Australian Politics

Australian Left trying to walk both sides of the street

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has made a grudging, partial course correction in the government’s previously anti-Israel rhetoric and record.

He now says that “of course” Israel’s right to self-defence, which the government has previously backed only in principle, includes “the right to respond” militarily to Iran’s attack with more than 180 ballistic missiles last week.

This was always the government’s view, Marles said, and only Opposition Leader Peter Dutton sought to pretend otherwise.

Not only that, but Marles claimed the Albanese government is now in lock-step with the Americans, “on the same page” with the Americans, and has been on the same page with the Americans all this time.

It’s a good thing Marles has moved the government on from its former position, in which the Israelis were viewed as having “in principle”, as a sort of ethereal Platonic idea, a notional right to self-defence, but the government explicitly condemned any action of self-defence the Israelis ever actually took or could possibly take in the physical universe.

But the grudging, partial and dissembling nature of Marles’s remarks is nonetheless a terribly depressing sign of how this government reacts to pressure. The Albanese government resembles a soft pillow. It seems to bear the imprint of whoever last sat on it.

Much of what Marles said, of course, is risible in its unreality.

The Australian’s Cameron Stewart details the stark division deepening among institutions, authorities and the country as a whole as the conflict in the Middle East develops.
If the government always held the view that Israel had a right to make a military response to Hezbollah and Iran, why didn’t it ever say so?

Joe Biden, and his Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, made it explicitly clear that they backed Israel’s operation to clear out Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure from anywhere near the Israel-Lebanon border.

It wasn’t a diabolical plot by Dutton but mere obvious journalism for reporters to ask the Albanese government if it held the same view.

At the time, the government would only repeat its simplistic and self-contradictory mantra: Israel has the right to defend itself, and there must be an immediate ceasefire.

The government often makes itself a hostage to some feeble slogan or formula somebody works out for it to avoid difficult choices. It never ends well.

If there’s any confusion about the government’s position here, it’s entirely the fault of the government.

The confusion of course is a direct result of political cowardice, the hope that inner-city voters Labor is worried about losing to the Greens will hear only the anti-Israel stuff, while those who care about Israel will hear only the pro forma minimal assertion about Israel’s right to self-defence.

Instead of which everybody hears all the equivocations, verbal dodges, refusals to answer questions straightforwardly and rightly concludes the government is trying to walk all sides of every street.

There are many ways Canberra’s position on Israel and the Middle East is against not only Israel but also Washington.

One of these led Marles on the ABC’s Insiders to treat his colleague, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, in much the way the government has recently treated Israel, offering support in theory but not in practice.

One of the major ways Wong, in her recent speech to the UN General Assembly, dismayed the Israelis, contradicted the Americans and generally took flight from reality was her demand that an independent Palestinian state be declared and recognised immediately, regardless of whether an agreement was negotiated with Israel.

When questioned on this, Marles said that of course he agreed with Wong.

But when Insiders host David Speers heroically tried to pin Marles down on whether he supports declaring a Palestinian state regardless of whether an agreement has been reached with Israel, he wouldn’t mention the key point in Wong’s speech at all. Rather, he observed blandly that support for a two-state solution had long been bipartisan policy in Australia and there needed to be a path to a two-state solution.

Well, of course. That’s just the normal pabulum of international relations speak. Everyone supports a two-state solution eventually. The controversial bit of Wong’s suggestion was that the international community should just declare it, and no one, especially not Israel, should be allowed to stop it.

Wong’s ahistorical and deeply unreal suggestion ignores the depth and complexity of all the final status issues that would need to be negotiated and on which there are fundamental clashes. Of course she offered no schmick of an idea about how any of this could be resolved, which leads again to the conclusion that the whole thing was just domestic politics.

Marles soared majestically above these mundanities. He says he agrees with Wong, but he agrees so wholeheartedly that he won’t even repeat her most controversial suggestion.

