – not just of Palestinians and Lebanese people, but of their own citizens – in real time while political leaders insist the situation remains too “complex” and “far away” for them to offer any kind of meaningful and moral position.

The danger for Western governments is that the old language of diplomacy that’s been in use since the 1800s no longer works. It’s all high-level bullshit and people can see this for themselves. Every new image from the region, every viral video of humiliation by extremists such as Ben-Gvir, every allegation of abuse followed up with even more evasive statements and denials just keeps chipping away at the credibility of the political establishment, if there’s any left at all.

The issue is no longer about whether governments support Israel: they obviously do, and will continue do so, despite everyone’s protestations. There must be some serious-level kompromat being held on all these political leaders – or threats being made to their family members or other types of blackmail – because no leader in their right mind would support the actions and activities of the state of Israel, especially taking into account the actions of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, unless these types of threats against them are being made.

And it’s also obvious that large sections of the public no longer support the state of Israel, and its behaviours in the region. For the Australian government, that’s the real political crisis that it’s facing – not just the collapse of faith in Israel, but the slow collapse of faith in the entire Western political and moral framework that protected it for so long. The real question is why it has come to this.

What was meant to be a Royal Commission to examine antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia has quickly become much broader and far more politically dangerous: the attempt to recreate the boundaries of acceptable political debate and dissent surrounding Israel, Zionism and the destruction of Palestine.

While it was established to address allegations of rising antisemitic abuse following the October 7 attacks in Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, the inquiry was initially framed as an effort to protect vulnerable communities after the Bondi terror attacks in December 2025. However, it’s now morphed into an attempt to blur that distinction between antisemitism, and criticism of Israel and Zionism.

Much of the testimony presented at the Commission is basically suggesting that any form of solidarity with Palestine is inherently antisemitic. The presence of Palestinian flags, watermelon symbols, university encampments, fundraising drives for children injured by the barbaric actions of the state of Israel, artistic exhibitions and slogans such as “from the river to the sea” are all now being claimed as acts of antisemitism. In this kind of environment, even describing the actions of the Israeli state as “barbaric” risks being interpreted as antisemitism, and the overall effect of this is to create a climate where legitimate critique of a specific nation–state will result in the criminalisation of those making the criticisms.

Much of this is arising from the application of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which too easily combines opposition to Israeli government policy or Zionism, with antisemitism. This Royal Commission has adopted the IHRA definition rather than more sensible alternatives such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which clearly distinguishes between antisemitism and criticism of Israel as a political entity. This is an enormous distinction in a democratic society such as Australia, if that’s what we claim to be. If opposition to nationalism, occupation, military and state violence or extremist ideology can be twisted and re-presented as racial hatred just because Israel is involved, then we may as well give up on that claim and just let legitimate political debate disappear for good.

The inconsistencies are more obvious once we compare the acceptance of the actions of Israel with the treatment of other communities during similar international actions. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many Australians of Russian background experienced hostility and social stigma, yet few political leaders or media outlets warned against conflating ordinary Russian people with the actions of the Vladimir Putin; in fact, the social stigma seemed to be encouraged. Yet criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and now in southern Lebanon – despite the massive amount of civilian casualties, widespread destruction and mounting international condemnation – is increasingly treated as a unique political situation or brushed off as “Israel’s right to defend itself”, and protected from the scrutiny that’s directed at every other country in similar circumstances.

The bigger danger here is that the Commission risks transforming legitimate concerns about the actions of the state of Israel – which includes war crimes and genocide – and the extremist ideology of Zionism, into a state-sanctioned process for regulating speech, and delegitimising protest and political activism. Democracies ultimately become unstable when institutions decide to protect one group from legitimate criticism of a state they support – or even criticism of their own actions, such as fundraising for the Israel Defense Forces, or supporting Shevet Onnot, a scout’s group in Melbourne that actively recruits and prepares young people to serve in the IDF.

This is something that has already shaped the media commentary surrounding the Commission. Former editor of The Age Michael Gawenda argued in his testimony that many journalists within the mainstream media have become activists who are hostile to Israel and Zionism, and that the incidents of antisemitism have been too easily dismissed by them.

There’s very little evidence to support this. Yes, over 600 journalists signed a letter of solidarity in November 2023 for the many Palestinians journalists who had been killed by the IDF and to condemn Israel for the killing of so many civilians, but almost none of these sentiments – which were registered in their capacity as journalists outraged by so many of their peers being killed – have filtered through to the coverage provided by the mainstream media.

Major outlets such as the ABC, SBS, Seven West, Nine Media and News Corporation have, with very few exceptions, generally framed events that are broadly sympathetic to Israel’s political narratives, almost to the point of regurgitating Israeli propaganda verbatim. In comparison, coverage of Palestinian suffering has often been neutered by more cautious editorial language and suspicion, while pro-Palestinian activists have routinely been portrayed as being socially disruptive or politically suspect – and on occasions, beaten by police or arrested for holding up a “river to the sea” sign at a protest rally.

Yes, there are any many Jewish Australians who have experienced fear and trauma since October 7, and those emotions – whatever they might be – need to be heard and recognised. But what are we actually hearing at this Royal Commission? Complaints about watermelons; feelings of being unsafe after seeing the flag of Palestine – as if seeing the Israeli flag doesn’t cause any discomfort at all for Palestinian communities – complaints of bullying over a Minecraft exchange online; concerns about seeing fundraising activities for victims (which are usually accompanied with the aforementioned offending Palestinian flag); objections to children’s drawings in public spaces (with flag, again).

Many of the testimonies provided at the Royal Commission, such as Gawenda’s, rely heavily on personal commentary and subjective interpretation rather than verifiable evidence, or blanket statements that appear to be at odds with reality. Also, there’s been almost no reference at all to the existence of Palestine, or reference to the brutal actions of Israel, including the occupation of West Bank, genocide in Gaza, the illegal expansion of settlements, or the practice of apartheid.

Of course, these issues will never be mentioned because it undermines the narrative that Israel wants to present of itself at the perfect and “most moral” state, and cover over the extreme ethno-nationalism that is subjugating and attempting to remove an entire group of people from their homes. Best to limit the conversations to Minecraft, or offensive comments that might have been made at a netball game in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

The musician Deborah Conway also complained to the Commission about being excluded and “cancelled” from performances and venues, but failed to mention that it’s the result of extreme Zionist views and callously suggesting in an ABC interview in 2024 that the Palestinian children killed by the state of Israel were not even children, and “depends on what you call kids”.

