At last a decision has been made. ABC management announced on Thursday, via ABC TV News Breakfast co-presenter Michael Rowland, that his new co-presenter will be Bridget Brennan. Comrade Brennan is the permanent replacement for Lisa Millar who is moving to other projects – including the TV series Muster Dogs.
It’s somewhat ironic that two of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s most popular shows are Muster Dogs (about real working dogs) and Bluey (about a fake cattle dog). Ellie’s (male) co-owner would ask her about this, but she is totally deaf. So, what’s the point?
Avid readers will recall that Comrade Brennan won MWD’s “Most Significant Own Goal Award” in 2022 for her comment on the (then forthcoming) referendum on the Voice. The occasion was her appearance on the ABC TV Insiders program on 31 July 2022. Let’s go to the transcript:
Bridget Brennan: … I actually think there’s a lot of appetite now to see some transformative change when we imagine what a Voice would look like. I think it does need to have teeth, it does need to be feared and revered. It needs to be a building, it needs to be an institution that has much more than that of a voice, it has some control and some autonomy.
Comrade Brennan went on to say that “we need to imagine that this body [the Voice] has much more than an advisory role”.
How counter-productive can an advocate get? Why would Ms Brennan expect that the people of Australia should readily vote for a powerful organisation that should be feared? Presenter David Spears tried to clean up the mess but with little success.
The good news is that – with form like this – Comrade Brennan is likely to provide lotsa material for MWD.
Comrade David Crowe (finally) recognises Peter Dutton’s political skills
Did anyone read the column by David Crowe – Nine Newspapers’ chief political correspondent – in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 16 August? titled “FM risks voters tuning out”? The FM reference was an attempted put-down of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s preference for what Comrade Crowe described as “hokey interviews on FM radio”.
The Crowe thesis was that “so many Australians are no longer listening” to the Prime Minister and his Labor government. He pointed to the fact that Opposition leader Peter Dutton had taken a small lead over Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister in the Resolve Political Monitor poll. According to the Nine Newspapers’ chief political correspondent, the PM “is being walloped by economic reality”. And he had this to say about the Opposition leader:
One moment jolted parliament out of its torpor: when Dutton called for a halt to refugees from Gaza. He went too far but he stopped everything with a statement of belief that sent all sides to the barricades. This is his proven skill set, whether voters agree with him or not. He can electrify a debate. He gets voters to sit up and take notice.
Hang on a minute. For aeons, David Crowe has been criticising Peter Dutton’s alleged populism in his Age/SMH columns as well as his appearances on the ABC TV Insiders program. His point was that Dutton’s populism would fail. But now Comrade Crowe is writing that Dutton is more popular than Albanese.
Your man Crowe’s column would have had more plausibility if he had acknowledged his previous commentary on Peter Dutton. But being a journalist like Comrade Crowe means that you never have to say you’re wrong.
[Interesting stuff. Perhaps this should have been placed in your (hugely popular) Can You Bear It? segment. Just a thought. MWD Editor]
CAN YOU BEAR IT?
Stuart Littlemore KC makes sense in 2024 – not so much Stuart Littlemore in1970
In his Weekend Australian column on 10 August, Gerard Henderson cited comments made by relatively new ABC chair Kim Williams to Nine Newspapers’ Calum Jaspan as reported in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on 5 August 2024.
It turned out that Williams had addressed ABC Radio National staff in late July where he criticised the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s digital news platform. His point was that much of what passes for news on the ABC is not news at all – but rather sludge presenting as lifestyle stories. Or something like that.
However, your man Williams told The Guardian Australia’s Amanda Meade on 10 August that he was surprised and embarrassed that his verbal epistle to RN staff had leaked to the media. Fancy that. Whoever would have thought that the comrades at the ABC soviet would ever leak against their media bosses? Somewhat naive, to be sure – but there you go.
