With mass starvation in full swing, a war crime and a crime against humanity unfolding before our eyes, if our eyes happened to be anywhere else but the lizard Oz, it goes without saying that the reptiles discreetly avoided any mention of the distressing topic in this day's outing.
Inevitably over on the extreme far right there was the same result.
The point about an alleged "newspaper" - the pond uses the word loosely - what you leave out, discreetly omit, is as important as what you put in ...
Our Henry was back on his Jillian Segal pony, and giving it a vigorous ride.
The pond can set the scene for him by noting a story in the Graudian which saw the use of a Private Eye cartoon result in an arrest ...
Per the Graudian:
The terrorism arrest of a man for holding up a Private Eye cartoon during a protest at the weekend was “mind-boggling”, the magazine’s editor, Ian Hislop, has said, as the retired teacher called for an apology from police.
Jon Farley was picked up by police at a silent demonstration in Leeds on Saturday, which he described as a “pretty terrifying and upsetting experience”, for holding a sign that made a joke about the government’s proscription of the group Palestine Action from the last issue of the fortnightly satirical magazine.
“[Police officers] picked me up, grabbed me, and took me to the side, and I ended up sitting on the pavement,” the 67-year-old said.
“I think that’s when they said something about the placard. And I said: ‘Well it’s a cartoon from Private Eye. I can show you. I’ve got the magazine in my bag,’ by which time, they were putting me in handcuffs.”
He was then arrested under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which prohibits support for a proscribed organisation.
The Private Eye cartoon. Photograph: Steve Johnston
“I thought, this is all a bit surreal,” said Farley, who had never been arrested before. “I clearly wasn’t any kind of physical threat. There was no need for them to act in the way they did.
“By this point I was in the van, so I wasn’t going anywhere. I said: ‘You take the handcuffs off and I’ll show you the magazine because what you’re doing is just daft.’”
In the meantime police found out his name from his senior bus pass and he was taken to a police station.
Six hours later, after being questioned by counter-terrorism police, he was allowed to leave, under bail conditions that he attended no “Palestine Action” rallies, which, as he pointed out, he had never done and would be illegal under terrorism laws anyway.
On Monday morning, a counter-terrorism officer called to tell him he would face no further action.
“So I said: ‘If I go on another demo and I hold up that cartoon again, does that mean I will be arrested or not?’ And she said: ‘I can’t tell you, it’s done on a case-by-case basis.’”
Jon Farley was picked up by police at a silent demonstration in Leeds on Saturday, which he described as a “pretty terrifying and upsetting experience”, for holding a sign that made a joke about the government’s proscription of the group Palestine Action from the last issue of the fortnightly satirical magazine.
“[Police officers] picked me up, grabbed me, and took me to the side, and I ended up sitting on the pavement,” the 67-year-old said.
“I think that’s when they said something about the placard. And I said: ‘Well it’s a cartoon from Private Eye. I can show you. I’ve got the magazine in my bag,’ by which time, they were putting me in handcuffs.”
He was then arrested under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which prohibits support for a proscribed organisation.
The Private Eye cartoon. Photograph: Steve Johnston
“I thought, this is all a bit surreal,” said Farley, who had never been arrested before. “I clearly wasn’t any kind of physical threat. There was no need for them to act in the way they did.
“By this point I was in the van, so I wasn’t going anywhere. I said: ‘You take the handcuffs off and I’ll show you the magazine because what you’re doing is just daft.’”
In the meantime police found out his name from his senior bus pass and he was taken to a police station.
Six hours later, after being questioned by counter-terrorism police, he was allowed to leave, under bail conditions that he attended no “Palestine Action” rallies, which, as he pointed out, he had never done and would be illegal under terrorism laws anyway.
On Monday morning, a counter-terrorism officer called to tell him he would face no further action.
“So I said: ‘If I go on another demo and I hold up that cartoon again, does that mean I will be arrested or not?’ And she said: ‘I can’t tell you, it’s done on a case-by-case basis.’”
What a form of madness, and if on any other topic, the hive mind would have been railing about political correctness, the police state and such like.
The yarn also has relevance to our Henry, but first the pond must deal with Killer of the IPA ...
The header: How Australia’s tobacco excise has led to a black market, Moral grandstanding has become the driving force behind Australian policymaking rather than traditional cost-benefit analysis.
The caption for the splendidly inviting illustration: Cigarette butts in a makeshift ashtray in a cement block.
The magickal invitation: This article contains features which are only available in the web version,Take me there
The pond realises that correspondents will be slavering and slobbering for the promised cornucopia of our Henry, but the pond will always make room for Killer of the IPA.
It's only a four minute read, so the reptiles say, and the pond has long been in awe of Killer's fear of masks and vaccines.
The pond promises that next week Killer is likely to address the urgent need to liberalise laws governing the likes of opium - what's good enough for Coleridege is good enough for all of us - heroin, coocaine, psychedelics, and even good old Mary Jane itself ...
After all, as the soon to be missed Colbert noted, there are all sorts of drugs that should be unleashed on the world if they'd just allow the original ingredients to be included...
But that's next week...this is now ...
Australia has long been known as the lucky country, but the stupid country is becoming a more accurate description.
With such a rich array of incriminating evidence, it’s hard to know where to start, but the collapse in tobacco excise, and the destructive response to it, must stand as a classic example.
A government that’s mulling a damaging tax on unrealised capital gains in superannuation – which might raise a few billion dollars in revenue over the coming years – has presided over a far larger collapse in tobacco excise, making the prospect of broader tax cuts even less likely.
Tobacco excise peaked at $16.3bn in the 2020 financial year, before it began to fall sharply: $14.2bn in 2021, then $12.6bn in 2022. This financial year the expected haul is $7bn, despite massive population growth, including from India and China, where smoking rates among adults are about triple Australia’s.
For years it’s been obvious that the absurdly high level of excise on cigarettes – which has roughly tripled since 2015 to around $1.40 a stick or $28 a packet – has been fuelling a black market and enriching criminal gangs who fight over turf and torch shops that refuse to sell their product.