The Commission has become – at this stage at least – a one-sided receptacle for every perceived slight against Zionists and supporters of Israel in Australia, with the ultimate intention of making these slights – real or perceived – punishable in the court of law. The Royal Commission was created as a result of the Bondi terror attacks – and to explore the issues of antisemitism – but the victims of these attacks seem to have been forgotten about, and the social cohesion that it was meant create, is as far away as it has ever been.

While the Royal Commission continues to hear the one-sided evidence and perspectives, others who have been left out are using other ways to have their voices heard. At Sydney Town Hall last Friday night, pro-Palestine supporters gathered to mark 78 years after the Nakba – the other holocaust that never gets mentioned and Israel doesn’t like to talk about, where over 700,000 Palestinians were violently removed and displaced by the infamous and brutal Zionist paramilitary group, the Stern Gang – an event that is a key cause of the generational trauma that exists until today.

One of speakers was 87-year-old Fouad Shriedy, displaced from northern Palestine as a child during the 1948 Nakba, and he provided a lived historical memory that rarely fits within Australia’s discussions about “social cohesion”. “The Palestinian dream will never die… my heart is still in Palestine,” he said. “The Nakba did not end in 1948, it is still happening today, and the genocide is still going on in Gaza. We will never forget Palestine and one day, Palestine will be free.” Palestine will be free. Is that now deemed to be antisemitic as well?

Voices such as Shriedy’s are entirely absent from mainstream discussions surrounding the Royal Commission. The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network requested leave to appear, but was refused on the grounds that it didn’t have a “direct and substantial” interest in the public hearings, even though the Commission is ostensibly about social cohesion.

Why can’t we recognise the perspectives of Fouad Shriedy or from the representatives of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network? If the goal is to achieve “social cohesion”, we should be hearing from as many people as possible, even if it is to give the Commission a veneer of credibility – and to avoid the accusations of just being another avenue to entrench the viewpoints of a privileged group of people who already have strong connections to the existing power structures in society.

So, what will become of this Royal Commission? Perhaps it has already done its work through the release of its interim report, and its activities from this point onwards are to allow people to vent their frustrations, experiences and perceptions about how they feel the rest of the world is against them, while the incidents of real antisemitism will slip by.

None of this is to deny the existence of antisemitism in Australia. As a child growing up in a working class migrant family in a dysfunctional, predominantly white-Anglo lower socio-economic and angry outer suburb in Perth, I’m not going to deny whatever people might be feeling, because I’ve felt it myself, and so many times.

It’s not just the fuck off and go back to where you came from – so much of racism and discrimination doesn’t always reveal itself in obvious ways, and even when it is overt and obvious, if there’s no one there to record it or report it, it’s as though it never occurred in the first place.

These testimonies should be heard, even if we’re not quite sure what we’re listening to. Jewish Australians, like all all other minority communities, deserve safety, dignity and protection from abuse, harassment and violence. And when an event such as the Bondi terror attack occurs, we need to work out ways of reducing the chances of this ever happening again, and improve protections for all peoples.

Australia does face challenges in addressing these concerns at a time when the nationalistic far right is gaining a foothold in many parts of the community. But if the solutions end up suppressing hard-fought political rights and are used to protect the state of Israel from criticisms of its war crimes and genocidal actions, then Australia will be trashing the same democratic freedoms that it claims to be defending.

On Tuesday night, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will deliver what is being regarded as one of the most important federal Budgets in many years, promising action on housing affordability, productivity, cost-of-living pressures and long-awaited tax reform.

Of course, we’ll have to wait to see whether this will be the case or not, but behind all of this talk about “structural repair” and “reprioritisation” lays a deeper political issue: after four years of caution, hesitation and carefully managed expectations, is the Albanese government finally prepared to confront the vested interests that have distorted the Australian economy and worked against too many people for far too long, or is this another round of choreography designed to look “transformative” without actually changing very much at all?

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has spent most his time in office acquiescing to many powerful groups in Australia. For example, there was great debate about the introduction of a 25 per cent gas exports tax, only for Albanese to rule it out after pressure from the resources sector.

To support Albanese’s position, Chalmers has indicated that the petroleum resources rent tax has raised additional revenue in this financial year, so there’s no need to worry about taxing gas exports at an appropriate rate. But Chalmers is trying to be too clever, and not even by half: yes, the revenue PRRT has increased from $1.41 billion, to $1.5 billion, but a gas exports tax – even if it fully replaced the PRRT – would raise around $17 billion per year, a sum that’s 188 times greater than the additional revenue Chalmers has claimed. This is the price the public pays – $17 billion in this case – when governments pander to the vested interests in Australia.

For well over a decade, the major parties – if we can still call the Liberal Party a “major party” – have avoided the serious reform of negative gearing, capital gains concessions and the massive wealth accumulations gained through property, despite the mounting economic and social evidence that shows how the existing system overwhelmingly benefits older asset holders while locking younger Australians out of home ownership.

Everyone seems to know about this: Labor, Liberal, Treasury, most economists. Yet governments continue treating even the mildest reforms as political kryptonite, terrified of stirring up yet another scare campaign from the property industry, the mainstream media and the opposition parties who defend a system of intergenerational protectionism that makes millennials and Gen Z pay for the largesse of the older and already wealthy propertied class. This is not to pit different generations against each other but the reality is that is unsustainable economically and socially – and politically.

The government’s language in the lead up to the Budget suggests that something will change, but many governments over the past 30 years or so have perfected the art of leading the “bold conversations” before the Budget that somehow end up in mouse talk, modest adjustments, a raft of review panels and carefully diluted compromises, once the final decisions are made.

The Housing Australia Future Fund is an excellent example of this – after much parliamentary debate, political grandstanding and delay, it was introduced in late 2023, 18 months after the Albanese government was first elected in May 2022. As of May 2026, just 889 dwellings have been completed: only 889, in four years of office; or an average of one dwelling per 17 suburbs across Australia. Whichever way it’s calculated or viewed, this is a pathetic number.

Sure, there are a further 9,500 currently under construction and 55,000 social and affordable homes are due to be completed by mid-2029 – but it’s around 500,000 dwellings short of where it needs to be, and that’s according to the government’s National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. There was a “bold conversation” in the lead-up to the 2022 federal election but, on housing at least, the strong words have been matched up with very weak action.

The bigger contradiction here is that governments talk endlessly about productivity and fairness – or in the case of the Prime Minister, “no one left behind” – while preserving the tax structures that overwhelmingly reward the wealth class and speculators more than work itself. A salary is for mugs: the real support from government goes to the people whose real work is deciding the best time to sell a property to maximise the profit, or at which point rents should be raised on a working and struggling family.