Henderson in his column largely agreed with Williams and commented that “Williams’ comments about the softness of ABC news has been welcomed by some ABC personalities”. Ellie’s (male) co-owner had in mind two letters published on 10 August in the Sydney Morning Herald by Stuart Littlemore (of Potts Point) and Peter Thompson (of Grenfell).
Peter Thompson declared that ABC News looks like “some third-rate amateur news organisation”. And here’s what Littlemore had to say:
The ABC’s charter imposes an enforceable duty to maintain a news and current affairs service that takes account of what commercial broadcasting networks do. In duplicating the trivial, crime-obsessed, “human interest”, celebrity-worshipping, formulaic, solecism-riddled, badly spoken and undignified quasi-journalism of the advertising medium that is commercial television, the ABC has proved the necessity of enforcement of that duty it owes to its community. Kim Williams has made a start.
With words like “solecism”, it appears that Littlemore KC, like Williams AM, has swallowed a copy of Roget’s International Thesaurus. In any event, it’s good to hear someone arguing for professional journalism on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.
Which raises the question. Could this be the very same Stuart Littlemore who had this to say about the (then) ABC This Day Tonight circa 1970 in his book The Media and Me (ABC Books, 1996):
TDT … built its reputation on assaulting the conservative values of postwar Australia …. We had done it in any way we could devise – aggressive interviewing of complacent [conservative] politicians, tendentious filmmaking in documentary form, satire …. Without enemies, TDT was lost. The election of a reformist Labor government [in December 1972] robbed the program of Canberra [i.e. the Coalition government] as its major antagonist.
And the answer is yes. So today, Littlemore maintains that the ABC Charter imposes an enforceable duty to maintain professional standards. But in 1996 Littlemore was boasting that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the ABC’s TDT targeted the Coalition but not Labor. This despite the fact that Section 8 of the ABC Act requires that the public broadcaster act in an “impartial” manner “according to the recognised standards of objective journalism”. Today Littlemore is correctly criticising the faults of ABC News. But not long ago he was praising the ABC This Day Tonight’s lack of impartiality. Can You Bear It?
[I assume that Peter Thompson is the person of the same name, who, for a time, presented ABC Radio National Breakfast. MWD Editor.]
Nine’s Peter FitzSimons drops the ball – a zero score in breakdancing is “excellent” but not in rugby union
As Media Watch Dog readers will recall, Nine Newspaper’s fave, columnist Peter FitzSimons, wore a red rag on his head for a decade until it was sent to the laundry – by common consent – where it got lost. So endeth the life of the Red Bandannaed One. Pity really, because the red bandana look might have worked style-wise in France where Fitz ventured to report on the Paris Olympics for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. But MWD digresses.
Did anyone read your man FitzSimons’ report in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 August? It was titled “I am Raygun. You are Raygun. We are all Raygun!” over the subheading “Breaking”.
Fitz covered the antics of the Macquarie University academic Dr Rachael Gunn (”Please call me Raygun”) at the Paris Olympics. Ellie appreciated Dr Raygun’s performance as some moves resembled a dog rolling around on the floor, but as an avid reader/breakdancing fan tells MWD, the performance – which included Dr Gunn hopping like a Kangaroo – barely resembled breakdancing.
Here’s how your man FitzSimons – who played several Rugby Union tests for Australia – commenced his piece:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. The Olympics is meant to be all about excellence. So, what is Raygun doing there, with her breakdancing routine, you ask? Being EXCELLENT, dammit, at too many things to count. But let’s try and count them, after a quick recap. Dr Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, is a 36-year-old Sydneysider with a PhD in cultural studies, “interested in the cultural politics of breaking”. She is also the talk of much of the globe for a – technically – less than prepossessing performance in the brand spanking new Olympic sport of breaking (aka breakdancing). Sure, she didn’t make the podium, but she has sure made the world talk, and laugh, and exult! So, let’s tabulate her excellence as I see it.
It turned out that Dr Gunn’s (for a doctor she is) excellence turned on “bringing the world what it needs now: joy”. And “embodying the most cherished Australian catchcry: have a go, ya mug”. And dancing “like nobody’s watching”. And “bringing us together as a nation”. And “showing against all odds, that the Olympics still has a place for those who are not necessarily elite athletes”. And so on.