With such a rich array of incriminating evidence, it’s hard to know where to start, but the collapse in tobacco excise, and the destructive response to it, must stand as a classic example.
A government that’s mulling a damaging tax on unrealised capital gains in superannuation – which might raise a few billion dollars in revenue over the coming years – has presided over a far larger collapse in tobacco excise, making the prospect of broader tax cuts even less likely.
Tobacco excise peaked at $16.3bn in the 2020 financial year, before it began to fall sharply: $14.2bn in 2021, then $12.6bn in 2022. This financial year the expected haul is $7bn, despite massive population growth, including from India and China, where smoking rates among adults are about triple Australia’s.
For years it’s been obvious that the absurdly high level of excise on cigarettes – which has roughly tripled since 2015 to around $1.40 a stick or $28 a packet – has been fuelling a black market and enriching criminal gangs who fight over turf and torch shops that refuse to sell their product.
Time to interrupt with an AV distraction, Rohan Pike Consulting Managing Director Rohan Pike says the Border Force is only stopping 25 per cent of illegal tobacco, stating that they’re “simply not resourced to stop everything”. “They suggest that they’re stopping 25 per cent, and if they’re stopping that much, then there’s an awful lot coming in,” Mr Pike told Sky News host Steve Price. “They’re simply not resourced to stop everything coming through.”
Speaking of distractions, the pond regrets that it can only offer a cartoon about current distractions ...
Back to Killer, in full vented fury, as good a squirrel as any this day ...
In Victoria alone more than 100 shops have been firebombed over the past year and a woman was even tragically killed in January in Melbourne in an apparently mistaken arson attack. On practically every corner of our major cities, cigarettes (in normal, branded packaging) are available for between $16 and $20 a packet, about a third the price of the legal product.
“Do you have the cheap ones?” “Of course” is normally the answer before the shop assistant reaches under the table for the standard laminated price list. Quite aside from the financial stupidity, smoking rates must have increased significantly. So what has been the government’s response to this wholly predictable health and financial loss?
In the 2024 budget Treasury wrote it would “encourage smokers to quit by raising tax on tobacco by 5 per cent per year, for three years from 1 September 2023”, adding that the increase would boost receipts by $3.3bn, just as those receipts were collapsing even further. To be clear, after observing multiple years of tumbling revenues, caused by excessive excise, the Treasury’s response was to increase excise further. In a week where many have paid tribute to the late, great former Treasury secretary John Stone, it’s a stark reminder of how much the nation’s supposedly premier economic agency – whose head is paid more than $1m a year – has fallen.
Tobacco excise is a shockingly regressive tax that serves mainly to punish addicts.
“Do you have the cheap ones?” “Of course” is normally the answer before the shop assistant reaches under the table for the standard laminated price list. Quite aside from the financial stupidity, smoking rates must have increased significantly. So what has been the government’s response to this wholly predictable health and financial loss?
In the 2024 budget Treasury wrote it would “encourage smokers to quit by raising tax on tobacco by 5 per cent per year, for three years from 1 September 2023”, adding that the increase would boost receipts by $3.3bn, just as those receipts were collapsing even further. To be clear, after observing multiple years of tumbling revenues, caused by excessive excise, the Treasury’s response was to increase excise further. In a week where many have paid tribute to the late, great former Treasury secretary John Stone, it’s a stark reminder of how much the nation’s supposedly premier economic agency – whose head is paid more than $1m a year – has fallen.
Tobacco excise is a shockingly regressive tax that serves mainly to punish addicts.
Who'd have guessed it was designed to punish addicts? And what of heroin, and cocaine, and good old wicked weed and the like? When will the pond be able to drop an edible at its leisure?
Hush the pond's mouth, it's time for another distraction ... Rohan Pike Consulting Managing Director Rohan Pike discusses the effects of the tobacco tax, which fuels a black market in illicit tobacco. “The price has a huge impact and is the primary driver of our illicit cigarette market here,” Mr Pike told Sky News host Steve Price. “May have been effective 20 years ago in reducing smoking rates in Australia, but in the last 15 years or so, that lever has just been pulled far too far. “It’s a no-brainer, smokers are going to be attracted to a $10 packet as opposed to a $50 packet.”
On with the rant...
Even in supposedly “far left” California, where smoking rates are lower than Australia’s, tax on a pack of cigarettes is no higher than $US2.87, approximately 20 per cent of what is levied in Australia. But given a choice between gratuitous sin taxes and higher income tax, or a tax on unrealised capital gains, the former is less harmful to economic growth and entrepreneurship.
Last month NSW Premier Chris Minns sensibly called for a reduction in tobacco excise to undercut the business model of criminal organisations – a rational response that would both increase tax revenue and could even reduce smoking rates if some of the gangs give up competing. But no, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said, the government would prefer to spend hundreds of millions of dollars it doesn’t have on additional “enforcement”. And the economic ignorance extends far beyond tobacco. Embarrassingly, Health Minster Mark Butler was crowing about the latest seizure of vapes last week, even as they remain readily available and widely used.
While the excise debacle deserves wider ridicule, what really prompted this week’s column was news that the government is poised to bail out Australian smelters with borrowed money. Of course, this comes after putting them out of business by ever higher energy costs, courtesy of the costly “net zero” delusion.
Moral grandstanding has become the driving force behind Australian policymaking rather than traditional cost-benefit analysis. We’re OK with other nations burning ever greater quantities of our coal and gas, but we don’t want to do it here. We’re building LNG import terminals outside Sydney and Melbourne, despite sitting on some of the world’s largest gas reserves.
Last month NSW Premier Chris Minns sensibly called for a reduction in tobacco excise to undercut the business model of criminal organisations – a rational response that would both increase tax revenue and could even reduce smoking rates if some of the gangs give up competing. But no, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said, the government would prefer to spend hundreds of millions of dollars it doesn’t have on additional “enforcement”. And the economic ignorance extends far beyond tobacco. Embarrassingly, Health Minster Mark Butler was crowing about the latest seizure of vapes last week, even as they remain readily available and widely used.