Will any of these areas be addressed in Tuesday night’s Budget? Will the Labor Party remember the people who brought it into office in 2022, and returned it again in 2025 with the greatest majority a government has ever held in the lower house? The Labor Platform can’t just be a document that Albanese uses for his bedtime reading at The Lodge, as a reminder of yesteryear and the possibilities that can exist for a progressive government; it’s something that has to be lived and breathed by the entire Labor Caucus.

If Albanese still holds these core Labor beliefs of “no one left behind” and has simply been waiting for the “right time” to fully introduce them, then this is the time. Otherwise, no one left behind will just become a football-type slogan and that’s used ironically against the Labor Party, in the same way the “honest John” moniker was used against former Prime Minister John Howard, when he was anything but.

The point is that there probably never ever will be a greater time for the introduction of a true Labor agenda within federal Parliament. The early signs, however, are not good – Chalmers promising “spending restraint” on the eve of the Budget, including a $37 billion cutback for the NDIS over four years – but if Labor genuinely wants to claim a mandate for reform after its substantial 2025 election victory, then this Budget will determine whether it intends to start governing differently – and that would be about time – or just continue with the business as usual approach and manage the continuing divides within the Australian community slightly more softly and less savagely than its conservative opponents.

The conflict now expanding across Iran and Lebanon – and forced on by Israel and the United States – is no longer a short-term regional crisis; it’s placing a great deal of pressure on the global order that countries like Australia have depended on for many decades. What began as the regular cycle of violence by Israel in the Western Asia region had now evolved into something far more dangerous and unpredictable: a breakdown in the ability of the United States to influence the outcomes, control either the escalation or deescalation, or even to articulate a coherent objective that can hold up for longer than several days.

Sixty days into this conflict, and while it can be argued that at least the zone of the warfare has been restricted to a relatively smaller region, the instability has affected almost every country in the world – the economics version of coronavirus that threatens to collapse the many economies that are dependent on energy and resource supplies from the Persian Gulf.

Israel’s campaign of war and genocide against Gaza since October 2023 has drawn widespread international condemnation for the scale of the harm to civilians and the humanitarian disaster, and its extension into southern Lebanon with almost the same tactics has only deepened those concerns of a broader regional war.

Each new escalation by Israel at this stage creates opportunities for military miscalculations and tit-for-tat retaliations, and a new scope for bringing in other countries into the conflict. Initially, the United States stated that its main goals were “regime change” in Iran, feeding an internal revolution and containing the conflict, with the hidden agenda of asserting its influence and seizing the resource assets of Iran. Yet after months of confrontation with Iran and its regional allies, none of those objectives have been achieved. Other unwanted consequences have arrived, however: oil prices have surged internationally, American diplomacy has disappeared, allies are confused, and the adversaries – Iran and Hezbollah – have easily adapted with their long-developed style of asymmetric warfare that is showing up the limitations of America’s traditional military dominance.

The problem for the United States is that it assumed that all it had to do was project its power – as it had done on so many occasions throughout its history – but the lack of a clear plan or a strategy has exposed its limitations and weakened it in the eyes of many leaders around the world. Yes, the United States still commands immense military and economic resources, but all the power and economic resources in the world won’t guarantee success if the people who are guiding this strategy are incompetent and have no idea what they are doing. And this has created the paradox where the more aggressively the United States behaves in this situation – as well as sacking many of its experienced military generals – the less effective it appears to be.

It’s hard to separate this international decay of American authority from the political environment that’s been created under the presidency of Donald Trump. While previous administrations, for all of their flaws, at least attempted to frame interventions such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003 through a weak but persuasive narrative and went through the process of building up alliances, Trump’s approach has been defined by ad hoc improvisation, the lazy spectacle and inherent contradictions that appear on a daily basis. While US presidents in the past might have argued the case for war – Lyndon Johnson, George H. and W. Bush – Trump just goes to war, with the same nonchalance of ordering a pancake from one of his Trump Tower diners.

Trump is the prime example of someone who firmly believes in American exceptionalism, but the gap between his empty rhetoric and the reality on the ground is just becoming too difficult to ignore. The recent assassination attempt against Trump – if that’s what it actually was – illustrates how deeply this dysfunction has infiltrated domestic politics. In another era, an assassination attempt would have produced shock within the electorate and a unified national response. Instead, half of the world questions whether it was a staged or manipulated event, and it has generated division, suspicion and resulted in different versions of what actually occurred. It’s almost as though whatever actually did happen doesn’t matter anymore: once a political culture has its trust so significantly eroded, it’s hard to believe anything that occurs in the White House and, perhaps, that’s what the Trump regime would prefer.

For many years – during the four years of his first term and now into his second – Trump has attacked institutions, discredited the media and blurred the lines between truth and outright lies. It’s not just an incidental by-product of his political style; this is the strategy. The outcome is a public domain where no single account is credible but, friends and foes alike, pick the narrative that suits them the best. When the reality itself becomes the bigger contest rather than the contest over policy and ideas, every crisis becomes an opportunity for it to be exploited for political gain.

It’s not a new strategy – history is littered with examples of clown shows and idiocy within political leadership, such as Caligula, Benito Mussolini, and the more modern versions of Silvio Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, Javier Milei, Jair Bolsonaro – extravagant fools who wasted space and became the convenient idiots creating the pathways for more corruption and vested interests. Trump is no exception in this field.

But it’s a strategy that leads to a state of permanent instability, with no clear boundary between the normal state of politics and the emergency; every day creates a drama, and a created drama then needs to be resolved. Over time, this creates a high level of exhaustion and fatigue within the electorate: can’t we just have a normal government for a change? The risk for any government that relies on constant disruption – whether it’s Trump, Johnson, Milei or Scott Morrison – is that it eventually loses the capacity to distinguish between legitimate action and foolish improvisation, where they are just trying to wing it each and every day. Eventually, people just want governments to resolve the problems of society, not to create more of them.

The economic conditions – which Trump has actually caused – are now compounding this instability. The rising energy costs, increased living expenses and stagnant wages create an environment that is unlikely to favour incumbents who engage in this type of behaviour. Political messaging – in the style of flooding the zone with shit – can reshape perceptions, but it can’t indefinitely bend the rules of the lived experience. If the electorate begins to associate chaos with dysfunction – and the current polls suggest that this is currently the case – then everything in politics shifts dramatically. The midterm elections in the United States have historically acted as a corrective mechanism for weak or incompetent Presidents, and there are indications that a similar dynamic will emerge again.

