A big day for the pond, featuring an abundant groaning, the bromancer in full flight, a Caterist lost and better not found, and Jennings of the fifth form. ...

 

Despite the obvious temptations, despite being a true crime aficionado, the pond refused to comment on the mushroom matter when it was before the court, at great cost to doing business...

If only Dame Slap had been of similar mind in the Lehrmann and other matters, but it explains why the pond will walk right past much of the lizard Oz coverage this day, in full ambulance and mushroom chasing mode ...

It's easy to almost completely ignore that note about the NT coroner, such is the reptile fetish for mushrooms.

What a relief that Dame Groan should, if ever so briefly, be top of the extreme far right, ma ...

The old duck had at last found something new to discuss, a book first published back in March ...

The header: American critique of red tape misses the point on win elections, Ezra Klein’s Abundance — with its take on stifling red tape and over-regulation — is making a splash in Canberra. But is it realistic when it comes to winning power?

The caption: US President Donald Trump walks on the south lawn of the White House on July 6. Picture: Getty Images

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The groaning biddy seemed invigorated by the sea change, because the reptiles rated it an abundant, full five minute read ...

It’s something of a worry that a book written by two partisan American journalists should be having a biblical-level impact in Canberra.

Written by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance: How We Build a Better Future was published in March. Most of the text was written when it wasn’t clear Donald Trump would be elected as US president for a second time.

The principal aim of the book is to provide guidance to left-leaning politicians about achieving their aims more efficiently. The authors don’t query these aims or ask whether government intervention is really a good idea.

Focusing on three areas – housing, climate measures and infrastructure – the argument is that over-regulation is holding back progress and red tape reduction is the key to better outcomes. The authors make the point that while individual regulations may make some sense and serve legitimate ends, the cumulative effect is often stifling: “Each individual decision is rational. The collective consequences are maddening.”

The reptiles helped out the publisher with a big snap of the cover, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

The pond should note that it has no dog in this fight, it hasn't read the book, and is unlikely to, and hasn't paid much attention to Ezra Klein in recent years, especially since he joined that house of both siderism, the NY Times, back in 2021. The pond is inclined to esteem the likes of Paul Krugman, who upped and left the joint to do his own thing, including Real Men Burn Stuff, The manosphere and the war on renewable energy...

So correspondents are on their own ...

The authors present plenty of evidence to back up their case. They cite the example of California, where every political level, as well as the judiciary, is dominated by Democratic Party nominees.

“California has spent decades trying and failing to build high-speed rail. It has the worst homelessness problem in the country. It has the worst housing affordability problem in the country. It trails only Hawaii and Massachusetts in its cost of living. As a result, it is losing hundreds of thousands to Texas and Arizona.”

Communist-run China is given as an example of what can be done, although it’s not entirely clear whether the authors support this repressive regime: “China can build hundreds of thousands of miles of high-speed rail in the time it takes California to fail to build hundreds of miles of high-speed rail. China does not spend years debating with judges whether to move a storage facility.”

The objective of providing more affordable housing is an example where government policies generally have the opposite effect. A recent RAND report compared the costs of producing affordable, family-suitable housing in California and Texas. Per square foot, it costs more than four times to build in California than it does in Texas. The plethora of requirements in California, including the mandated use of unionised labour, explain the difference. It also takes almost two years longer for projects to be completed in California.

Another example is Chicago, a Democrat city. Recently, $US11bn was invested by the city to build 10,000 affordable housing units. That means each unit costs more than $US1m – that’s more than $1.5m in Aussie dollars.

There was a 100-point process for selecting the projects, with 10 points for “advanced level” green certification; 11 points for a women-led development teams; and seven points for certain accessibility standards.

Cost containment scored only three points.

The conclusion is obvious: seeking to impose numerous conditions when the objective is to provide more affordable housing leads to perverse outcomes.

Economists, of course, won’t be in the least surprised; the famous Tinbergen rule deems the requirement of one policy instrument for one objective. Any violation of the rule leads to sub-optimal results.

When it comes to renewable energy, Klein and Thompson observe the far faster rollout in red states – controlled by Republicans – than in the blue states. The legislation that was designed to block what were thought of as undesirable developments such as new coalmines has been used by those opposed to wind and solar installations as well as new transmission lines.