While the excise debacle deserves wider ridicule, what really prompted this week’s column was news that the government is poised to bail out Australian smelters with borrowed money. Of course, this comes after putting them out of business by ever higher energy costs, courtesy of the costly “net zero” delusion.
Moral grandstanding has become the driving force behind Australian policymaking rather than traditional cost-benefit analysis. We’re OK with other nations burning ever greater quantities of our coal and gas, but we don’t want to do it here. We’re building LNG import terminals outside Sydney and Melbourne, despite sitting on some of the world’s largest gas reserves.
For no particular reason, the reptiles even managed to slip in a snap of a reprehensible reprobate to honour the news of his carking it, John Stone
Actually the pond isn't particularly okay with the hypocrisy surrounding coal and gas, but it's time to wrap up Killer so our Henry can strut the stage ...
The greenhouse gas emissions generated to make the imported manufactured goods Australians voraciously consume aren’t counted in our emissions tally, as any honest reckoning would.
We had a federal election where neither major party dared promise to rein in the NDIS, whose cost ($52bn this year, rather more than the $14bn forecast in 2011) is poised in a few years to overtake that spent on national defence.
The Productivity Commission said the NDIS would be “for people with a significant and permanent disability who need lifetime care and support”. In March, 717,000 people were beneficiaries, up from 535,000 less than three years ago.
No wonder the Centre for Independent Studies estimated this week around half of voters were largely dependent on government for their income via welfare payments salaries or subsidies.
Our living standards have fallen faster than almost any other OECD nation over the past few years, and that’s as prices and demand for our commodity exports remain high. Then, we’ll be losing a lot more revenue than just tobacco excise, and the stupidity of the past few years might finally be acknowledged.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.
We had a federal election where neither major party dared promise to rein in the NDIS, whose cost ($52bn this year, rather more than the $14bn forecast in 2011) is poised in a few years to overtake that spent on national defence.
The Productivity Commission said the NDIS would be “for people with a significant and permanent disability who need lifetime care and support”. In March, 717,000 people were beneficiaries, up from 535,000 less than three years ago.
No wonder the Centre for Independent Studies estimated this week around half of voters were largely dependent on government for their income via welfare payments salaries or subsidies.
Our living standards have fallen faster than almost any other OECD nation over the past few years, and that’s as prices and demand for our commodity exports remain high. Then, we’ll be losing a lot more revenue than just tobacco excise, and the stupidity of the past few years might finally be acknowledged.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.
Thank you Killer, and please next week address the pond's urgent need to be able to drop a cannabis edible on a whim. The pond hates smoking - the pond developed the bad habit of eating food rapidly to escape the kitchen table when pater lit up a fag while eating - and thinks it should be taxed up the wazoo, but is always ready to gain a buzz in some other way.
And now, trumpets and drum roll, perhaps even a hint of Copeland, because it's on with the cornucopia of our Henry ...
The header: Jillian Segal’s critics disqualified by ignorance and rage, Richard Flanagan and Robert Manne’s criticisms of Jillian Segal’s report exemplify all that is wrong with the elites that dominate our taxpayer funded cultural, broadcasting and educational institutions.
The caption for that fiend in action: Author Richard Flanagan speaks at a No Stadium Rally in Hobart. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones
The constantly ignored advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
Relax, you're not going to find any snaps of starving Palestinians here.
Also relax, you're not going to find any links to Flanagan or Manne in our Henry's text.
As always, the reptiles don't want anyone leaving the hive mind to listen to the enemy.
The pond thought it should remedy that omission up front.
Thus you can find Flanagan on the topic in those other rags, under the header To defend our democracy, PM must disavow and abandon Segal report (*archive link)
A brief quote on the approach:
The eminent Jewish historian, the late Tony Judt, put it this way in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2006: “When Israel breaks international law in the occupied territories, when Israel publicly humiliates the subject populations whose land it has seized – but then responds to its critics with loud cries of ‘antisemitism’ – it is in effect saying that these acts are not Israeli acts, they are Jewish acts: The occupation is not an Israeli occupation, it is a Jewish occupation, and if you don’t like these things it is because you don’t like Jews.
“In many parts of the world this is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling assertion: Israel’s reckless behaviour and insistent identification of all criticism with antisemitism is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe and much of Asia.”
Anyone repeating Judt’s words would risk no longer being able to speak in mainstream Australia because they would have been branded as antisemitic. Similarly, a university or writers’ festival or public broadcaster could lose its funding for hosting Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, who last week compared plans for a “humanitarian city” to be built in Rafah to “a concentration camp”, making him yet another antisemite according to the Segal report. Pointedly, Olmert said, “Attitudes inside Israel might start to shift only when Israelis started to feel the burden of international pressure.” In other words, leading Israelis are saying criticism of Israel can be helpful, rather than antisemitic.
“In many parts of the world this is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling assertion: Israel’s reckless behaviour and insistent identification of all criticism with antisemitism is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe and much of Asia.”
Anyone repeating Judt’s words would risk no longer being able to speak in mainstream Australia because they would have been branded as antisemitic. Similarly, a university or writers’ festival or public broadcaster could lose its funding for hosting Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, who last week compared plans for a “humanitarian city” to be built in Rafah to “a concentration camp”, making him yet another antisemite according to the Segal report. Pointedly, Olmert said, “Attitudes inside Israel might start to shift only when Israelis started to feel the burden of international pressure.” In other words, leading Israelis are saying criticism of Israel can be helpful, rather than antisemitic.
A fair and seemly argument, with the bonus of quoting the eminent Judt ...
As for Manne, one piece of his could be found at Pearls and Irritations, and also at Inside Story ... The wrong way to respond to antisemitism, Jillian Segal’s proposals won’t only erode free speech but could also worsen the problem she was asked to tackle.
Manne worried about definitions and especially “legally binding”...