The consequences of this behaviour, however, go far beyond the cycle of midterm elections, or even what might happen in the 2028 presidential election. There’s a great deal of uncertainty over the future of NATO. There’s also a great deal of uncertainty surrounding of the future of AUKUS, although, as we’ve argued many times before, cancelling this ill-thought-out deal would be beneficial to all parties, and save Australia at least $368 billion over the next 30 years or so.

The central issue here is not just that the chaos exists – governing is difficult and there’s always going to events that fall outside of the control of a leader – but that it has been embraced as a governing principle. We frequently complain about the Albanese government and its lack of ambition, but it’s not a government of chaos; the main job of government is to reduce chaos, not to create it, and the Prime Minister has largely avoided that.

Markets – and societies – also require a certain level of predictability to function efficiently. Money is the eternal coward, and will follow the path of least resistance and shy away from conflict and chaos. But if the crisis becomes permanent though, the conditions for economic recovery disappear.

The Trump presidency – Marks I and II – has highlighted this contradiction, but how can the system be rebuilt after the state of chaos has been normalised? Joe Biden managed to end Trump’s chaos in 2020, but was a weak president who didn’t know when his time in politics was up. Similarly, Albanese ended the chaos of the Morrison years, but is yet to work out how to use his massive mandate constructively, except for his goal of making Labor “the natural party of government”.

The answer to all of this is not so obvious: Trump was voted out in 2020, only to reappear in 2024. He might not be eligible for re-election in 2028 but, as history has frequently shown, there are always new clown-show leaders who can replace the old. Trump won’t be the last to appear in the exhibition hall of disgraceful political leaders who distract the electorate with their laugh-out-loud routines, and allow the corrupt to fester in the background. But their influence can be diminished.

The world has entered a period in which the consequences of American disorder can no longer be isolated, or tolerated. From the bombs being dropped on the villages of southern Lebanon and Iran, to the corridors of power within the White House, we can see the same pattern repeating itself: a loss of control is presented by Trump as a strength, there’s a reliance on the spectacle over substance, and a belief that the chaos can continue forever. But it can’t: eventually, the chaos stops being a useful tool when the public has had enough of it, and that time is approaching very quickly.

And when that time arrives, there won’t be any winners – only those left to pick up the pieces afterwards, trying to rebuild a sense of order from the ruins of a post-World War II system that once promised stability but, instead, delivered uncertainty on a grand scale. That is Trump’s legacy.

The debate over taxing Australia’s gas exports has returned with the same predictably and, of course, the same paralysis. At Senate Estimates last week, the question of a 25 per cent export tax on liquefied natural gas was the centre of attention again, not as some radical leftist idea but as a long-delayed correction to a complete failure in how Australia taxes its natural resources.

This argument should be pretty straightforward: gas is a finite resource formed over millions of years, owned collectively by the Australian people, and extracted largely by multinational corporations for export. The only meaningful mechanism through which the public can benefit from this arrangement is through the taxation system, which can then be used to apply to other public benefits for the entire community. Yet as we enter the third decade of the LNG boom, Australia continues to receive far less value from its resources than many other countries in the world.

At Senate Estimates, Ken Henry, the former Treasury Secretary and architect of the 2009 Henry Tax Review that produced a comprehensive blueprint for reform, provide a simple but blunt assessment – “stop the crap”, “just do it” and raise the taxes on gas: governments license private companies to extract public resources, and if the tax system fails to receive an appropriate return, the public loses out. In Australia’s case, domestic consumption of gas is only a small fraction of total production, meaning the overwhelming economic benefit should come from how these exports are taxed.

It’s not clear if the Albanese government hasn’t got the ability read, or is too politically dumb for its own good, but it has signalled strongly that it will not be proceeding with a new export tax. The Prime Minister has emphasised the importance of maintaining Australia’s reputation as a reliable trading partner – once again, a Labor government prioritising the markets rather than the community – particularly during recent diplomatic engagements in Southeast Asia, where both Albanese Trade Minister Don Farrell has reiterated that existing export arrangements will be kept.

The argument from government and industry is that LNG producers already contribute tens of billions in taxes and royalties, and that raising the burden risks undermining investment and supply. It’s a weak argument – countries apply new taxes on existing arrangements all the time, and the government of Japan applies a tax on Australian gas for its own domestic market, resulting in the outrageous situation where Japan raises more taxes on Australian gas, than the Australian government does. Gas is working in the interests of the countries of Japan, China and South Korea, but not in the interests of the Australian community, and for this, the Albanese government should be admonished for allowing this bizarre situation to continue.

Albanese might be the master of incrementalism, but this is proceeding so slowly, that it’s actually going backwards: a weak prime minister in a powerful once-in-a-generation position, who refuses to take an easy option that will clearly be a benefit to the public interest. The core proposition – that Australians should receive a fair return on their own resources – is a very clear principle, yet repeatedly ignored by our political leaders.

Instead of implementing this reform, there’s the ongoing consultation and listening to debate; instead of action, Treasury produces new modelling; instead of the introduction of policy, there’s the political management of the issue and, ultimately, the deferral of this idea to the neverland. And that gives time for industry groups to mobilise quickly and create the fear campaign to suggest that any change at all will be a form of economic self-harm on everyone. The result is this meandering policy vacuum in which the public interest is clearly acknowledged by everyone – except by the government and the resources industry – and the loss of tax revenue continues.

These are not trivial amounts that we’re talking about. Estimates suggest that a 25 per cent gas export tax could raise in the order of $15–20 billion per year, depending on the market conditions. Even at the lower end, that’s a level of revenue that would transform public finances: funding the health and education systems that are currently under strain, stabilising the National Disability Insurance Scheme, funding housing supply properly instead of using an inadequate housing future fund or, if the government is not prepared to do that, reducing the structural deficits that have been building up for almost two decades.

Australia’s approach is in contrast to other countries such as Norway, which has built a sovereign wealth fund exceeding US$1 trillion by capturing the value of its petroleum resources through clear taxation and public ownership policies. Every country is different, and a Norwegian solution might not fit perfectly into an Australian context, but it shows that the resources of a country can be converted into long-term national prosperity if governments are willing to assert the public claim over it and, at the moment, we have a Prime Minister who is supposedly from the left of the Labor Party, totally unwilling to do this.

The failure to act also reflects a deeper reluctance to engage with the broader reform agenda outlined in the Henry Review all the way back in 2009. Only three of the 138 recommendations were implemented – since removed – but had those reforms been phased in during the early 2010s, and kept, Australia’s budgetary position would have been significantly stronger today, with higher and more stable revenue streams, better resources management, and a more efficient distribution of capital. Instead, the country has accumulated rising public debt while leaving major revenue sources underutilised.