Fitz compared the learned doctor with the long-distance runner Cliff Young “who once shuffled all the way from Sydney to Melbourne” in a road race. But failed to mention that Young won the Adidas Sun Superun long distance race in 1979. A really excellent performance to be sure.
This is how Fitz’s praise for someone who scored three zeros for three rounds in the breaking competition:
You do you. This is your world, Raygun, and we are just privileged to be living in it, and watching you at the same time! And I am not just talking as an Australian. You have made headlines around the world, and rightly so. And you are, right now, the toast of Paris, the one everyone is talking about. I know I speak for them all and their admiration, when I misquote John F. Kennedy to say: Ich bin Raygun. Du bist Raygun. We are all, RAYGUN!
What a load of absolute tosh – including the (Knox Grammar) schoolboy German. If everyone is Raygun, does Comrade FitzSimons believe that Dr Gunn should get a run in the Australian Rugby Union Women’s team – where she could continually drop the football, miss targets while passing, fail to make tackles and so on? Not on your nelly.
Which suggests that Comrade FitzSimons believes that Gunn’s “performance is great for the Olympics” – but not for a football code in Australia. By the way, Nine’s man in Paris covering breakdancing declared that critics of the learned professor’s performance are “dickheads”. This from one of Nine Newspaper’s leading journalists. Can You Bear It?
[I note that in The Journal of World Popular Music (JWPM) in July 2016, while completing her PhD, Rachael Gunn wrote an article titled “`Don’t Worry, it’s just a Girl’: Negotiating and Challenging Gendered Assumptions in Sydney’s Breakdancing Scene ”. The Abstract reads as follows:
In this article, I analyse how bodily potential is culturally regulated in Sydney’s breakdancing (breaking) scene through drawing both on my breakdancing practice and interviews conducted with prominent figures in this scene. I critically examine my lived experiences as one of only a few female breakdancers (”b-girls”) in Sydney through analytic autoethnography, and use the theoretical tools of Deleuze and Guattari to unpack and challenge normative gendered narratives. With breakdancing culturally inscribed as masculine (”b-boying”) and its conventions interlocking with broader patriarchal restrictions that inhibit female participation and bodily expression, I argue that the Sydney breaking scene is both a site of transgression and regression for the female body. This paradox confronting the b-girl sees her participation as “othered”, while also challenging normative assumptions of gender. Through situating specific practices of breaking within broader Australian culture and gender norms, I examine how the performances of b-girls and b-boys in Australia disrupt the stability of binary logic on which the organisation of bodies is so heavily reliant and, in doing so, allow for the experience of breaking as a site of “pure” difference.
So, now I understand. Or perhaps not. – MWD Editor.]
Boring for Australia
As avid readers will recall, Ellie’s (male) co-owner has always been a fan of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-90) since he read Muggeridge’s 1940 book The Thirties. Writing in the New Statesman on 11 February 1956, Saint Mug (as he sometimes was called in later life) had this to say about the British Conservative parliamentarian Sir Anthony Eden: “He is a Disraeli hero who has moved into a service flat, or perhaps a deep shelter; a Bertie Wooster who has turned from the Drones Club to Toynbee Hall. As has been truly said, he is not only a bore but he bores for England.”
This segment is devoted to those who – as citizens, residents or visitors – bore for Australia.
Chaser ‘boy’ Julian Morrow allows Bruce Pascoe to drone on about himself without asking one pertinent question
Julian Morrow is one of The Chaser Boys (average age 481/2) – who were made famous by the ABC. Like most of his fellow “boys”, Comrade Morrow was a star at the taxpayer funded public broadcaster in a previous century. But Media Watch Dog cannot remember which one.
In any event, like many of The Chaser Boys, Comrade Morrow’s experience at the ABC is best described by some words from the song Hotel California. In that you check out of the ABC, but you never leave – not if you’re a leftist, that is, like Comrade Morrow.
