We should test hateful opinions in open debate, not shut them down
If we allow tribal and polemical opinion to govern public interaction, we undermine our shared liberties.
If we allow tribal and polemical opinion to govern public interaction, we undermine our shared liberties.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong isn’t dancing, but she does need to be reassessed. She’s not convincing anyone of her skill or judgment.
Xi Jinping’s imagined ‘tianxia’ – China presiding over ‘all under Heaven’ – would constitute an enormous regression. None of us should want any part of it – least of all those of us who live in liberal democracies.
When people who are household names in this country lionise the party’s governance of China, they and their audiences need sharply to be reminded of the brutal reality.
Richard Nixon’s opening to Mao’s China led to American business elites coming to see China not simply as a tantalising market, but as a potential manufacturing paradise.
Biden warned Tehran not to cross a red line and it has promptly done so. Obama likewise warned Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad not to cross a red line and was ignored. The regime in Tehran knows that.
Whereas the impending famine in Gaza is blamed on Israel, it is arguable that only foreign intervention in Haiti will be able to restore responsible governance.
We have long needed a truly independent inquiry into the origins and spread of Covid-19. This blow-by-blow account examines how the global pandemic could have been prevented.
Wang Yi is both a hardliner and a servant of the uber-dictator whose approach to foreign policy has been notably aggressive for well over a decade.
If Keating had one last good fight in him, it would be to urge upon Xi the kind of economic reforms the former led in Australia in the 1980s. But don’t hold your breath on that one.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/paul-monk/page/2