The point is not to bemoan the fact that nothing of the Henry Review exists today – the water under that bridge passed a long time ago – but that governments always have to consider future generations, and a future that they will actually be a part of. Anthony Albanese was a senior member of the Rudd–Gillard–Rudd government between 2007–13. This is not to suggest that he alone could have pushed for the implementation of tax reform, but how much easier would his task have been 13 years later as the Prime Minister, if all these reforms were already in place? He’s unlikely to be Prime Minister in another 13 years, but how easier will the task for Prime Minister Jim Chalmers be in 2039, if a new 25 per cent gas export tax was implemented now? How much would the public benefit over that time from this greater source of revenue?

Applying a 25 per cent tax on gas exports would at least address some of the anomalies and inconsistencies in the application of government revenues. The Albanese government is willing to commit billions of dollars to defence spending at the drop of a hat – $53 billion in new spending announced last week – or maintain the outrageous tax concessions in negative gearing that benefits the already wealthy, while every other area of government spending such as education, health, aged care, disability support, is debated, argued for, and finally drip-fed with a range of caveats that demand that every cent is accounted for, because we simply don’t have enough money.

This isn’t just something that relates to economics, it’s the management of powerful industry stakeholders in the resources and media sectors. It’s the government’s preference to manage that risk, rather than electoral risk, bearing in mind that governments face the electorate only once every three years, but they have to deal with the revolving door of industry lobbyists pestering them every single day of the year. And this is Albanese’s focus – managing the risk of these key stakeholders, rather than acting in the interests of the public.

The timing for reform – in the unlikely event that anything will happen – is also critical. We have now completed the first third of this term of government and, historically, the second year of a government’s term offers the best opportunity to introduce major policy changes, allowing time for implementation and adjustment before the next election cycle. If a gas export tax is not implemented in the upcoming budget, it’s increasingly unlikely that it will be introduced at all in this term, if ever.

There’s also the question of political legacy. Leaders enter office with finite time and finite opportunity, even those such as Albanese who have been a part of the parliamentary woodwork for over 30 years. The choices they make – or avoid to make – not only define the legacy of their governments but the future of the country.

In 2022, soon after he became Prime Minister, Albanese spoke about the importance of leaving office with a sense of purpose, rather than regretting the opportunities that were missed. Albanese is veering into the second part of that equation, four years in office, with not too much to look back at with a sense of purpose. Albanese has often talked about wanting the Labor Party to become the “natural party of government”, but this is just empty rhetoric and is code for a party wanting to be in government just for the sake of it and enjoy the trappings of office.

Australia remains one of the most prosperous countries in the world, but prosperity without the correct political leadership will just follow the laws of a diminishing return. We don’t want “natural governments”; we want governments that will govern in the national interest, not pander to vested and powerful interests and give them exactly what they want.

Albanese is the incrementalist, he’s made that point very clear. But he’s not even moving incrementally at all on the management of our stock of natural resources which, just like his own political career, is finite, and to continue exporting gas under the current terms is a failure of political will. The question that now faces the Labor government is no longer whether it understands the problem, but whether it’s prepared to solve it – and so far, it has shown that it’s unwilling to do so.

The Liberal Party’s push for a so-called “values-based” immigration system, including proposals to scrutinise migrants’ social media accounts, is a real troubling development in Australian politics, not so much because we think it’s a politically winning strategy – it’s not – but because one of Australia’s mainstream political parties – and, supposedly, representing the essence of true liberalism – feels that this is its way of reaching electoral nirvana.

Framing its policy as a necessary defence of national cohesion, in reality, it’s a reflexive move to the culture war politics that have hampered the Liberal Party for well over 30 years, and an attempt to import elements of the ideology associated with figures such as Donald Trump in the United States, albeit without the extreme edges that we’ve come to expect from Trump’s new dystopian world.

Yet even in diluted form, the strategy is very similar: confuse the questions of Australian identity, loyalty and belonging, while constructing a narrative of the eternal threats that demands a constant vigilance and the perpetual fear of the migrant.

What is difficult to comprehend is not just the contents of this Liberal Party policy, but the timing of it. Less than a year after the Australian electorate so thoroughly rejected this style of politics at the 2025 federal election, the party has decided to double down with a different leader, Angus Taylor, and go further to the right in the search for the voters that have been stolen by One Nation, and unlikely to ever return.

At the centre of this draconian shift is the effort to draw a distinction between what Taylor describes as migrants of “noble and patriotic intent” – reflective of the racist undertones of 18th-century European philosophy and the noble savage – and the migrants of “subversive intent”. He doesn’t need to name these subversives or indicate where they actually reside: not providing these details means his audience can fill in the gaps with their own imaginative construct of the other, and insert the specific migrant group of choice that they dislike.

Of course, Taylor is all big on the rhetoric but intellectually shallow, reducing complex social realities into an easy to digest binary that invites suspicion and division in the electorate that can easily be shouted at. Taylor’s rhetoric also relies on a deeply questionable premise, making a causal link between the Bondi terror attacks and pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism, and then further extending that link between criminal acts, political expression and immigration itself.

Bereft of any other ideas, Taylor feels that he’s hit the political jackpot, encouraging the electorate to associate migration with insecurity, and dissent with disloyalty to Australia. The political logic behind his approach is easy to see: the Liberal Party is still trying to work out how to deal with the new world of a splintered conservative base, challenged on one side by Labor’s complete electoral dominance, and on the other, One Nation, and other creatures lurking in the shadows of the far-right mindset.

Historically, the party has navigated pressures from the far-right by absorbing elements of their rhetoric. Under John Howard in the 1990s, this strategy proved to be electorally effective, neutralising Pauline Hanson’s early rise by adopting a harder edge on issues of national identity and immigration, even though the Howard government actually maintained high levels of immigration for most of their 11 years in office.

But that was many years ago – adopting the politics from 30 years ago, is not going to work in 2026, especially when the stocks of the Liberal Party are so low. For sure, it worked for Howard in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Taylor seems to be testing his lines in public to see what floats, rather than offering coherent policies. And, as a result, the Liberal Party is behaving like a fringe party, shouting at the clouds, and searching for electoral relevance.

The entire premise of moving towards a “values-based” immigration system implies that the values are currently not there, but Australia has always operated with a values-based system in practice, as does every other country in the world. Visa requirements, character tests, and the citizenship process already provide expectations about adherence to the rule of law, democratic values and social participation. Short of suggesting executions, there’s not much more that Taylor could recommend.