But MWD digresses. These days Julian Morrow presents Sunday Extra on ABC Radio National at 7am. Fran (”I’m an activist”) Kelly does RN’s Saturday Extra also at 7am. From one leftist to another on weekend mornings. One of the “highlights” of Sunday Extra is the (very, very long) segment “The Year That Made Me” in which some of the ABC’s “chosen ones” are invited to talk to Comrade Morrow about the year that made them famous.
On Sunday 11 August, the Sunday Extra’s “chosen one” was Bruce Pascoe. Here’s how he was described – by producer Jessie Kay:
Amongst the laundry list of careers he’s had – teacher, editor, farmer, fisherman, barman, archaeological site worker and fencing contractor – Bruce Pascoe has published 38 books. In 2014, his book Dark Emu made headlines for suggesting Australia’s Indigenous food cultures went beyond merely hunter-gathering. The media storm that followed brought chaos to both his professional and personal life. Guest: Bruce Pascoe, author and enterprise professor at the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystems at University of Melbourne.
Interesting. As MWD recalls, Dark Emu did not just suggest that Australia’s Indigenous food cultures went beyond hunter-gathering. [By the way, what’s wrong with hunter-gathering? – as the saying goes. – MWD Editor.] Rather, Comrade Pascoe claimed that Indigenous Australians were farmers. Also, as MWD recalls, your man Pascoe holds a position at the University of Melbourne which presented him as an Enterprise Professor, Indigenous Studies.
In short, Professor Pascoe is a controversial figure in the Australian debate. And yet his conversation with Morrow was just boring – both Morrow’s questions and Pascoe’s answers.
Guess what? The learned professor’s fave year is 2014 – the year that Dark Emu was published by Magabala Books.
Without question, when it comes to interviews your man Pascoe excels in talking about the subject he knows best. Namely, HIMSELF. The learned professor droned on and on about his life until the clock chimed at around 30 minutes and Zzzzzzzzz. However, to be fair, Morrow’s questions/comments were also in the Zzzzzzz category. Here’s a brief summary.
• Morrow asks Bruce Pascoe to talk “about the BDE era” i.e. Before Dark Emu. He did – at length.
• Morrow asks about some of Pascoe’s post-Dark Emu books.
• Morrow asks about BP’s “other jobs” beyond writing books.
• Morrow asks BP about his own family history. The learned professor declares “I really love my family”.
• Morrow refers to BP’s “strong relationship with your grandmothers”. After a while, BP states “we had an Aboriginal family in Tasmania and even that was complicated because it was related to the fishing families on the North Coast, prior to Governor Arthur in Hobart, so there’s not a lot of written record about that”.
• Morrow finally makes it to 2014 and the Dark Emu controversy – describing it as a “real maelstrom”. BP declares that “a lot of archaeologists, a lot of historians were passionately in support of Dark Emu”. But he condemns “the attack” on him as really nasty. Quelle Surprise! BP criticises the Melbourne “Herald Sun and the Murdoch papers”. Groan. And here’s how it ended up:
Julian Morrow: I’ve been known to observe there’s no point trying to placate your implacable critics. Well, Bruce, it’s been a great pleasure speaking with you for “The Year That Made Me”. Thanks very much for telling us your story.
Bruce Pascoe: Well, it’s a pleasure to be able to talk about these things on ABC Radio.
Talk about putting the bore into boring. Julian Morrow did not ask Bruce Pascoe to identify the name of even one Indigenous grandparent from whom he traces his Aboriginal ancestry. Nor did Morrow ask Pascoe to respond to the withering criticism of his Dark Emu theory by the anthropologists Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe in their book Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate (MUP, 2021). Convenient, eh? By the way, neither Professor Sutton nor Dr Walshe are political conservatives.
So Julian Morrow had one of Australia’s most controversial authors in an ABC studio for half an hour. But did not ask even one challenging question or make one critical comment. How boring is that?