...There is more than enough wriggle room in the IHRA definition to allow a clever lawyer to present a case that an entirely legitimate discussion about Israel in general and, in particular, Israel-in-Gaza is antisemitic.
Let one example suffice. There are scores of genocide scholars who believe, as I do, that since the Hamas atrocity of October 7 2023 Israel has been carrying out policies of both ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian peoples of Gaza.
By slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children; by withholding altogether or restricting radically supplies of food, water, fuel, medicines and medical supplies; by reducing to rubble most of the buildings in Gaza—what Israel is telling the Palestinians of Gaza by its unmistakable action is: you have no future in Gaza. President Trump’s fleeting fancy about transforming Gaza into the Middle Eastern Riviera was music to Israeli ears. The current ethnic cleansing fantasy action plan is to collect all the Palestinian people of Gaza inside a massive tent city on the ruins of Rafah where they might find food and medicine and freedom from bomb attack but from where, until transported to another country, they would not be permitted to leave. Even as it pulverises Gaza, Israel prides itself on having the world’s “most moral army”. In a rare example of black humour, Israel’s great oppositional newspaper, Ha’aretz, recently described this latest means for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza as “the world’s most moral concentration camp”.
The second half of this claim—the overlapping claim of genocide—is also strong. According to the international convention, the crime of genocide occurs when a state attempts to eliminate or destroy a nation, race, ethnicity or religion “in whole or in part”. The Palestinian nation is principally concentrated in two localities—in Gaza and on the West Bank. To eliminate Palestinian existence in Gaza involves the destruction of the Palestinian people “in part”. Unlike ethnic cleansing, the charge of genocide relies on intentions as well as actions. For the crime of genocide to be proven what must be demonstrated is that beyond the actions taken to ethnically cleanse Gaza the intention to destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part can be found. Especially in the early days, following October 7, the President, Isaac Herzog; the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant; and the two far right members of the Cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, all spoke in ways that unambiguously suggested genocidal intent, as did scores of Israeli commentators. The Israeli public was now frequently reminded that God had required his people to exterminate the enemy of the Israelites, the Amalekites.
Let one example suffice. There are scores of genocide scholars who believe, as I do, that since the Hamas atrocity of October 7 2023 Israel has been carrying out policies of both ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian peoples of Gaza.
By slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children; by withholding altogether or restricting radically supplies of food, water, fuel, medicines and medical supplies; by reducing to rubble most of the buildings in Gaza—what Israel is telling the Palestinians of Gaza by its unmistakable action is: you have no future in Gaza. President Trump’s fleeting fancy about transforming Gaza into the Middle Eastern Riviera was music to Israeli ears. The current ethnic cleansing fantasy action plan is to collect all the Palestinian people of Gaza inside a massive tent city on the ruins of Rafah where they might find food and medicine and freedom from bomb attack but from where, until transported to another country, they would not be permitted to leave. Even as it pulverises Gaza, Israel prides itself on having the world’s “most moral army”. In a rare example of black humour, Israel’s great oppositional newspaper, Ha’aretz, recently described this latest means for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza as “the world’s most moral concentration camp”.
The second half of this claim—the overlapping claim of genocide—is also strong. According to the international convention, the crime of genocide occurs when a state attempts to eliminate or destroy a nation, race, ethnicity or religion “in whole or in part”. The Palestinian nation is principally concentrated in two localities—in Gaza and on the West Bank. To eliminate Palestinian existence in Gaza involves the destruction of the Palestinian people “in part”. Unlike ethnic cleansing, the charge of genocide relies on intentions as well as actions. For the crime of genocide to be proven what must be demonstrated is that beyond the actions taken to ethnically cleanse Gaza the intention to destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part can be found. Especially in the early days, following October 7, the President, Isaac Herzog; the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant; and the two far right members of the Cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, all spoke in ways that unambiguously suggested genocidal intent, as did scores of Israeli commentators. The Israeli public was now frequently reminded that God had required his people to exterminate the enemy of the Israelites, the Amalekites.
Well yes, and we've been here before ...
Enough preliminaries, enough warming up, enough foreplay, on with the 'our Henry' intercourse ...
Were outrage a winning card, the left would by now have comprehensively defeated Jillian Segal’s recommendations for addressing anti-Semitism. But while it may come as news to Robert Manne and Richard Flanagan, outrage is an emotion, not an argument.
And the fact that their criticisms of the Segal report – published in Inside Story and the Sydney Morning Herald respectively – are littered with errors makes it all the more surprising that anyone would take them seriously.
Just listing the errors would require too much space. It is, however, obvious that Manne doesn’t know what he is talking about when he claims that “There has not been even one case of a physical attack on a Jew”. There were, on the contrary, 65 in 2024 alone, as compared to an annual average of six in the preceding years.
Nor is Manne on surer ground in contending that Segal presents anti-Semitism as “the most dangerous form of racism in contemporary Australia”, thereby brushing aside the plight of Indigenous Australians.
She does no such thing, either explicitly or by inference – and rightly so. For what is at issue is not a competition in victimhood, with only the worst-treated being entitled to relief from harassment, intimidation and violence. Rather, the bedrock principle, from which Segal’s recommendations flow, is the right of all Australians, regardless of their race or religion, to the equal protection of the laws – and that includes Jews.
And the fact that their criticisms of the Segal report – published in Inside Story and the Sydney Morning Herald respectively – are littered with errors makes it all the more surprising that anyone would take them seriously.
Just listing the errors would require too much space. It is, however, obvious that Manne doesn’t know what he is talking about when he claims that “There has not been even one case of a physical attack on a Jew”. There were, on the contrary, 65 in 2024 alone, as compared to an annual average of six in the preceding years.
Nor is Manne on surer ground in contending that Segal presents anti-Semitism as “the most dangerous form of racism in contemporary Australia”, thereby brushing aside the plight of Indigenous Australians.
She does no such thing, either explicitly or by inference – and rightly so. For what is at issue is not a competition in victimhood, with only the worst-treated being entitled to relief from harassment, intimidation and violence. Rather, the bedrock principle, from which Segal’s recommendations flow, is the right of all Australians, regardless of their race or religion, to the equal protection of the laws – and that includes Jews.