Which leads to this inevitable question: does this government actually believe in anything at all?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/labor-grudgingly-finds-its-way-to-backing-israels-right-to-respond/news-story/d14056d964e64fb61844f49cac63d75f

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‘Why did abusive students go free?’, Jewish body asks

The nation’s peak Jewish body has challenged Deakin University to explain why students who chanted “F..k off Zionist Scum” to Jews at an anti-Israel rally on campus should be allowed to keep studying there.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has complained to Deakin on behalf of a Jewish student who felt threatened by anti-Semitic chants at a rally at Deakin’s Burwood campus on May 7. Video of the incident shows two students chanting “F..k off Zionist Scum” near a person holding a Jewish and Australian flag.

One of the students was initially suspended for participating in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Deakin, but the decision was overturned on appeal with that student describing her appeal victory on Instagram as a win for “free speech”, adding that “Deakin University can’t get rid of us”.

Moran Dvir, the mother of the Jewish student who made the complaint, also witnessed the anti-Semitic chants and said she was shocked by what she saw.

“They chanted racial slurs, ‘f..k off Zionists - f..k off Zionist scum’ blatantly, openly in the middle of the day on the university campus, in front of campus staff, in front of campus security,” Ms Dvir said. “And those students are allowed to be on campus, they are allowed to return as full students. I am sure that if the slur was ‘f..k off Indigenous/gay/black etc scum’ they would have penalised the student immediately and with no hesitation.”

Ms Dvir said the safety of Jewish students such as her daughter “has been sacrificed by Deakin University to appease an ugly mob of hateful protesters who have weaponised a conflict on the other side of the world to inflict and express racist sentiment against Australian Jewish students and staff in a public space”.

Ms Dvir said she repeatedly contacted the Dean of Students and vice-chancellor at Deakin about the issue without receiving any substantive reply. Last week, ECAJ wrote to Deakin to complain about the university’s treatment of the issue.

“Multiple incidents of hate speech by speakers and students from the day of the rally were filmed,” ECAJ said.

“The specific incident impacting the student the subject of this complaint is also captured on film and concerns the use of the highly offensive phrase, ‘F..k off Zionist scum’.

“A student who was part of this incident was suspended but has since had their suspension revoked, signalling to other(s) that such conduct is acceptable.”

A spokesperson for Deakin said the university could not comment on individual student misconduct processes and the university declined to answer the question of whether it considered the words “F..k off Zionist scum” to be anti-Semitic.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/education/why-did-abusive-students-go-free-jewish-body-asks/news-story/0502bede352f07ad13dbcafec5ff7b78

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A truly toxic welcome

‘Who’s Captain Cook?’ should not have been a surprising question coming from a six-year-old commencing Catholic school having left a government school. For his older sister, the curriculum vacuum which the feats of our pioneers and nation builders once occupied is filled with Sorry Day, a permanent Sorry wall, letters to the Stolen Generation, being told on Anzac day that the evil Anglos excluded Aboriginals from being Anzacs, choosing and drawing your own spirit animal, revering the digging stick, and much more. But the biggest culture war weapon, the tip of the Woke (Cultural Marxist) activists’ spear, is the so-called Welcome to Country (WTC). The whole thing is currently losing some of its chutzpah in the face of the sheer animosity virtually everyone feels for it. Its multifaceted toxicity runs much deeper than mere annoyance.

Firstly, most Woke nonsense, however egregiously dishonest, can be hidden from or quietly laughed at. You can easily avoid those likely to threaten violence if you mis-pronoun them. Sports ruined by virtue signalling can be turned off. Contrast this with the WTC delivered by a commissar or acting deputy in a closed quiet space closely observing your degree of reverence. It’s a kind of neo-Marxist’s Nicene Creed indicating you embrace all the self-loathing inauthentic nonsense that goes with it. Don’t roll your eyes or laugh at the $1,600 cultural performance. Put your hands behind your back and look down. It’s your original sin being invoked here, Invader as the WTC is recited with the same timing and gravitas of the Lord’s Prayer. Your implied wrong-think will be noted and consequences will follow. In situations where an authority figure is invoking it, your pretence at religious reverence is vital. If a judge is opening the Court with a WTC, which is increasingly the case, be careful lest your client lose in an exercise of judicial discretion that could have gone either way. Why is the teacher being mean to me? The WTC is pure power flexing by Left activists that have wormed their way into our institutions using the tunnels of DEI.