OUTSIDE INSIDERS
As avid readers are well aware, a certain William (Bill) Thompson – a Melburnian who identifies as the ABC’s Southbank Correspondent – set up the “Outside Insiders” video segment some years ago. This is a print edition of the Bill Thompson initiative to report on the ABC TV Insiders program from the outside. Mr Thompson remains in situ in Melbourne. But Insiders has fled Melbourne for the (media) safety of the Canberra Bubble and, consequently, is now loose from the troublesome Mr Thompson. [Maybe that’s why Insiders junked Melbourne – just a thought. – MWD Editor]
David Speers fudges the fact that Michael Stutchbury was discontinued as an Insiders panellist
ABC TV Insiders was worthy – if somewhat dull – on Sunday 11 August. David (”Please call me Speersy”) Speers was in the presenter’s chair. The panel comprised Melissa Clarke (ABC TV News), David Crowe (Nine’s Age/Sydney Morning Herald), and John Kehoe (Nine’s Australian Financial Review).
The focus was on the economy. The panel is well known. Comrade Crowe is perhaps best known for his failed prophecies about the 2019 election and the 2023 Voice referendum. Comrade Clarke once made the ABC TV News for finishing second in a road race somewhere in Tasmania – the winner did not get a mention (as MWD recalls) and is a competent Canberra-based reporter. And your man Kehoe put in his usual informed analysis of the economic debate.
However, the discussion livened up when, at the end of the program, Speersy threw the switch to “Final Observations”. Here we go:
John Kehoe: Thanks David. Look, the Australian Financial Review’s longest-serving editor-in-chief, Michael Stutchbury, has just stood down from the role after 13 years. During that time, he’s seen off six prime ministers, six treasurers. He’s had enormous impact on the political and economic debate in this country – dating all the way back to the 1980s and the Hawke-Keating economic reforms. He’s been a member of the Insiders couch over the years –
David Speers: [interjecting] He has.
David Speers’ “he has” brief comment was instructive for what he did not say. Michael Stutchbury was a lively Insiders panellist for some years up until the end of 2019. That’s the time that Speersy arrived at Insiders. He took over (from Barrie Cassidy) as the permanent presenter from the beginning of 2020 – with Samuel Clark continuing as executive producer.
Guess what? MWD understands that your man Stutchbury never heard from Insiders again. He was dropped – without a phone call, text or email. When Speers replied “he has” to John Kehoe’s comment that Stutchbury “has been a member of the Insiders’ couch over the years” – he should have said “he was”. That is, the past tense was called for. Stutch didn’t even get a DCS (i.e. Don’t Come Sunday). He got nothing at all – except a mention by his AFR colleague some four years later.
[This is quite a shocking way to treat an AFR editor who was also a good Insiders’ performer and is a nice guy. It’s a pity that Comrades Speers and Clark never attended any of Nancy’s Courtesy Classes where emphasis is placed on politeness. It’s not too late – since the late Nancy’s courses continue beyond the grave per courtesy of American psychic John Edward (when he is not appearing on the ABC TV News Breakfast program). – MWD Editor.]
But there was more. David Marr and Gerard Henderson were also discontinued as Insiders panellists following the arrival of David Speers.
David Marr told Peter FitzSimons (Sun-Herald, 12 May 2024) that he “sort of drifted off with the new [Speers/Clark] regime”. Marr added “David Speers wanted actual insiders on Insiders”. Marr was not regarded as an actual “insider” since he was not a member of the Canberra Press Gallery.
For Gerard Henderson’s part, when the Speers/Clark regime declined to offer him any dates for the whole of 2020, he quit – dispatching an email (of the courteous kind) to Samuel Clark on 11 February 2020. There was no reply (courteous or otherwise). However, an anonymous Insiders source told The Guardian that “Henderson did not sufficiently engage with issues during the journalists’ discussion” and that “the decision had nothing to do with his conservative views” (The Guardian Australia, 24 February 2020). This was discovered, apparently, after Hendo’s 17 years and a hundred appearances on Insiders.