The authors are not great believers in the power of markets or the scope for private businesses to solve most of society’s problems. They still see government as the solution. In their view, the federal government should somehow supercharge science and what is required is “a new kind of entrepreneurial state (with) the government as a bottleneck detective”. Given their observations about the dead hand of regulation, this sounds hopelessly naive.

(It is also reminiscent of that other unconvincing advocate for government intervention, Mariana Mazzucato. One of her books is entitled The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths. Her ideas have captured the imagination of our Treasurer, Jim Chalmers.)

The Klein-Thompson book does contain some useful lessons for Australia. It focuses on the supply side of the economy, which is routinely ignored by policymakers when deciding on large-scale policy interventions – childcare and aged care being obvious examples.

It also strongly makes the case for focusing on productivity.

In the authors’ words, “an economy can grow because it adds more people. It can grow because it adds more land or natural resources. But once those avenues are exhausted, it needs to do more with what it has.”

The authors strongly favour an expansion of nuclear power in the US, arguing that the massive over-regulation of the industry has thwarted the industry for decades. Our Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, may like to pay attention.

Where the authors err is their take on the role of government and how political parties can win office. It’s a technocratic view of how governments should function. The leaders should develop worthy policy aims, hopefully with political appeal, and then go about achieving these aims in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

Whether voters are really swayed by the supposed technocratic prowess of political parties is unclear, although blatant incompetence tends to be punished.

It was not something Trump campaigned on. Rather, it was the message of making America great again – a values-based statement that means different things to different people. The Coalition may want to take note: claiming to be a more efficient government manager is probably unlikely to win elections.

The likeliest message the Albanese government will take from the book is the need to reduce red tape, but only in preferred areas.

This will include housing and renewable energy where infringing on the rights of those adversely affected by investments, often subsidised, will be justified in the “national interest”.

The states will be called on to make much of this happen. It is already happening, with state planning ministers overriding the role of local governments in a growing number of instances. The rights of landowners and affected communities that object to renewable energy projects and transmission lines are being significantly curtailed.

When it comes to other areas, however, there will likely be a step up in regulatory intrusion. The new merger laws involve a thicket of red tape, to use Klein and Thompson’s noun.

The regulatory burden on childcare sector is also about to be massively ramped up.

In net terms, very little is likely to be achieved, but for the Albanese government’s pet projects life suddenly may become easier for investors and operators.

There will be a negligible impact on productivity.

Ah, it was all just an elaborate attempt to do the usual, bash comrade Albo and his cohort but the pond did warn correspondents that they were on their own... 

Perhaps the pond should have started off by visiting Morwell ...

No use crying over lost hits, and so to the eternally hysterical bromancer, who seems to be getting more and more easily triggered of late ... always living on the edge in some flashpoint or other ...

 The header: AUKUS review is a flashpoint for future of our defence strategy, The US-Australia alliance could be headed for a dangerous period with one flashpoint being Washington’s AUKUS review that might be completed any day now.

Always good to start a story with a snap of patriotic champers Pete: US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has nominated China as the chief threat to the US, its stated intention of taking Taiwan by force if it chose as something Washington was determined to prevent. He has said Beijing was preparing for war. Picture: AFP

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The bromancer was deep in crisis mode, set off by comrade Albo's pending visit to Beijing ...

You get the sense that the US-Australia alliance could be moving towards a dangerous crisis point.

One flashpoint could emerge any day: the completion of the AUKUS review by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defence for Policy.

Colby is examining whether the AUKUS agreement fits Donald Trump’s America First policies. Colby is an AUKUS sceptic because he doesn’t think the US will have enough nuclear-powered subs of its own to sell one to Australia in 2032.

It’s possible the review will be released while Anthony Albanese is on his extended trip to China, basking no doubt in schmoozing and compliments.

The official apparatus of the People’s Republic of China is superb at flattering foreigners it wants to influence, though it’s hard to imagine it can get much more oleaginous than describing our estimable PM as “handsome boy”.

Still, even the Prime Minister may feel jaundiced if he finds it necessary in Beijing to answer questions about his own contribution to the death or dismemberment of AUKUS. That probably won’t happen. The review could well take longer than its scheduled 30 days.

If its conclusions are significant there may be an interagency review afterwards. Anything that bore fundamentally on the alliance would have to go up to Trump himself.