Secondly, for the poor children enduring it, it has a much deeper toxicity. If you have to acknowledge every day that you are a thief on the land that you stole why would you want to serve and protect the nation that you are being taught to despise? That’s the point: you won’t. That vacuum created by the removal of solemn expressions of Christian faith is filled by the new state-based religion but the Aboriginal activists will not be forgiving us our trespasses. This is not a religion of redemption. It segues usefully with the blame laden on our children for white (non-white countries aren’t to blame) climate change.

Thirdly, as G.K. Chesterton said people who believe in nothing can be made to believe in anything. Forcing everyone to revere what is completely inauthentic and false serves a deliberate destabilisation purpose and an important demoralisation purpose. The WTC is inauthentic. It was written in 1976 for a particular performance and later weaponised by activists. Watch the Mayor participate in one and the one conducted in the Supreme Court of Victoria. We are being asked to revere the entirely inauthentic. It’s nonsense and the ability to make people spout and accept nonsense is probably the greatest power metric there is. Once you’ve got everyone lying and revering nonsense with you, you’ve got ‘em by the balls. Keep silent because you are required to be an ‘ally’ of dishonesty and speaking truth will make others feel unsafe. Your observations of what is untrue constitute a form of violence and there is a brace of quasi-judicial authorities ready to come after you. Adherence to the nonsense is a precondition to employment, membership, and rights of entry virtually everywhere. Your knowledge of what is nonsense has to be hidden if you are to be allowed to live. Demoralisation is an important facet of any Marxist toolkit. You can’t create Marx’s ‘new man’ without tearing down all the old institutions first. An essential precursor to institutional demolition has to be establishing everyone’s disbelief in them. Read Vaclav Havel’s early speech as President of a freed Czechoslovakia about how under communism virtually every communication was a state-required lie. We’re getting there.

Fourthly, questioning the idiotic is, of course, ‘racist’. That strange concept that the Woke would wish had the same effect as pointing the bone. Go out of the tribe, thou cancelled, and die as the penalty of suggesting cultures other than yours can be criticised. It is often said that Wokeism is a kind of industrial solvent to Western Civilisation upending all its central pillars.

There’s no better illustration than the effect the WTC and its baggage on Australian law. Individual rights are our Greco Judeo-Christian heritage and the bedrock of our law as opposed to Marxist-based class rights or racial rights. Nomads had no system of land ownership no concept of citizenship and no writing. Yet no state institution can send a message without reminding you of Australia’s true ‘owners’ and therefore you and Australia’s illegitimacy. Always will be sounds a little and means the same as the from the river to the sea. It’s pure sedition. Yet, the Woke leadership of the Victorian Bar and some other state Bars, always headed by someone with the Monarch’s rosette on their gown, happily endorses the nonsense that dictates that our constitutional head of state and the legal system flowing from him is illegitimate. While quietly conniving at every aspect of our English heritage being airbrushed out, they would have happily ushered in, via the Yes vote they supported, an Aboriginal House of Lords in Canberra. The unconstitutional concept of a State (Victoria) Treaty with a local tribe or persistent language of Australia’s constitutional illegitimacy gets a pass using the think positive verbiage of ‘reconciliation’. It’s perverse save that the New Left establishment clearly punishes those who don’t conform. Stick for the honest, carrots for the others. Sun Tsu understood the power of psychological warfare. He would have loved the Welcome to Country.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/a-truly-toxic-welcome/

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Democracy demands choice, not the appearance of choice

Senator Ralph Babet

Most Australians think we have a real choice when it comes to the government we elect, but many of us know that is not true. Unless of course you consider being given the opportunity to vote for socialism or socialism-lite a choice!

Imagine going to the ballot box and believing that the choice of authoritarianism on one hand and gentle authoritarianism on the other, meant you had real options.

Spare me.

