President needs to help Ukraine
The course of ceasefire hopes in Gaza and Mr Trump’s role in them will weigh as heavily with the Nobel committee as the Abraham Accords. But so will Mr Trump’s support for Israel’s controversial actions in the enclave and the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. No less crucial will be what happens in Ukraine. The Nobel committee is certain to be unimpressed if Mr Trump fails to help ensure Vladimir Putin is defeated in his quest to overrun Ukraine, destroy its democracy and subjugate its people. Mr Trump’s latest backflip, when he reversed the damaging embargo on US weapons supplies, including Patriot air defence systems that Kyiv desperately needs, hopefully is a sign that he is definitively turning against his “good friend Vladimir”. Putin “just wants to kill people”, Mr Trump said, complaining that the Russian tyrant gave him “a lot of bullshit”. Mr Trump hopefully will do what the US should do to help Ukraine turn back Putin’s onslaught.
The US President has never hidden his passion for the Nobel prize. Mr Netanyahu faces a daunting task convincing the Nobel committee that there is more than just obsequiousness in his nomination of Mr Trump to follow in the footsteps Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Malala Yousafzai, who defied the horrors of the Taliban. But Mr Trump has confounded those who have written him off before, despite the odds stacked against him.
China cannot change who we are
The Prime Minister must devote more time and effort to the US relationship. Regardless of Australia’s current warmer relationship with China, the latter’s strategic ambitions in Asia are fundamentally different from Australia’s view.
Energy transition that is becoming an end unto itself
High costs and inefficiency are the opposite of productivity. But there’s a growing danger that an overly ambitious net-zero transition will become the key performance indicator for government.
Donald Trump would not disagree with the lavish praise heaped on him at the White House on Tuesday AEST when Benjamin Netanyahu handed him a copy of the letter the Israeli Prime Minister has sent nominating Mr Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. “President Trump has demonstrated steadfast and exceptional dedication to promoting peace, security and stability around the world,” Mr Netanyahu wrote in the letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. He praised the US President for “forging peace, as we speak, in one country in the (Middle East) region after another”, highlighting Mr Trump’s role in the historic 2020 Abraham Accords that established formal diplomatic ties with Arab states.