Naturally the reptiles included a snap of our Henry's heroine, Special Envoy to Combat anti-Semitism Jillian Segal speaks during a press conference on Thursday. Picture: Nikki Short
The pond included those links to the victims of our Henry's assault so that correspondents could trot off and see for themselves whether they deserved our Henry's vitriol ...
That neither Manne nor Flanagan grasp so fundamental a point is bad enough. But it pales compared to their misrepresentations of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Statement on the Definition of anti-Semitism.
It is, for example, simply incorrect to call Kenneth Stern – now a strident critic of using the IHRA’s definition as an instrument of public policy – the definition’s “lead drafter”. As the voluminous literature on the definition’s genesis shows, he was merely one member among others of the drafting committees, and by no means the definition’s principal author.
At the same time, Manne and Flanagan completely misunderstand what the IHRA meant when, at its meeting in Bucharest on May 26, 2016, it described the definition it was adopting as “non-legally binding”.
That, they seem to believe, implies the Alliance neither expected the definition to have, nor designed it to have, any legal effect. In reality, the stock phrase merely meant that approving the definition did not in itself impose any enforceable obligations on the Alliance’s members. It could not have been otherwise, as the IHRA is a non-treaty organisation that is not authorised to legally bind its members.
However, exactly as is the case with decisions reached in other non-treaty bodies, it was always intended that participating states could give the definition binding force by incorporating it into domestic law, as many subsequently have.
Having gotten the definition’s background and significance wrong, Manne and Flanagan then distort its substance. It is, for instance, utterly incorrect to say, as Manne does, that the definition “asserts that it is anti-Semitic to claim that Israel invents or exaggerates the Holocaust”. What it plainly states – in this instance and with respect to every one of the examples it cites – is that the claim can be, but need not be, anti-Semitic, depending on its context and precise formulation.
Manne should have known that from a recent UK case, Husain v SRA (2025), in which Sir Martin Chamberlain, a High Court judge, painstakingly works through the steps applying the IHRA definition involves – and he would also have seen how careful the High Court was to protect freedom of expression. If there is a lesson in that case, as in the other cases that have relied on the definition, it is that the definition may be unduly lenient on anti-Semitic statements, rather than unduly harsh.
It is, for example, simply incorrect to call Kenneth Stern – now a strident critic of using the IHRA’s definition as an instrument of public policy – the definition’s “lead drafter”. As the voluminous literature on the definition’s genesis shows, he was merely one member among others of the drafting committees, and by no means the definition’s principal author.
At the same time, Manne and Flanagan completely misunderstand what the IHRA meant when, at its meeting in Bucharest on May 26, 2016, it described the definition it was adopting as “non-legally binding”.
That, they seem to believe, implies the Alliance neither expected the definition to have, nor designed it to have, any legal effect. In reality, the stock phrase merely meant that approving the definition did not in itself impose any enforceable obligations on the Alliance’s members. It could not have been otherwise, as the IHRA is a non-treaty organisation that is not authorised to legally bind its members.
However, exactly as is the case with decisions reached in other non-treaty bodies, it was always intended that participating states could give the definition binding force by incorporating it into domestic law, as many subsequently have.
Having gotten the definition’s background and significance wrong, Manne and Flanagan then distort its substance. It is, for instance, utterly incorrect to say, as Manne does, that the definition “asserts that it is anti-Semitic to claim that Israel invents or exaggerates the Holocaust”. What it plainly states – in this instance and with respect to every one of the examples it cites – is that the claim can be, but need not be, anti-Semitic, depending on its context and precise formulation.
Manne should have known that from a recent UK case, Husain v SRA (2025), in which Sir Martin Chamberlain, a High Court judge, painstakingly works through the steps applying the IHRA definition involves – and he would also have seen how careful the High Court was to protect freedom of expression. If there is a lesson in that case, as in the other cases that have relied on the definition, it is that the definition may be unduly lenient on anti-Semitic statements, rather than unduly harsh.
Ah yes, There is more than enough wriggle room in the IHRA definition to allow a clever lawyer to present a case that an entirely legitimate discussion about Israel in general and, in particular, Israel-in-Gaza is antisemitic.
Cut to a snap of the offender, deserving to be sent down, Robert Manne at La Trobe University, Bundoora. Picture: Aaron Francis
That sight sent our Henry right off ...
But misstating the definition and ignoring the case law are not incidental features of Manne and Flanagan’s argument. They underpin their central contention, which is that adopting the definition would be an appalling attack on free speech and academic freedom. Indeed, it would, says Manne, be “totalitarian”, depriving Australians of the right “to decide for ourselves our own definition of what constitutes anti-Semitism”.
But Segal nowhere recommends forcing all and sundry to adopt the IHRA definition. If Manne, Humpty-Dumpty-like, wants to define “anti-Semitism” as eating blue cheese, he would be every bit as free to do so tomorrow as he is today. What Segal contends is that the definition should be used by governments, and most notably the Commonwealth government, to assist in identifying anti-Semitism and assessing whether publicly funded institutions are responding to it appropriately.
Here too, Manne and Flanagan’s ignorance comes into play. They don’t seem to realise that the Commonwealth already imposes a vast array of requirements, for instance about diversity, on the institutions it funds.
Nor do they realise that making those requirements explicit, and codifying them as the IHRA definition would help do, is the exact opposite of totalitarianism, with its inherent arbitrariness. It would ensure assessments were carried out on a predictable basis, thus strengthening the foreseeability, transparency and reviewability pillars of the rule of law, rather than the current reliance on a jumble of case-by-case approaches.
But it is precisely the effectiveness that would bring to combating anti-Semitism that underpins their complaint. For what Manne and Flanagan really object to is not the IHRA definition; it is properly holding universities, arts bodies and the ABC to account for the vilification of Jews that has marred our public life since October 7, 2023. Receiving taxpayer funds, they believe, is an entitlement, not a privilege: and never is it more of an entitlement than for the institutions they like.