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of an alarming figure, Elbridge Colby during his confirmation hearing before the Senate armed services committee last March. He is regarded as an AUKUS sceptic because he doesn’t think the US will have enough nuclear-powered subs of its own to be able to sell one to Australia in 2032. Picture: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Those of a certain age will recall the days when Japan, France, etc were mooted as suppliers ...remember bromancer stories like these ones?

Sheesh, the pond has spent way too much time reading and worse, remembering the bromancer.

Enough of these distractions ... back to the current fear ...

We’re still not sure whether this review is a personal initiative of Colby’s, a full-fledged institutional Pentagon project or something that can be seen as representing the Trump administration altogether.

The majority of public comment about the Colby review has, understandably, focused on his reasonable doubts as to whether the US could possibly afford to sell first one, or eventually in total three, Virginia-class boats to Australia when it will be severely short of such boats itself.

A nuclear-powered sub takes about seven years to build so we already know how many US subs there will be. The AUKUS agreement stipulates the US president in 2031 has to be sure selling a sub to Australia the next year won’t diminish the US Navy.

Time for reptile detour with an AV distraction, Chief International Correspondent for The Australian, Cameron Stewart, unpacks the political and strategic shockwaves from Donald Trump’s review of the AUKUS pact — a calculated move that pressures Australia to boost defence spending while testing the strength of one of the world’s most critical security alliances.

Carry on bromancing at the threshold ...

There are two other threshold questions for Colby. Is the US-Australia alliance strong enough that Washington would believe Australian navy submarines would help our ally in any conflict in the Pacific?

That this is a question shows how badly the alliance has run off the rails. The ANZUS Treaty itself calls for the allies to respond if their territory or their forces are attacked in the Pacific.

The precise question of how Australia would respond in a conflict is subject to a simple but unavoidable paradox.

No alliance arrangement absolutely commits any nation to take action in some unforeseeable future contingency.

So no Australian government could give a formal commitment, in advance, that it would join the US in any military engagement with the PRC. However, in reality it’s almost inconceivable that Australia wouldn’t join the US in such circumstances.

The most likely event would be conflict over the PRC trying to take Taiwan by force.

The reptiles slipped in a reverential snap, The late Richard Armitage, former US deputy secretary of state, speaking in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

The bro was inspired ...

As the great Rich Armitage once put it to an Australian audience: if American service men and women are fighting and dying to secure a Pacific democracy, and Australia stands on the sidelines, the US-Australia alliance could not possibly endure.

Moreover the presence of US joint facilities such as Pine Gap, and other US forces in Australia, means that in a real war the PRC would almost certainly attack Australia at the outset anyway.

Not only that, if there were any chance at all we would participate, the PRC would have an incentive to attack our air force, whose bases are completely unprotected, and our submarine base, as these two assets, modest as they are, could be usefully deployed in such a conflict.

But now, under Albanese and Trump, the alliance is more distant than it has been at any time since the erratic and disastrous Gough Whitlam prime ministership. So it’s not quite so clear the Americans could rely on us as we routinely rely on them.

We can rely on King Donald?

The reptiles were busy with their own distractions, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is downplaying a recent warning from China over Australia's defence spending. This comes as US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth urged Australia to lift its defence budget to 3.5 per cent of GDP to help counter Chinese aggression. Defence Minister Richard Marles described it as “the most significant military build-up” Australia has ever seen.

The bromancer began to slip back into the past with Blainers ...

A new edition of the Geoffrey Blainey classic, The Causes of War, has just been issued. In it Blainey argues persuasively that neither war nor peace is the natural state of relations between nations. Both rather are methods for advancing national interests and policy objectives. Blainey calls for a much deeper analysis of the causes of peace.

One of the most effective causes of peace is a stable system of deterrence. US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth gave important congressional testimony last month. He nominated the PRC as the chief threat to the US, its stated intention of taking Taiwan by force if it chose as something Washington was determined to prevent. He said Beijing was preparing for war.

The US could deter this, however, by modernising and expanding its own forces and by “strengthening our forward posture in the region and working closely with our allies to enhance their own defence capabilities”. He specifically nominated Australia, Japan and The Philippines.

