China makes ambitious offers to South Pacific states. Australia’s great counter-offer is to South Pacific people. The people dimension must define Australia’s effort for the islands. The rebuttal to the charge that Australia is driven …
Tag Archive for: "bipartisan politics"
In a major address at the National Press Club on Tuesday, shadow defence minister Richard Marles doubled down on the Australian Labor Party’s criticisms of Australia’s troubled future submarine program. The address was teasingly billed …
In the South Pacific, Australia confronts the law of untended purposes. The law states that if you don’t tend to your policy and political purposes, stuff goes off course and the unexpected arrives. If your …
‘Politics stops at the seaboard and anybody who denies that postulate is a son of a bitch and a crook and not a true patriot.’—Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State Acheson, a wry moustachioed warrior …
‘The goalposts weren’t just moved, they were cut down and used for firewood.’ That’s how former Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson characterised the impact of defence budget cuts as the three-year political cycle drove the …