But Segal nowhere recommends forcing all and sundry to adopt the IHRA definition. If Manne, Humpty-Dumpty-like, wants to define “anti-Semitism” as eating blue cheese, he would be every bit as free to do so tomorrow as he is today. What Segal contends is that the definition should be used by governments, and most notably the Commonwealth government, to assist in identifying anti-Semitism and assessing whether publicly funded institutions are responding to it appropriately.
Here too, Manne and Flanagan’s ignorance comes into play. They don’t seem to realise that the Commonwealth already imposes a vast array of requirements, for instance about diversity, on the institutions it funds.
Nor do they realise that making those requirements explicit, and codifying them as the IHRA definition would help do, is the exact opposite of totalitarianism, with its inherent arbitrariness. It would ensure assessments were carried out on a predictable basis, thus strengthening the foreseeability, transparency and reviewability pillars of the rule of law, rather than the current reliance on a jumble of case-by-case approaches.
But it is precisely the effectiveness that would bring to combating anti-Semitism that underpins their complaint. For what Manne and Flanagan really object to is not the IHRA definition; it is properly holding universities, arts bodies and the ABC to account for the vilification of Jews that has marred our public life since October 7, 2023. Receiving taxpayer funds, they believe, is an entitlement, not a privilege: and never is it more of an entitlement than for the institutions they like.
It wouldn't be a reptile piece without dragging in a dogsbody, in this case, the lesser Leeser ... Shadow Attorney-General Julian Leeser spoke with Sky News Australia on the antisemitic report being handed down and implemented by the government. “The question here is, what is the government’s commitment to this report, because the report provides a terrific work plan for the special envoy, but the special envoy can’t fight antisemitism alone,” Mr Leeser said. “What a set of dirty, misogynistic comments from Bob Carr, a person who should know so much better. I thought we were well and truly well past the days where we were holding wives responsible for the actions of their husbands. “We have been one of the great multicultural countries in the world, and yet multiculturalism only works if everybody can enjoy the full benefits of that multiculturalism, and that means that everyone who is law-abiding can enjoy the full benefits of the law.”
Fans of our Henry will be mortified, and perhaps wonder if this is actually the genuine work of the hole in bucket man. Not one mention of ancient Greeks, Romans, even the bible (old testament of course)in support of his arguments and his rage ...
The best he could manage? A feeble reference to Mill in the penultimate par ...
It is consequently unsurprising that in yet another bewildering display of ignorance they call reviewing those institutions’ funding a “Trumpian” attack on freedom of speech – as if the US Supreme Court had not, since at least 1983, consistently upheld the government’s right to defund institutions that breach the race discrimination laws, for instance by tolerating or promoting anti-Semitism.
And it is unsurprising too that they don’t note that Harvard, and the other institutions challenging the Trump administration’s funding cuts, are not contesting the administration’s right, or even duty, to withdraw funding from institutions that are non-compliant. Rather, they deny that the administration’s motives and procedures (which should have involved applying the IHRA definition) were consistent with the case law and the relevant statutes.
In the end, Manne and Flanagan descend to ad hominem attacks against Segal, which, as John Stuart Mill argued long ago, both debase “the morality of public discussion” and disqualify the assailant from the respect of decent people.
Substituting hand-me-down reactions for knowledge, and off-the-cuff judgments for the hard work of informed analysis, their response exemplifies the intellectual arrogance, cheap moralising, and intemperate sciolism of the class that dominates our taxpayer-funded cultural, broadcasting and educational institutions. With those institutions turning into breeding grounds for intolerance, division and hatred, the sooner they are held to account, the greater the chance reason’s weak voice will prevail over the champions of smouldering rage.
And it is unsurprising too that they don’t note that Harvard, and the other institutions challenging the Trump administration’s funding cuts, are not contesting the administration’s right, or even duty, to withdraw funding from institutions that are non-compliant. Rather, they deny that the administration’s motives and procedures (which should have involved applying the IHRA definition) were consistent with the case law and the relevant statutes.
In the end, Manne and Flanagan descend to ad hominem attacks against Segal, which, as John Stuart Mill argued long ago, both debase “the morality of public discussion” and disqualify the assailant from the respect of decent people.
Substituting hand-me-down reactions for knowledge, and off-the-cuff judgments for the hard work of informed analysis, their response exemplifies the intellectual arrogance, cheap moralising, and intemperate sciolism of the class that dominates our taxpayer-funded cultural, broadcasting and educational institutions. With those institutions turning into breeding grounds for intolerance, division and hatred, the sooner they are held to account, the greater the chance reason’s weak voice will prevail over the champions of smouldering rage.
Only a brief trip back to the nineteenth century in support of his outrage and incendiary rage?
Never mind, Flanagan and Manne can look after themselves, because the pond has a special treat, a surfeit, an excess of our Henry on this, Saint James the Greater day ...
The pond noted it last weekend when the reptiles gave it a big splash ...
The damn thing was some 13 minutes long, or so the reptiles said, and besides there were questions as to its authenticity.
Some judged it apocrypha, full Deuterocanonical, a "non-canonical work" or "pseudepigrapha" if you will, on the basis that there's a shared authorship, which might have subverted or perverted our Henry's noble pomposity, a notion reinforced by the way there's not a single mention of Thucydides or some other ancient Greek or Roman.
If ever there was a time to drop in a mention of Caesar's recounting of the Gallic wars, this was it, but nope, nada, nihil, nothing ...
The header: John Curtin fell short at our darkest hour, Sure, if the ALP needs saints, let it beatify John Curtin. But if the government thinks his insular mindset exemplifies what the times demand, Australia is in for a rude awakening.
How they dislike Curtin, and never mind that he stayed on the job until it killed him ...
The caption: US General Douglas MacArthur (left) meets Australian prime minister John Curtin. Picture: Tony Phillips/AAP
The weird proposal: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
Now close readers of the pond will recall the pond noting that nattering "Ned" considered Curtin to have been one of the few Labor PMs to have run a successful Labor government.