Migrants coming to Australia are not entering a value-free space; they are entering a society with established institutions, legal frameworks and civic expectations. Taylor’s suggestion that Australia has somehow abandoned these standards – without indicating which standards, or how they have dropped – is not supported by evidence, but it doesn’t have to be. All it’s doing is serving a political purpose: it’s the classic case of identifying a problem that doesn’t exist, and then offering the solutions that won’t work anyway.

But what is new – and concerning – is the proposed policy of enforcement. The idea that prospective migrants should have their social media activity examined introduces a level of state surveillance that sits uneasily with the very values being claimed by Taylor. Freedom of expression, belief and the right of individual dignity can’t be reconciled in a system where individuals are assessed on their opinions, associations and surveillance of their digital history.

In a direct paraphrase of Howard’s words from 2001, Taylor claims that “we will decide who deserves protection and the circumstances in which that protection is granted”, but who will decide what constitutes acceptable speech, either on the streets or through social media? What level of dissent will determine someone’s ability to become an Australian citizen? How will such judgements be insulated from political bias and interference? It’s simply not good enough to declare a commitment to that jingoistic “fair go”, while creating exclusions that are based on subjective interpretations devised by a team of bureaucrats.

Australia’s post-1788 history is quite different to the one that Taylor wants to promote. From the presence of Muslim cameleers in central Australia, to the waves of European migration after World War II, to the removal of the White Australia policy in 1973, the country’s development has been shaped by successive waves of inclusionary migration policies. These processes were often imperfect and up for debate – Howard always claimed multiculturalism was “a mistake” – but these processes also established a broad consensus about Australia’s national identity. Crucially, that consensus – ignoring the shallow men like Howard – has been more or less bipartisan.

In political terms, the social risks are considerable, considering that an opposition party – irrespective of how poor its electorate position might be at the moment – is only one election away from returning to office. By adopting the language and the rhetoric of the more extreme actors in Australian politics, the Liberal Party is hoping to recapture those voters who have drifted off further to the right. But in doing so, it legitimises those very narratives, and all it does is reinforce the fragmentation that it’s seeking to reverse.

The recent South Australian election, where the Liberal Party fell behind both Labor and One Nation on primary votes, confirms that splintering of the right that started off with the 2025 federal election. Rather than consolidating the conservative vote, strategies such as the ones promoted by Taylor will split it even further, leaving the party squeezed between a more moderate centre and a more radical fringe. Chasing the votes garnered by One Nation – a fringe party of right-wing white noise – means that the Liberal Party will also become a fringe party, and this continuing pursuit is unlikely to result in the renewal that the party so desperately needs: it will just cement its continuing decline.

Yet the implications for this go far beyond the low number of seats held by the Liberal Party, or how difficult it will be for them to return to office at the next federal election in 2028. Policies that frame sections of the population as inherently suspicious – and we know who Taylor is talking about when he brings up the rhetoric of the “migrant of subversive intent” – that equate dissent with disloyalty, and expand state surveillance on a select few, have lasting effects on the social fabric of society, and sends a strong message that they… them… the other… and whoever is deemed to not fit in, just don’t belong to that white Australian construct.

In a diverse society, cohesion is not achieved through suspicion, but through shared institutions, mutual recognition and the consistent application of the law. “Social cohesion” seems to be the fashionable phrase of the day, but excluding the brown and black people from our society, just because Taylor wants to decree this to be the case, doesn’t make social cohesion any easier: all societies are difficult to manage politically, irrespective of how homogenous they might be, but the Liberal Party wants us to believe that social cohesion is achieved by ironing out all the kinks of colour, and achieving pure white, if not literally in appearance, but through a colonisation of the mind. It’s a corrosive style of thinking.

What is ultimately at stake is not simply the direction of immigration policy, but the character of Australian democracy itself. Taylor is a tin-pot leader who might not even be the leader of the Liberal Party at the next election, but he’s likely to implement a system that treats values as something to be policed rather than lived, and prioritises political expediency over principled governance, undermining the very foundations that he claims to defend.

The challenge for all political leaders is not to manufacture division in the hope of short-term gain – which is obviously what Taylor is attempting to do – but to articulate a vision of national identity that is confident enough to accommodate difference and celebrate and accept it. After all, no two people on this planet are the same. Anything less than this is not a sign of strength, but Taylor’s own insecurity masquerading as policy – and voters, as recent elections have shown, are increasingly unwilling to reward it.

The arrest and charging of Ben Roberts-Smith on five counts of war crimes has exposed yet another schism within Australian politics, and it reveals just how quickly the principles of justice can be thrown away when placed against nationalism, power and myth. The response from prominent conservative figures has ignored the seriousness of these allegations – the unlawful killing of Afghan civilians – and has focused on defending the reputation of a decorated soldier, at the expense of the rule of law itself.

Figures such as Pauline Hanson and Gina Rinehart – a mining magnate who really should have no role in political life – have publicly questioned and condemned the charges, while media proprietor Kerry Stokes – who financially backed Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation cases to the tune of $30 million – is using his substantial media assets to push for his innocence. What’s emerging from these responses is not a careful assessment of the available evidence, but a knee-jerk defence of Australia’s war symbolism and jingoism.

The legal reality of this case should be very straightforward: Roberts-Smith, like any other accused person, is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, and that’s exactly what he’ll receive. The charges against him will be tested in a criminal court, where the burden of proof will be high and the consequences will be announced by a judge, if he’s found guilty. In other words, it will just like any other case that runs through the Australian courts, every single day.

The nature of these allegations is also important. It’s not a question of split-second decisions made in the chaos of combat – the so-called “fog of war” – where tragic mistakes can occur. Instead, the list of accusations includes deliberate acts of violence, including the alleged execution of detainees and the practice known as “blooding”, where junior soldiers are ordered by their superiors to kill prisoners. These claims, supported by testimony from fellow soldiers, go to the heart of military ethics and discipline: all is not fair in love and war, and murder – by any other name – is still murder, irrespective of where it might happen in the world.

The fact that members of Roberts-Smith’s own regiment came forward is particularly significant in a culture that’s often characterised by loyalty, silence and subservience to rank, suggesting a level of concern that goes far beyond what could be assumed to be internal disagreements or personality conflicts.

The political defence of Roberts-Smith by conservative figures also reveals a deeper issue with accountability. For some, the idea that a recipient of the Victoria Cross – the nation’s highest military honour – could be implicated in war crimes is simply inconceivable, especially when placed next to that Anzac narrative that has come to dominate Australian identity for well over 100 years.