In her report in The Guardian Australia, Amanda Meade commented: “Henderson’s occasional appearances on the program alongside Guardian Australia writer David Marr have been celebrated for the stark difference between the two men’s views”.
And so it came to pass that the Stutch, Marr and Hendo trio all departed Insiders at the end of 2019. All of whom are Sydney-based and none has ever been subsumed by the Canberra Bubble. By the way, Insiders along with David Speers, re-located to Canberra in July 2023.
The good news is that your man Stutchbury’s contribution to Insiders has been remembered by John Kehoe. While your man Marr remains happily a resident of inner-city Sydney. Previously Hendo’s AC (aka Always Courteous) gong limited his critique of Insiders to a considerable extent. And now he is free of this self-censorship. So, the Stutch/Marr/Hendo trio lived happily ever after in their Post-Insiders life.
A cliche in the room – an elephant’s perspective
The “Elephant in the Room” cliche is fast becoming perhaps the most overused platitude in the English language. The term is supposed to refer to an obvious matter which is being overlooked. However, it invariably is used to refer to an issue which is not being ignored – by someone who wishes to pretend otherwise. And, so, assert their (perceived) cleverness. That’s why it appeals to Media Watch Dog as a cliche that can be distorted.
In which Stephen Mayne manages 3 Cliches in 39 words
James Madden reported in The Australian on 14 August that former Channel 7 employee Amber Harrison was interviewed by Louise Milligan for the Four Corners program which aired on 11 August 2024 titled “Don’t Speak”.
Apparently, the interview took three hours – but none of it made it to air. Ms Harrison was scheduled to speak about working for Channel 7. Apparently, Harrison was not told by Milligan that her interview had been left on the cutting room floor – so to speak – prior to Four Corners going to air. How impolite is that?
So, Ms Harrison scored a zero. Crikey founder – and MWD fave – Stephen Mayne – did better. God only knows for how long your man Mayne was interviewed by Comrade Milligan. But at least 39 words (including an “eh”) of the Sage of Templestowe made it to air. Here are his words of wisdom in response to a (somewhat long) question about the Channel 7 culture.
Stephen Mayne: Well, I think it’s a very poor culture. Eh, it is a Second Chance club – the last chance saloon for blokes behaving badly. So, if they’re loyal, there does seem to be a culture of stand by your man.
There were almost as many Mayne cliches as there were Mayne words. Namely, references to Channel 7 as “the last chance saloon” (cliche), to “blokes behaving badly” (cliche 2) – along with a reference to the culture of “stand by your man” (cliche 3 and song title).
Well done Comrade Mayne – a (very) stuffed Elephant is on the way to you.
HISTORY CORNER
Paul Keating’s weird view on the Australia/American alliance – as told to 7.30’s Sarah Ferguson
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not invent the word “weird” for use to describe someone whom you regard as unusual. But the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in the United States presidential election on November 5 certainly popularised “weird” as an attack weapon against Donald J. Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republican team.
In Australia the word is more familiar due to John O’Grady’s novel They’re a Weird Mob and the 1966 comedy film of the same name. In any event, the word came to mind immediately when watching Sarah Ferguson’s ABC TV 7.30 interview with former Labor prime minister Paul Keating on August 8.
The interview followed news that the White House had released new details about the commitments made by Australia and the AUKUS partners – the US and Britain – about the transfer of naval technology to Australia. Under the arrangement, Australia will be able to construct and service nuclear-powered submarines.
It is generally agreed that AUKUS was made possible consequent upon concerns in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the UK – about China’s present and future projection of power in the Asia-Pacific. This concern has increased following the changed direction of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of Xi Jinping.
This is how the interview commenced: Ferguson: “What’s wrong with co-operating with an ally [the US] deemed indispensable for Australia’s security?” Keating: “What’s wrong is that we completely lose our strategic autonomy.”
It was a strange comment coming from a one-time Labor Party leader – in view of the fact that Labor has claimed responsibility for the creation of the Australia-American alliance under John Curtin’s government in the early 1940s.