How little "Ned" knows, and because it's such a long rant, please allow the pond to summarise the intent...
Friends, dinkums, countrypersons, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Curtin, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Curtin. The noble Henry
Hath told you Curtin fell short:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Curtin answer’d it.
I come to bury Curtin, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Curtin. The noble Henry
Hath told you Curtin fell short:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Curtin answer’d it.
... and while burying Curtin, the authors manage to praise Ming the Merciless, good old Pig Iron Bob to the skies ...
Whatever Washington may make of the John Curtin Oration Anthony Albanese gave a few days before setting off for China, there is no doubt that it warmed hearts in Beijing.
Yet the fundamental importance of that oration does not lie solely in its immediate message; rather, it lies in the far broader question of how Australia should manage its alliances at a time of sweeping geopolitical change.
Viewed in that perspective, the thrust of Albanese’s oration boils down to this: great prime ministers, such as Curtin, push back against their nation’s most important allies and insist on doing what they perceive as being in Australia’s interests instead. That, the oration contends, is exactly what Curtin did when he repulsed British and American requests to route returning AIF soldiers to Burma during World War II, justly earning his heroic stature in the national consciousness ever after.
However, the historical reality is far more complex; indeed, it is difficult to think of a worse example than the Curtin government of how Australia can ensure its sovereignty while securing the benefits alliances provide.
As we struggle with those issues today, that government stands as an exemplary failure – a failure that contrasts sharply with the lessons of our considerable, if hard-won, successes. Far from retaining sovereignty, no prime minister in Australian history capitulated more entirely than Curtin did when he handed total oversight of war strategy to US general Douglas MacArthur shortly after his arrival in Australia in March 1942.
Yet the fundamental importance of that oration does not lie solely in its immediate message; rather, it lies in the far broader question of how Australia should manage its alliances at a time of sweeping geopolitical change.
Viewed in that perspective, the thrust of Albanese’s oration boils down to this: great prime ministers, such as Curtin, push back against their nation’s most important allies and insist on doing what they perceive as being in Australia’s interests instead. That, the oration contends, is exactly what Curtin did when he repulsed British and American requests to route returning AIF soldiers to Burma during World War II, justly earning his heroic stature in the national consciousness ever after.
However, the historical reality is far more complex; indeed, it is difficult to think of a worse example than the Curtin government of how Australia can ensure its sovereignty while securing the benefits alliances provide.
As we struggle with those issues today, that government stands as an exemplary failure – a failure that contrasts sharply with the lessons of our considerable, if hard-won, successes. Far from retaining sovereignty, no prime minister in Australian history capitulated more entirely than Curtin did when he handed total oversight of war strategy to US general Douglas MacArthur shortly after his arrival in Australia in March 1942.
There's a corollary to the argument. If comrade Albo happened to praise Curtin, then the authors are agin it, and him, and them and they, Historic meeting of Labor wartime prime minister John Curtin with General Douglas Macarthur at Advisory War Council, Melbourne 1942.
For Curtin, the bulk of whose political life had been as a socialist radical, deeply committed to pacificism and to isolationism, the benefit of giving up control was plainly evident. Granting MacArthur unfettered authority, Curtin was content to let American conscripts fight crucial northern battles while insisting Australian conscripts remain largely in home territory.
As John Hirst put it in a brilliant, recently republished Black Inc essay on Curtin’s wartime prime ministership that set the record straight, “Curtin was never happier than when it seemed Australia’s role in the war was to grow food and make munitions.”
It is true that small powers have limited influence over great allies. Yet Curtin did have considerable leverage, with MacArthur initially reliant on Australian troops to provide the bulk of his fighting forces in the South West Pacific zone.
“What is disturbing in Curtin”, writes Hirst, is that despite his leverage “he made no attempt to test the boundaries”, instead remaining “absolutely in thrall to MacArthur” until his death. Curtin’s replacement, Ben Chifley, once in office, immediately rebuked MacArthur for treating Australia as supine and independently planned Australia’s role in Japan’s post-war occupation. It was then, Hirst concludes, that “you feel that Australia had acquired a government again”.
Instead of beatifying Curtin, Albanese would therefore be far better served by studying other Australian prime ministers who responded with decisive authority during moments of dramatic geostrategic shift – most signally Alfred Deakin and Robert Menzies, but also foundational Labor hero Andrew Fisher.
Australia’s strategic isolation became glaringly apparent after the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905 when Japan wiped out Imperial Russia’s Baltic fleet.
Britain had struck an alliance with Japan in 1902 that enabled the former to withdraw its battleships from the Pacific Ocean and concentrate them in the North Sea, where they could deal with the rising threat of the German navy. Japan’s victory at Tsushima eliminated its own sole remaining rival for Pacific supremacy.
As John Hirst put it in a brilliant, recently republished Black Inc essay on Curtin’s wartime prime ministership that set the record straight, “Curtin was never happier than when it seemed Australia’s role in the war was to grow food and make munitions.”
It is true that small powers have limited influence over great allies. Yet Curtin did have considerable leverage, with MacArthur initially reliant on Australian troops to provide the bulk of his fighting forces in the South West Pacific zone.
“What is disturbing in Curtin”, writes Hirst, is that despite his leverage “he made no attempt to test the boundaries”, instead remaining “absolutely in thrall to MacArthur” until his death. Curtin’s replacement, Ben Chifley, once in office, immediately rebuked MacArthur for treating Australia as supine and independently planned Australia’s role in Japan’s post-war occupation. It was then, Hirst concludes, that “you feel that Australia had acquired a government again”.
Instead of beatifying Curtin, Albanese would therefore be far better served by studying other Australian prime ministers who responded with decisive authority during moments of dramatic geostrategic shift – most signally Alfred Deakin and Robert Menzies, but also foundational Labor hero Andrew Fisher.
Australia’s strategic isolation became glaringly apparent after the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905 when Japan wiped out Imperial Russia’s Baltic fleet.