This narrative, propped up by Bob Hawke in the 1980s, and supercharged during the Howard era, has elevated military service to an unrealistic level of national virtue. To then acknowledge any form of wrongdoing within this narrative is regarded as sacrosanct by conservatives and is seen as a huge blow to national pride. Yet this is precisely why accountability in this case matters: if the law is not going to be applied equally, then it stops functioning as the law.

There are also the usual racist undertones in this reaction from conservatives, particularly in the indifference shown towards the victims. The Afghan civilians at the centre of these charges are totally absent from the rhetoric of the defenders of Roberts-Smith, always navigating back to his status as a “war hero” and national figure. And they are so absent that we’ve barely heard their names before: they are Ali Jan, a farmer and father from the village of Darwan; Ahmadullah, a man with a prosthetic leg – the same leg Roberts-Smith used as a trophy to drink alcohol from; Mohammed Essa, the father of Ahmadullah; an unnamed elderly man; and another unnamed detainee in Chinartu.

It also sets up that partition between whose lives are really valued – our own Anglo-heroes – and whose suffering is deemed irrelevant and easily ignored – barely known people on the other side of the world, with a different coloured skin, culture and language.

What should also not be forgotten in this case is the profound contradiction in the Australian justice system. David McBride, the former military lawyer whose disclosures helped bring allegations of war crimes committed by Roberts-Smith to light, is currently serving a five-year prison sentence for leaking classified information, despite acting in what he has consistently argued was in the public interest.

His relatively quick prosecution – and Australia’s constant pursuit of whistleblowers – is in contrast to the slow process of holding alleged perpetrators of war crimes to account. The message this sends should be highly concerning to the Australian community: exposing wrongdoing is punished more swiftly and severely than actually committing the wrongdoing. There’s also that long tradition of Australia glossing over war crimes and accepting war criminals, as was so clearly documented in Mark Aaron’s concise publication on this issue, War Criminals Welcome: Australia, a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals Since 1945.

The role of government in this situation should also not be ignored. The Attorney-General at the time, Mark Dreyfus, had the authority to intervene in cases like McBride’s, but declined to do so, an action continued by his successor, Michelle Rowland. This reluctance reflects a broader pattern where national security considerations – however flimsy – are prioritised over transparency and accountability, even when the serious allegations of misconduct are involved, and it’s a position that risks undermining public trust in both the legal system and democratic institutions.

Beyond the immediate legal and political implications, the Roberts-Smith case should also force a stronger debate about Australia’s broader military engagements and whose interests they serve. From Vietnam in the 1960s, to Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century, Australia has repeatedly aligned itself with United States-led conflicts, often with limited public debate and without much scrutiny.

The consequences of these decisions include lives lost in other countries, communities destroyed and, as the case of Roberts-Smith suggests, potential war crimes and violations of international law. The question is not only about whether individual soldiers should be held to account, but whether the political decisions that place them in these situations are themselves subject to adequate scrutiny. That’s not to excuse the allegations against Roberts-Smith but, perhaps, he shouldn’t have been in Afghanistan in the first place.

Then, there is the question of national character. A mature democracy doesn’t try to shield itself from the uncomfortable truth; it confronts it head on. That willingness to investigate, prosecute and, if necessary, convict those accused of serious crimes – even when they are celebrated figures – shouldn’t be seen as a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. It reaffirms that the rule of law doesn’t depend on the medallions that someone pins on their chest, but is applied equally, and that no individual is above it.

The outcome of Roberts-Smith’s criminal trial will ultimately be determined in court – and we assume, a jury chosen from the public – and this is as it should be. But there’s a greater test that’s already going on in the background. It lies in whether Australia chooses to uphold the principles it claims to defend, or whether it allows myth, power and political expediency to override justice. So far, it’s upholding those principles when it comes to Roberts-Smith – if not to David McBride – but the case itself will be test of how far Australia is prepared to hold itself to account.

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One month after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the conflict has expanded far beyond its undefined objectives and into well into the unknown, reshaping the landscape of the Western Asia/Middle East region – perhaps forever – and dismantling the long-standing assumptions about deterrence, control and the regional order. What was being pushed in Washington as a supposedly short-term and limited operation designed to create stability has instead triggered a sustained retaliation by Iran – with Yemen now joining the conflict – and putting the global oil and energy markets under extreme strain.

Iran’s response has been direct and deliberate, and should have been entirely predictable. Thousands of missiles and drones have been launched over the past month, targeting Israeli and U.S.-linked military bases in the region, as well as other critical infrastructure across the Gulf. While missile defence systems have intercepted many of these attacks, a significant number have actually gone through, inflicting material damage and suggesting that there’s a new reality within this region: Iran retains both the capacity and the willingness to escalate this conflict far beyond what Israel and the United States expected and the scale of their response has challenged the assumption – which seemed to be widely held within the U.S. military – that Iran would act with restraint to avoid a broader war, mainly because they didn’t have the capacity to retaliate.

As we’ve seen, the major issue to arise from this conflict has been Iran’s effective disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, which has created chaos through global energy markets. And it’s also difficult to accept that the United States could not have seen that this would be the logical action for Iran to take on, unless it’s part of a longer-term agenda that not even the United States seems to be aware of.

Around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply goes through the Strait of Hormuz, and this level of disruption has driven up insurance costs, clogged up the shipping lanes, and created volatility with global energy pricing. While the strait has not been formally “closed” in a legal sense – strictly speaking, it’s not in international waters, as the 12 nautical mile zone for both Oman and Iran intersect each other at the 21-mile width of the strait – the practical effect has been the same: an increased risk and a clear demonstration of the type of leverage Iran does have over the global economy.

Across the Gulf states, the conflict has led to many flight cancellations, displacing thousands of passengers and complicating the movement of labour forces that support the economies in the region. Missile strikes have also targeted areas hosting foreign personnel and military infrastructure, especially those facilities that are linked to U.S. operations.

Despite this, the Gulf states haven’t responded with direct military retaliation against Iran and their responses have instead called for diplomatic solutions. Publicly, these governments have condemned Iran’s actions as violations of international law and threats to regional stability but privately, they’re furious with the United States for undertaking this war, and undertaking it without any warning, and leaving their states vulnerable.

For decades, the presence of American military bases across the Gulf has been framed as a guarantee of security in a volatile area but, essentially, they’re primarily about the U.S. keeping that strong control in the region, even if it is mainly using Israel as its proxy. Also under consideration is the situation that these Gulf states are now bearing the costs of decisions made by the United States – and not having any guarantee of security – and if that’s the case, what is the purpose on these long-standing alliances?

Four weeks into the conflict, the severity of attacks has diminished, but the frequency hasn’t. Iran has almost played out a textbook asymmetric war game here, and the United States has been caught with its pants down, figuratively speaking, although with Trump, you’re never quite sure, and it could literary be the case.

