Australia was on the verge of sanctions against Israel… and then walked away
The problem for the Albanese government isn’t just about Australia moving too slowly against illegal Israeli settlements – it walked up to the negotiating table but then decided that it was all too much and just walked away.
Australia was a part of these negotiations with Britain, France, Canada and European governments over action that would target trade with illegal West Bank settlements, and at that stage, was open to “more aggressive action”. Foreign minister Penny Wong, who never misses the opportunity to miss an opportunity – as well as leaving her morals behind – then instructed Australia to remove itself from the table and advised its partners that it wouldn’t be joining this action.
Britain has declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank unlawful and described the forced displacement as ethnic cleansing. Canada and France are also joining action on settlement imports. These countries created the pathway for the sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements, so all Australia had to do was flow in the slipstream.
The obvious question is: what actually changed in those last moments?
The government did cite all these concerns about enforceability and unintended consequences – Australian businesses losing export revenue – but, as we’ve explained before, this is a Labor government that is beholden to Zionists interests and donations to the Labor Party, and despite its rhetoric, will do nothing at all that acts against the state of Israel. Absolutely nothing. Even when it engages with unlawful activity and ethnic cleansing.
It will be interesting to see how Australia’s current bid for a seat on the UN Security Council proceeds, because this type of behaviour of walking away from a critical issue and leaving its partners in the lurch shows a complete lack of courage and exactly the type of behaviour that the United Nations doesn’t need at this point of history.
The migration numbers debacle continues
Australia’s political leaders have finally discovered who’s responsible for the housing crisis, overcrowded hospitals, congested roads and falling living standards. Migrants!
Labor’s decision to drive net overseas migration down to 225,000 by 2028 is being presented as careful calibrated management of population growth but, politically, it’s a lot more cynical than that: it flows directly into this idea that Australia’s problems can be solved by turning migration into race to the bottom between the government, the opposition, and One Nation.
This is how the game goes: the Coalition says Labor’s numbers are too high. Then One Nation then says the Coalition’s numbers are too high. And just like a silly little game in the school playground, the downward bidding continues until Australian politics becomes a ridiculous competition over who can produce the smallest number and most punitive system, without providing a reason why.
Conveniently disappearing from this argument are the governments that failed to build enough public housing, allowed property speculation to distort the housing market – thank you, John Howard! – underinvested in infrastructure and services, and constructed an economy increasingly dependent on insecure migrant labour.
It’s not like migrants sat down and created a committee to design this system: elected governments did, and it’s what they’ve done over the past 30 years or so. If there’s problems with the migration program, blame them, and not the migrant.
There are perfectly legitimate arguments for lowering migration numbers when housing and infrastructure can’t deal with rapid growth in population. But that’s very different from pretending migration has caused all the problems after the many decades of political failure.
The bigger political issue is that Labor’s accepting the central premise of the arguments presented by One Nation and the Coalition. And once migration is presented as the big scary villain, every rent increase, traffic jam and hospital queue becomes yet another argument for cutting it even further.
And Pauline Hanson doesn’t even have to open her mouth anymore – the Labor government and the Coalition are doing all the hard work for her, even though they collectively hold 136 seats in the Parliament of 150 – or 90 per cent of the seats – and One Nation holds… oh, just the two. It shows all the signs of a weak government spooked by the first sign of a mirage.
Education standards declining? Put a flag in the classroom
Australian schools have genuine problems: there are many teacher shortages, there’s declining educational outcomes, staff are exhausted, there are unequal resources across the country, and a public system that is increasingly expected to do more with less funding.
These are big concerns and we do need to work out the solutions. More funding for teacher education? More educational resources? Higher funding for public education, instead of funnelling most of it into private schools? No, forget all of that, the Liberal Party has discovered the solution: more flags in classrooms and more “Western values”.
The shadow education minister Julian Leeser has proposed a “root and branch” overhaul of education system – stronger discipline, reducing excessive screen use, improving civics education, the Australian flag flown in every school, and pushing that old conservative catch-all theme, Western civilisation. Setting aside the fact that no-one has really asked for any of this, all of these been bundled together with the familiar conservative argument that Australian education has somehow lost its way because students hear too much about Indigenous history, sustainability and Asia, and not enough about Britain’s contribution to Australian institutions. And, of course, it’s too woke.
It’s the steady old hand of politics and vote chasing, and will do nothing at all to improve educational standards in Australian schools, or provide teachers with more support. One Nation is increasingly competing for conservative voters, and the Liberal Party needs to show the world that it too can fight the culture wars over national identity, history and supposedly progressive institutions.
Sure, there’s nothing wrong with teaching students about democracy, Western political traditions, or British colonisation in 1788. But Australia’s history didn’t begin there: we need to know about the time before that, and the invasion and destruction of Indigenous people and culture from 1788 onwards. We need to understand all the values and communities that make up Australia, not some half-arsed garbage that a conservative politician wants to use in his battle against One Nation.
And putting up another Australian flag in the classroom or preaching jingoistic nonsense in our schools won’t teach a child to read or equip them to deal with an increasingly complex world in the future.
Banning trade with the illegal settlements might be tokenistic, but every opportunity to denormalise Israel and punish its actions needs to be taken. The argument that sanctions wouldn’t make a difference were used on the apartheid regime in South Africa – but they did, even it took 20 years. It would be better for the world to take stronger action, but it can start with the settlements, and then against all of Israel. Who knows how long it will take, but it has to start somewhere.
I actually hope we don’t get a seat at the Security Council for two years, the spineless labour party would waste it. They should give it to someone that has the moral courage to use it for good not just political convenience.