Time for another sample of a certified Faux Noise weekend host and notorious drinker, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said China’s threat to Taiwan “could be imminent,” in what was his most assertive statement to date on Taiwan during a security conference in Singapore.

The bromancer stayed outraged and fearful, with the kit for his war on China by Xmas a worry...

So Hegseth is clear about what should be obvious: the presence of US forces in Australia, and our co-operation with US forces, is part of a conscious military deterrence against Beijing. Albanese will never speak publicly of any of these matters now.

Part of the AUKUS arrangement is to have US nuclear subs partly based in Australia. These, too, would be targets in any conflict.

Another big question for Hegseth is whether Australia will be technically capable of running nuclear subs by 2032. In this connection we have indirect but devastating evidence of gross Australian incompetence.

The Australian National Audit Office published a dismal report that produced shocking chapter and verse about the navy’s inability to maintain in reliable service its landing helicopter dock ships.

There’s a lot of depressing and terrible detail in this report. But it all boils down to this.

If the Australian Defence Force is routinely defeated by the challenge of manning and running LHDs, under what moon of madness would anyone think it can run Virginia-class nuclear submarines, one of the most complex artefacts ever constructed by humanity? If we were serious about doing any of this we would have put in huge effort already.

Then came a final AV distraction, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke discusses Labor’s resistance to increasing defence spending to the requested 3.5 per cent of GDP by the Trump administration amid a spending lift pledge by most NATO members. “We start with the capability, we don’t start with the dollars, and that’s how we work with every financial decision that the government makes,” Mr Burke told Sky News Australia. “We make decisions on behalf of Australia and on behalf of Australia’s national interest, the relationship with the United States is really important, we have mature, decent, respectful conversations with the United States, but as I say, the conversation doesn’t start with the dollars on our end, it starts with the capability.”

That inspired the bromancer to take a final deep dive into the past ...

Here’s a final historical note.

In 1963, Labor’s parliamentary leaders Arthur Calwell and Whitlam were sensationally photographed sitting docilely outside a meeting of Labor’s national conference, its 36 “faceless men”.

The parliamentary leadership wasn’t included in the party’s decision-making body in those days. It was meeting to consider whether Labor would support the establishment of the US facility at North West Cape, which was vital in US submarine communications. The left of the party was in uproar, determined to reject this US facility.

One of the leading left opponents of North West Cape was Tom Uren, the MP for whom Albanese, as a fellow member of the party’s far left, later worked and idolised for so long.

Just what kind of government has Labor’s huge election victory delivered us?

Now that's the bromancer at his terrified, hysterical, alarmist best ... pitching for the reptile demographic, still stuck somewhere back in the days of the faceless men/Artie routines of the early 1960s.

And so to the cratering Caterist. 

Those few who pay attention, and the even fewer who care, will remember that the pond missed the Caterist yesteray because he clearly gets up late to file his copy.

No matter, as promised, here he is, the quarry whisperer in full flight...

The header: Nick Cater: No sign PM has learned lessons of first-term failures, The PM paints a picture of an economy rich with advantages, a ‘standout destination for international investment’. There’s no acknowledgment circumstances might have changed.

The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the Economic Outlook 2025 event hosted by Sky News and The Australian, at Crown Sydney. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers / NewsWire

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The quarry whisperer showed off his ability to do a Henry by quoting Confucius ...

It’s been a while since an Australian prime minister remained upright long enough to take off the training wheels.

So we can be forgiven for expecting something more substantial than the flim-flam Anthony Albanese offered the nation on Friday in what was billed as a keynote speech on his second-term agenda.

Grey-haired readers will remember John Howard confidently striding back into office in 1998 and striking a tax reform agreement with the premiers as a prelude to introducing the GST. Some might recall Bob Hawke’s gleaming eyes in 1984, illuminated with the zeal of a reformer, pledging to reduce government spending and lower labour costs to allow businesses the chance to make a profit.

History will record that Albanese returned with an ill-defined commitment to do something to improve productivity.

When pressed on what that something might be, the PM didn’t seem to know. The policies would emerge from a two-day summit in August.

“What we’re trying to do is to have an adult conversation,” he told Andrew Clennell at The Australian’s Economic Outlook forum on Friday.

“I think it was Confucius who said, ‘If you think you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong room.’ ”

There is no record of Confucius saying such words, nor much hope among Confucian scholars that any will emerge.