But what has emerged during this first month is the short and sharp conflict the United States promised has failed to materialise and, instead, a widening crisis has exposed the limits of U.S. military planning and an underestimation of the motivations of the government of Iran. The United States and Israel initiated this confrontation, but it’s no longer theirs to control, and this is where the dangers lay for them.

The cost of following Washington into the abyss

Locally, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been exposed politically on this issue, not because of the war itself, but because of the way he responded when the United States and Israel first attacked Iran. By aligning himself too closely, and too quickly, with Trump in the early stages of these attacks, Albanese gave up the opportunity to create an independent political narrative at home, an approach that would have insulated him and the Labor government from domestic criticism and the subsequent and costly policy responses on fuel excise.

The initial decision to back U.S. strikes and commit Australian military personnel and resources to the region, of course, is a familiar bipartisan pattern in Australian foreign policy: the quick action to support the United States in these circumstances, without having the foresight to think about how it might affect domestic politics. And in this case, Albanese has made a serious misjudgement.

Rather than drawing a clear distinction between Australia’s national interest and the actions of the United States, Albanese tied himself to a radically changing and often strange U.S. strategy. His recent calls for “greater certainty” around American objectives further highlighted the foolishness of his quick jump to side of Trump and raised the obvious question: why did Albanese not demand this greater certainty before Australia offered its support?

This is in contrast with someone like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney – who has demonstrated a willingness to publicly push back against unpredictability of Trump, even going on to win an election based around this – just highlights the political advantage Albanese chose not to take. In a climate where voters often reward strength and assertiveness, the Prime Minister appears reactive and weak, asking the pertinent questions way after the consequences had begun to appear.

Those consequences are now not just rhetorical. The government’s decision to halve the fuel excise for three months – at an estimated cost of around $2.6 billion in foregone revenue – represents a first direct response to rising fuel prices linked to the U.S. attacks on Iran. While such a measure might provide short-term relief to households, it also exposes the Budget to additional strain at a time when structural pressures on spending and revenue are already quite significant. Aside from this, Albanese seems to excel at implementing plans that benefit the public, without getting a political win: consumers will save 26 cents per litre, but no one will thank him for it, and the government will lose $2.6 billion in forgone revenue.

By failing to establish a clear and independent position early, when he should have attacked Trump and apportioned all blame onto him – as Carney did in Canada – Albanese has reduced the political space for him to move around in. The fuel excise cut, while politically expedient, can be seen as the cost of his earlier hesitation – a reactive policy designed to manage domestic fallout rather than a proactive strategy grounded in defined national objectives and principle.

In the end, the issue is not simply whether Australia should support its allies, but how and when that support is given. Leadership in such moments requires more than saying “yes” to everything the United States wants; it requires clear thinking, clever timing, and an ability to anticipate the domestic consequences of international decisions.

On all three fronts, Albanese’s approach has left his government carrying both the political burden and a multi-billion-dollar hit to the Budget. It would have better for him to listen to what the former Labor leader Simon Crean said to U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003, that “on occasions, friends disagree… but, such is the strength of our shared values, interests and principles, those differences can enrich rather than diminish, strengthen rather than weaken, our partnership… friends must be honest with each other.” And it would appear that aren’t many votes lost in attacking Trump, as Mark Carney has already discovered, but, it appears, Albanese has not.

Toward an uncertain future: The limits of American power

How this conflict ends is still an open question, but the shape of a resolution is beginning to form – and it won’t be through a decisive military victory, but through a gradual reworking of the regional alignments and careful mediation. It’s obvious that the belligerents in this case, the United States and Israel, won’t be capable of offering mediation as a solution.

The war has also exposed not only the vulnerabilities of American bases in the region, but also the political limits of these regional alliances, which now appear to be fraying at the edges, and certainly not helped by Trump suggesting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “didn’t think he’d be kissing my ass”.

One critical consideration for the Gulf states is whether this alignment with the United States – which also means an alignment with Israel – enhances their security or increases their risk, and it’s been clearly shown that the promises of American protection have not come to fruition.

This has prompted a quiet but significant shift in thinking within these Gulf states, where rather than acting as passive hosts under coercion from the United States – which is causing internal anger within the region – there is a growing argument and confidence that they should pursuing more political independence, which includes removing these foreign-controlled bases, while opening up diplomatic communication with Tehran.

The government of Iran has consistently stated during this conflict that its main adversaries are the regimes of United States and Israel, not the Gulf states themselves. By taking these statements at face value, Gulf countries can create a certain level of insulation from the conflict, repositioning themselves not as lackies of the United States but as regional players acting on their own behalf. Whether that would be allowed to happen is another matter, but direct dialogue with Iran, even if it is limited, could be the tool that prevents further escalation on their own territories.

This is where another external player could have a role in this war: China. Unlike the United States, China has maintained economic relationships across the region without the same level of direct military involvement as the United States. Its dependence on Gulf energy supplies means that it has a large interest in a de-escalation, while its diplomatic history of restraint and longer-term speculations allows it to act without the short-term political pressures faced by Western governments.

Ever since these attacks on Iran commenced, China has been relatively quiet, but as these disruptions affect global markets and China’s own economic interests, the incentive to take on a more active role – diplomatically – will increase. China is also one of the few external powers capable of engaging all sides in a conflict with a degree of credibility, as was shown in 2024 when it brokered the Beijing Declaration, a unity deal with Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions, an act that no other government had been able to achieve.

China is the ultimate pragmatist on the world stage, and its role wouldn’t be driven by altruism alone, but through a range of interests including securing energy supply chains, stabilising markets, and reinforcing its status as a global diplomatic actor. Not that the United States will simply roll over and allow China to intervene in an area where it’s had a strong sphere of influence and control over – and hasn’t that been a disaster over the past 80 years or so – but it’s clear that the geopolitical structure of the region needs to change.

Even so, mediation might not produce an immediate or clean resolution, as this war has already gone down a path that can’t be easily reversed. The involvement of an external mediator such as China – if it comes to that – might establish the frameworks for communication and restraint, but it won’t eliminate the underlying tensions that gave rise to the conflict, and not while the malevolent influence of the United States remains in the region.

The United States still remains the central actor here but the unexpected retaliations by Iran have shown that it’s in a weakened position and has never had a long-term interest in securing a lasting peace anyway: that’s not the American way. What began as a show of short-term force by the United States and Israel has now evolved into a test of long-term endurance, strong diplomacy, and adaptability, and history has shown that these are not the types of conflicts where America prevails.

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