26 March 2023

COUNTER CURRENTS: Views & Analysis Website


 The first part is a follow-up to an earlier post on this blog related to #AUKUS...

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AUKUS, the Australian Labor Party, and Growing Dissent

in World  by   25/03/2023

"It was a sight to behold and took the wind out of the bellicose sails of the AUKUS cheer squad.  Here, at the National Press Club in the Australian capital, was a Labor luminary, former Prime Minister of Australia and statesman, keen to weigh in with characteristic sharpness and dripping venom.  Paul Keating’s target: the militaristic lunacy that has characterised Australia’s participation in the US-led security pact that promises hellish returns and pangs of insecurity.

In his March 15 address to a Canberra press gallery bewitched by the magic of nuclear-propelled submarines and the China bogeyman, Keating was unsparing about those “seriously unwise ministers in government” – notably Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles, unimpressed by their foolish, uncritical embrace of the US war machine.  “The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One.”

In terms of history, this was chilling to Keating.  The AUKUS security pact represented a longing gaze back at the Mother Country, Britain, “shunning security in Asia for security in and within the Anglosphere.”  It also meant a locking alliance with the United States for the next half-century as a subordinate in a containment strategy of Beijing. This was a bi-partisan approach to foreign policy that saw the US dominating East Asia as “the primary strategic power” rather than a balancing one.

For Keating, the impetus for such madness came from a defence establishment that dazzled the previous Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.  That effort, he argues, was spearheaded by the likes of the US-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Andrew Shearer of the Office of National Intelligence.  They even, he argues, managed to convince PM Albanese, Marles and Wong to abandon the 20-month review period on the scope of what they were seeking.

The steamrolling Keating was also unsparing in attacking a number of journalists for their ditzy, adolescent belligerence. . . 

> Kim Carr, who had previously held ministerial positions in industry and defence materiel, revealed that the matter of AUKUS had never been formally approved in the Federal Labor caucus, merely noted.  Various “key” Labor figures – again Marles and Wong – agreed to endorse the proposition put forth to them on September 15, 2021 by the then Coalition government.

> He also expressed deep concern “about a revival of a forward defence policy, given our performance in Vietnam”.  For Carr, the shadow cast by the Iraq War was long.  “Given it’s 20 years since Iraq, you can hardly say our security agencies should not be questioned when they provide their assessments.”

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TAKE A LOOK AT THIS (...“Paul Keating is not a cultural magician, an economic miracle-worker or a bohemian radical,” he wrote, “but I suspect he is a reasonable human being, and that he and his government have an attainable vision of an economically viable Australia that is less conservative, less violent, less male-dominated and less environmentally destructive.” 

CULTURE

Thirty years ago Paul Keating was photographed for an iconic cover of the Australian edition of Rolling Stone magazine. Photojournalist Lorrie Graham and others present recall the shoot. By Chris Wallace.

Paul Keating and that Rolling Stone cover

Black and white portrait image of Paul Keating, posing with a pair of sunglasses.
Then prime minister Paul Keating photographed in Sydney in 1993.



HERE'S THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT: 

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Paul Keating’s Criticism Of Australia’s AUKUS Deal Is ...
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