Confucius was a Zhou Dynasty philosopher, not a modern motivational speaker delivering epithets on Instagram.

Nor is there any record of Hawke arriving at the two-week taxation summit 40 years ago this week with a roll of blank butcher’s paper and marker pens looking for ideas.

He came with a 440-page white paper on tax reform, proposing to widen the tax base and alleviate pressure on income tax by taxing capital gains and fringe benefits.

Why do the reptiles keep reverting to Hawke? 

They hated him back then, and yet now they can't get enough snaps of him, Former PM Bob Hawke in 1986. Picture: News Corp

The pond understands it's all part of the demographic, a pitch to those Grey-haired readers to fight ancient wars one more time, in order to bludgeon comrade Albo's mob, but it's such a pathetic ploy ...

He also included a proposal for a 12.5 per cent goods and services tax, which languished in the too-hard basket until Howard came along.

In the Prime Minister’s defence, he is right to point out that productivity began slowing long before he entered office.

Indeed, declining productivity is a challenge in most developed economies – though not all – with Portugal, Ireland and the US standing out as exceptions.

Yet the exceptionally sharp decline in productivity in Australia over the past three years has not escaped the notice of international economists.

An IMF report published in December noted with alarm a 3.7 per cent fall in labour productivity in 2022-23, one of the steepest drops on record. The IMF attributes this to weak business investment – particularly in non-mining sectors – as well as economic rigidities.

The unmistakable warning is that structural factors are driving up the costs of labour, resources and capital.

Yet none of this was acknowledged on Friday by the PM, who painted a picture of an economy rich with natural advantages, a “standout destination for international investment … a partner and provider of choice to the Indo-Pacific”.

Cue another snap, AustalianSuper CEO Paul Schroder. Picture: Jane Dempster / The Australian

The pond suspects it was an attempt to make Dame Groan seem lively and interesting ...

The chief executive of Australia’s largest superannuation fund might beg to differ. AustralianSuper’s Paul Schroder told Friday’s forum that for every dollar flowing into funds, 70 cents is invested overseas. “If you run a national business in Australia at the moment, you have about 100 different taxes you have to pay,” Schroder said. “How stupid is that? So why don’t we fix that?”

Fair point. Reducing the corporate tax rate would encourage investment that lifts productivity.

Lowering income tax would reduce the cost of labour. Removing levies on heavy emitters and internal combustion engines would reduce the price of energy.

Yet the PM showed no appetite for taxation reform, nor would he acknowledge its central role in improving productivity.

There was no mention either that increasing energy costs in pursuit of net zero might be driving businesses offshore, or that pro-union workplace laws might increase the cost of labour.

The consequences of erecting barriers to companies that simply want to turn a profit have emerged in the latest ASIC data on business insolvencies. They record a sharp increase in bankruptcies in 2024-25, to a level well above that of the Covid years.

The pain is concentrated in small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly in the construction, retail and service sectors. Cost-of-living pressures have softened consumer demand.

“Other Services” – a catch-all for personal services, dry cleaners, repairers and small transport operators – also registered a sharp rise in exits, typically a sign of struggling sole traders and microbusinesses. The picture is clear: Australia’s business environment for small and medium-sized enterprises has become more difficult, more costly and less forgiving. It does not bode well for Labor’s promise of a “future made in Australia”. Manufacturing’s contribution to the national economy halved from 12 per cent at the start of the century to 6 per cent in 2020.

In 2024, it was 5.9 per cent – hardly an auspicious sign that manufacturing is heading home anytime soon.

Missing from Albanese’s speech was any evidence that his government is prepared to dip into its substantial pool of political capital to tackle the challenging task of microeconomic reform, let alone acknowledge, as Hawke did, the imperative of reducing government spending.

It was time to trot out another aged, ossified relic, a man who had the misfortune to lose his own seat as well as government, Former prime minister John Howard. Picture: Dan Peled / Getty Images

The careening Caterist seemed to realise he was dating himself, so he made a valiant pitch to Gen Z ...

Productivity is the most consequential economic challenge of our times. It was the invisible force unleashed by Hawke’s and Howard’s economic reforms that delivered three decades of unparalleled prosperity.