The idea of a two-party political system is pure disinformation. Speaking of which, if you want proof that the two-party system is really a one-party system cleverly disguised as democracy, look no further than the Labor Party’s Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. The Bill now proposed by Prime Minister Albanese and his Communications Minister Michelle Rowlands is the same bill first proposed by Scott Morrison and his Communications Minister Paul Fletcher. Fancy that!

In the same way that cockroaches survive nuclear wars, globalist ideas survive federal elections and changes of government.

You need to understand that most government ministers are not especially smart or capable. Most MPs, if they had to find actual jobs in the actual economy, would be hard-pressed to find work as low-level middle managers. Think regional managers overseeing half a dozen 7-11 stores.

Actually, no. More like – and I’m stretching here – deputy assistant to the assistant night manager of a solitary, underperforming store in a rural town no one ever heard of. Yes, that’s your average high-ranking Labor minister had they not been voted into Parliament.

So the people sitting at the big desk in the ministerial office are not the brightest. They are good at talking, schmoozing, and politicking. But that is about it. The real smarts are to be found in the bureaucracy – the nameless, faceless, public servants who are more likely to be serving the globalist elites than the public who pay their wages.

These bureaucrats attend globalist functions where they enthuse over how idyllic the world could be if only the public could be massaged and moulded into the right kind of public. They then return to Canberra where they convince the deputy assistant to the assistant night manager of a poorly performing 7-11 – who by some fluke of the electoral system somehow end up as Australia’s Communicators Minister – that it is vitally important to censor the free thinking of free citizens online.

The Communications Minister – more suited to making a Slurpee than running a national portfolio let alone protecting civil rights – is quickly convinced by the bureaucrat’s fine-sounding words and high-minded ideals. The next thing you know, your Facebook posts are being suppressed and your X (Twitter) account has been suspended.

Labor and the Liberals exist only to echo one another. Liberal or Labor, Scomo or Albo – it’s all the same. Only the colour of the corflute changes. I can give you example after example to prove the point. Consider Australia’s self-sabotaging commitment to Net Zero emissions. Right now, Net Zero is considered a Chris Bowen fetish. But we should never forget that it was former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard who signed Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol that required us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as if human activity was the main cause of climate.
Today the Labor Party insists on wind turbines and solar panels while the Liberal Party insists on nuclear power plants. But both parties are in lock-step agreement that there is a climate catastrophe that can only be avoided by completely overhauling our energy policy.

Or what about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament? Prime Minister Albanese wanted it in the Australian Constitution; Mr Dutton wanted it legislated. Our major parties only disagreed on the instrument, not on the desirability to divide Australians by race.

Should we talk about Digital ID? It’s a Liberal Party idea that never quite got up. Labor succeeded where the Liberals failed and all Australians lost.

Think about the commitment to globalist entities who continually undermine our national sovereignty. Whether it’s the World Health Organisation, the United Nations, or the World Economic Forum – both major parties are beholden to them.

The WEF serves unelected corporate elites by giving them access to politicians worldwide, and subsequently, access to public money. Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats should be nowhere near any of it.

Both major parties love big government and big bureaucracy. No matter what they say before taking office, neither party ever reduces the size of government or repeals legislation. Both parties have put the nation into serious debt. And both parties have raised taxes and levies.

There was perhaps no more appalling proof that we actually live in a the one party state than during Covid when both Liberal and Labor politicians cheered the trashing of civil rights. Both parties – to their eternal shame – supported mandatory vaccinations, lockdowns, mask-wearing and school closures.

Democracy demands a choice, not just the illusion or appearance of choice. At present, we don’t have that. Slowly, Australians are starting to realise it, but we must all play a part and wake more people up.

The UAP exists outside of the two-party system because a real democracy demands that voters are given a real choice – a choice about where we are heading as a nation and about the kind of country we want to be.

When you support the United Australia Party you are doing more than supporting sensible policy positions, you are giving Australia the chance to exercise real choice and in so doing, strengthening democracy.

I am ever so grateful for your continued support.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/democracy-demands-choice-not-the-appearance-of-choice/