This is not strictly accurate – since in the 1930s and the early years of the 1940s prime ministers Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies established close contact with the US. They led the United Australia Party at the time – the predecessor of the Liberal Party of Australia, which was created by Menzies in 1944.
Keating was a highly influential treasurer in Bob Hawke’s Labor government. In December 1991 he overthrew Hawke in a party-room ballot. During this time, as a member of the Labor right, Keating was a strong supporter of the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) Treaty. Then, as now, there were US/Australia Joint Facilities in Australia – a crucial part of intelligence gathering for the Five Eyes nations (US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
During his years in the Lodge, Keating never even hinted that Australia’s defence and intelligence ties to the US had led to a loss – or even a lessening – of Australia’s sovereignty. Also, Keating supported the United Nations-approved and US-led military force which drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in the First Gulf War in 1990-1991. Australia’s contribution was a naval contingent.
Ferguson suggested to Keating that he believes “increasing American troop presence and broader military presence here makes Australia more of a target”. The former prime minister replied: “Yes, we’re now defending the fact that we’re in AUKUS”. He went on to describe the US – under the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris administration – as an “aggressive ally”. Aggressive to China, that is.
And then it got quite odd. Asked about Taiwan, Keating described it as “Chinese real estate” and declared that the CCP’s attitude to democratic Taiwan would be akin to China saying to Australia: “Look we think Tasmania has been forgotten and poorly treated for many years” and “we will economically support the Tasmanian people should they wish to secede from Australia”.
It was an unwarranted comparison. Tasmania voluntarily supported Federation in 1901. Taiwan has never accepted the CCP leadership of China since it came to power on the mainland in 1949. Sure Keating said that the China/Taiwan dispute will “get resolved socially and politically over time”. But he expressed no empathy for the democratic aspirations of the Taiwanese people.
There was also plenty of hyperbole. Keating asserted that the US expected the Chinese military “to move around in rowboats, canoes maybe”. Another exaggeration. The US is concerned about China’s massive build-up of military capacity in recent years. As are such nations as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and more besides – including Australia under the Albanese Labor government.
Keating seems to be advocating what the left once embraced as armed neutrality. He believes that the likes of Kurt Campbell, the deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, wants “to have American bases all around Australia”. In short, according to Keating, Campbell wants “military control of Australia”. And that, if he goes along with this policy, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States”. More hyperbole.
Keating believes that Australia should greatly increase its military power. In his 2019 book, How To Defend Australia, Hugh White – who broadly supports Keating and opposes AUKUS – argues that Australia should increase defence spending as a percentage of GDP from around 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent which he concedes is a huge amount. There is a case for an increase in defence spending – but not for Australia abandoning alliances.
Keating asked the question: “What is a threat” to Australia?. His answer was “An invasion [that] comes in an armada” which could be sunk on the way. This shows a strategic ignorance which Keating never expressed as Prime Minister.
As an island continent of some 27 million people on a vast land mass, Australia can be conquered without an invasion. This can be done by merely interdicting sea lanes and flight paths. As the historian Peter Stanley documents in his 2008 book Invading Australia, Imperial Japan considered an invasion of Australia in 1942 but decided it was all too difficult. There were easier ways to conquer Australia.
To survive as a democracy, Australia needs security at sea. This can only be assured with the co-operation of allies. Originally Britain then the US and now, potentially, with both allies in AUKUS.
The idea that a nation – including China – can never threaten Australia without an invasion is – well – weird.
* * * *
Until Next Time.
* * * *
What happens if Trump and Harris tie in Electoral College votes?
If neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris win 270 Electoral College votes in next week’s presidential election, it would trigger political chaos and an obscure constitutional provision for a ‘contingency election’.
In the end, democracy demands our leaders lose well and take defeat on the chin
When it comes to losing, what matters most is not how the losing presidential candidate deals with defeat. More important is that those who voted for the losing candidate accept the result.