Today, with productivity in decline, the economy is running with decreasing momentum. If millennials and Gen Z have reason to feel depressed about the future, it’s not because their parents have ignored the threat of global warming. It’s because we’ve been defying the laws of economics for the past decade or more.

The pond knew Krugman would come in handy. Please note again Real Men Burn Stuff, The manosphere and the war on renewable energy...

No doubt the cratering Caterist fancies himself a real man, but in truth, anyone who begins a sentence "in truth" is setting up the chance to include some kind of outrageous porkie....

In truth, the Albanese agenda is not the blank slate he claims it to be, as his speech made clear. He promised more of the big-government, economic petrification that characterised his first term.

There is no indication he has learned from his mistakes, nor any acknowledgment that external circumstances might have changed – and that his government must adapt. In short, there is no sign of the moral character that emerges in prime ministers – one who genuinely approaches challenges with an open mind, free from political dogma, and prepared to make trade-offs in pursuit of the national interest.

There are three ways to learn wisdom, as Confucius is reliably recorded to have written: “First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Sorry, Confucius, that's clearly not true, the Caterist hasn't learned a single bitter truth or insight from his experience as a quarry whisperer...

At least one thing's been revealed. The pond wouldn't have missed anything if the Caterist had been let go for the week ... it was just a standard bashing of Albo's mob, given a Confucian fig leaf.

Time to take a break with the immortal Rowe, celebrating a man much given to strange experiences ...

If the pond had done a Caterist flick pass, this post wouldn't have got so lengthy and tedious, because originally the pond had just wanted to feature Jennings of the fifth form as the bonus...

The header: PM doesn’t get it, but Curtin knew we needed the US, It is striking that Anthony Albanese’s speech about Australia’s wartime prime minister has nothing to say about current defence or security problems.
The caption: Former PM John Curtin, inset, and current PM Anthony Albanese. Pictures: News Corp/Supplied
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The pond had wanted to feature Jennings of the fifth form because he provides another example of how the reptiles can be triggered by a mention of Curtin, and how when triggered they can re-fight world war II with weird insights ...

It was almost like the bromancer on steroids ...

Anthony Albanese’s wildly inaccurate take on John Curtin’s war would fail as an undergraduate essay.

Curtin’s defiance of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring Australian troops home from the Middle East did not win the war or create an independent Australia “engaging with the region as ourselves”.

Curtin understood, in a way Albanese doesn’t, that US air and naval power determined the fate of the Pacific war.

The Prime Minister tries to recast Curtin’s October 1941 statement that “Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links of kinship to the United Kingdom”.

In Albanese’s rendering, this was not an acknowledgment that the British defence of Singapore had failed and Australia was vulnerable to attack.

Rather it was a realisation that “this was a Pacific war. It was its own conflict, which demanded its own strategy.”

But let’s be clear; the strategy that won the Pacific war was driven by Admiral Chester Nimitz working out of his Pacific Command Headquarters in Honolulu.

It was American aircraft flying off the decks of American aircraft carriers at the battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway that won the Pacific war.

Curtin understood that reality. His real wartime success – brilliantly captured by John Edwards in his 2005 book Curtin’s Gift – was to gear the Australian economy and our limited ports and airfields to support the US effort to drive Japanese military forces out of the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

Edwards makes the case that Curtin knew by mid-1942, and certainly after the battle of the Coral Sea, that Japan had little capability to invade Australia.

But Curtin worried about a post-war settlement that might leave Japan controlling Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, blocking the US Navy from nearing Japan’s home islands. An undefeated Japan controlling much of our region would have been a dire outcome for a remote, sparsely populated Australia.

Curtin tried to do what every Australian government has done since: shape American strategic policy to suit Australian interests.

What’s new, and some may say interesting, about Albanese’s approach is that he is abandoning Canberra’s usual attempts to shape American thinking in favour of what he calls “engaging with our region as ourselves”.

Repeatedly through his Curtin oration Albanese stresses Australia’s independent position. Curtin is praised for “pushing back against two of the most powerful men in the world” – no, not Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo or Joseph Stalin but Churchill and FDR.

In this rendering Australia was “to follow our own course and shape our own future”, in which “we can determine how we respond” avoiding “what Doc Evatt called ‘a great power peace’ ”.

Of course all speeches are about the present, not the past.

Albanese’s comments are widely being reported as an attack on US President Donald Trump and his administration’s view that we are failing to spend enough on our defence.

So much for all the fighting in PNG, so much for the chocos, and so on and so forth ...

Have a go at King Donald? Widely reported?

Sorry the pond should have remembered the detail in the immortal Rowe ...a reminder that King Donald had many bricks to throw...

At this point the reptiles decided to double down on the Jennings... Strategic Analysis Australia Director Peter Jennings says Australia-US relations exhibit a “sense of disapproval,” claiming Australians should “read this as a problem”. “I would say that … in the history of the Australia-US alliance relationship, there wouldn’t be a time in the past where a President and a Prime Minister have not actually spoken for six or seven months,” Mr Jennings told Sky News host Caleb Bond. “It’s very clearly now beyond the challenges of scheduling a meeting. “I think that we’re getting a sense of disapproval out of Washington, DC, and the President doesn’t see it as a priority to meet with Mr Albanese. “We should read this as a problem.”

Jennings of the fifth form is of course keen on bunging on a war with China, possibly before Xmas, perhaps even more than the bromancer, and that's saying a lot ...

It is striking that a speech about Australia’s wartime prime minister has nothing to say about current defence or security problems. For example, there is no language about Australia facing its most difficult strategic outlook since the end of World War 11.

What was once a commonplace of government speeches has been replaced with the much more benign formulation of “in times of profound change in our region and against the backdrop of global uncertainty”. The only reference to Australia’s current military situation is Albanese’s new mantra that we are “investing in our capabilities – and investing in our relationships”.

Could Albanese even name these capabilities? Curtin surely would be dismayed by Albanese’s lack of interest or engagement in our national defence agenda.

It would be a wonderful thing to see Albanese do some pushing back against the increasing aggression of communist China.

Curtin, I feel certain, would recognise that China’s takeover of the South China Sea, its attempts to dominate Southeast Asia, its military build-up and search for basing options in the Pacific, are all warning signs of an aggressor on the march.

As our Prime Minister flies to China for an extended tour, it’s clear he has cast himself as the leader of the party of appeasement. Even as Neville Chamberlain sought to appease Hitler at Munich, Britain was doing its best to strengthen US willingness to defend Europe.

By contrast, Albanese appeases Beijing and annoys Washington.

Albanese ends his Curtin speech by highlighting four policies supposedly promoting our national interests. First, he says we are “rebuilding our standing in the Pacific”. I give him partial credit for that, but the competition with China is far from over.

We subsidise football teams while Beijing builds ports and airports and puts cash into the pockets of island elites.

Actually, and the pond says this as someone completely indifferent to thugby league, cultivating a relationship with New Guinea via sport seems like a good move. 

After all, we've already shown our form by leasing a port to Chinese interests, so why not offer a bit of boofhead biff and the odd coat hanger?

And so to a snap of the fiend, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the Australia's Economic Outlook 2025 event hosted by Sky News and The Australian. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

Off to a final gobbet ...

Next, Albanese says he is “patiently and deliberately working to stabilise our relationship with China”. None of this vacuous diplomatic rhetoric has stopped China from its increasingly aggressive military behaviour.

The Chinese navy circumnavigated Australia, firing weapons where it pleases it to do so and Albanese’s response is to defend this behaviour.

Third, Albanese says he is “deepening our economic engagement across Southeast Asia”.

This is not true. Australian investment into Southeast Asia is stagnating. Trade is growing but at a rate far slower than trade with China. Our government says it is encouraging business to diversify markets, but actually they have given up that effort.

Finally, Albanese says he is “forging new defence and security co-operation with our nearest neighbours, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea”.

What nonsense. Jakarta is much more interested in building ties with Moscow than with us. And China has more freedom of action in Port Moresby, despite all Albanese’s blather about family and football.

The reality for Australian security interests is that there is no substitute for US military power as the ultimate stabilising force in our region. Curtin understood that reality. Albanese doesn’t. His foreign policy is a mix of appeasing China, fantasising about our declining power in the region and antagonising the US.

Albanese may yet face his darkest hour in our national life, depending on whether the US can deter China’s military ambitions.

We must hope that moment never arrives because no Australian prime minister since the war has done more to damage our defence interests than Albanese.

Peter Jennings is a director at Strategic Analysis Australia.

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