Britain had struck an alliance with Japan in 1902 that enabled the former to withdraw its battleships from the Pacific Ocean and concentrate them in the North Sea, where they could deal with the rising threat of the German navy. Japan’s victory at Tsushima eliminated its own sole remaining rival for Pacific supremacy.
There's a lot of faux history to endure, and a series of distracting snaps, Ben Chifley. Alfred Deakin.
The essential point, two legs Curtin bad, four legs Ming good, shouldn't be forgotten, because after the extensive, elaborate display of historical feathers, that's where we'll land ...
In an interview given to Melbourne’s Herald in the days after Tsushima, Deakin laid out the new geostrategic facts Australia had to face.
Britain’s unquestioned supremacy of the world’s oceans, which had ensured Australian protection from the threat of hostile military incursions since the Napoleonic Wars, was a thing of the past. Now Australia was within immediate striking distance of potential enemies and no longer could assume the comforts of distance’s isolation: “Japan at her headquarters is next door, while the Mother Country is many streets away, and connected by long lines of communication.” Regardless of whether Japan or Russia had prevailed, the decisive victory left Australia exposed.
Australians, lulled by many decades of total strategic security, had to wake up to the risks and responsibilities “that we have not realised in Australia in all the long period of peace”. “When we will be attacked,” Deakin grimly warned, “it will not be with kid gloves, or after convenient notice, but it will be when and where we least desire it, and with remorseless fury.” In order that Australians “may continue to enjoy the blessings of peace, the Commonwealth must be prepared to spend more liberally than it has ever done on its defence and defence forces”.
Returning from the 1907 Imperial Conference without having secured a strengthened British Pacific commitment, Deakin unveiled a new defence policy that foreign policy doyen Neville Meaney has described as “revolutionary”. An independent Australian navy was to be established, the army reorganised and universal compulsory military service introduced to ensure “a defence of the people, for the people, by the people”. These initiatives defied imperial advice, as did Deakin’s audacious invitation to US president Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet.
Britain’s unquestioned supremacy of the world’s oceans, which had ensured Australian protection from the threat of hostile military incursions since the Napoleonic Wars, was a thing of the past. Now Australia was within immediate striking distance of potential enemies and no longer could assume the comforts of distance’s isolation: “Japan at her headquarters is next door, while the Mother Country is many streets away, and connected by long lines of communication.” Regardless of whether Japan or Russia had prevailed, the decisive victory left Australia exposed.
Australians, lulled by many decades of total strategic security, had to wake up to the risks and responsibilities “that we have not realised in Australia in all the long period of peace”. “When we will be attacked,” Deakin grimly warned, “it will not be with kid gloves, or after convenient notice, but it will be when and where we least desire it, and with remorseless fury.” In order that Australians “may continue to enjoy the blessings of peace, the Commonwealth must be prepared to spend more liberally than it has ever done on its defence and defence forces”.
Returning from the 1907 Imperial Conference without having secured a strengthened British Pacific commitment, Deakin unveiled a new defence policy that foreign policy doyen Neville Meaney has described as “revolutionary”. An independent Australian navy was to be established, the army reorganised and universal compulsory military service introduced to ensure “a defence of the people, for the people, by the people”. These initiatives defied imperial advice, as did Deakin’s audacious invitation to US president Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet.
Come on down Yankee doodle dandies, US Navy marching in Swanston St on a visit to Melbourne in 1908.
On with Deakin decking Curtin ...
The US chief fleet, the only naval force capable of countering Japan’s Pacific penetration, was concentrated in the Atlantic. But with Japanese-American “war scares” proliferating, Roosevelt instructed his navy to transfer to the Pacific and embark on a world tour that would demonstrate its potency. While the ships were painted white to signal peaceful intent, their presence undeniably demonstrated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific power with significant regional claims of its own.
Whitehall feared that Deakin’s invitation indicated that Australia wished to leave Britain’s side for the US. But Deakin was far from wanting to jettison Britain, which he continued to view as an indispensable component of Australia’s system of alliances. Rather, he had simply concluded that in the face of mounting threats, two great and powerful friends, each sharing Australia’s core values, were better than one. The visit of the US fleet was not just an exercise in alliance management; it was a vital part of Deakin’s project of awakening a previously apathetic electorate to the need for defence preparedness.
A half-million people gathered in Sydney and Melbourne in August and September 1908 to greet the fleet, demonstrating an enthusiasm that verged on Federation-era Beatlemania. Banquets, processions, street illuminations, ceremonial arches, bunting and a sea of American, British and Australian flags generated waves of public euphoria that exceeded anything else in Australian history. The fleet’s reception easily dwarfed the celebrations that had inaugurated the commonwealth in 1901. Admiral Charles Sperry reported back to Roosevelt that their “sustained enthusiasm has not been equalled in our experience”.
But beneath the constant references to “blood ties” and “kin”, the real reason for the intense fervour stood out starkly: the sudden, acute sense of geostrategic isolation in the Pacific, now dominated by the potentially hostile fleet of an expansionist empire.
With the public and all the major political parties persuaded, it fell to Labor leader Fisher, long an advocate of an Australian navy, to carry through Deakin’s pledge.
Whitehall feared that Deakin’s invitation indicated that Australia wished to leave Britain’s side for the US. But Deakin was far from wanting to jettison Britain, which he continued to view as an indispensable component of Australia’s system of alliances. Rather, he had simply concluded that in the face of mounting threats, two great and powerful friends, each sharing Australia’s core values, were better than one. The visit of the US fleet was not just an exercise in alliance management; it was a vital part of Deakin’s project of awakening a previously apathetic electorate to the need for defence preparedness.
A half-million people gathered in Sydney and Melbourne in August and September 1908 to greet the fleet, demonstrating an enthusiasm that verged on Federation-era Beatlemania. Banquets, processions, street illuminations, ceremonial arches, bunting and a sea of American, British and Australian flags generated waves of public euphoria that exceeded anything else in Australian history. The fleet’s reception easily dwarfed the celebrations that had inaugurated the commonwealth in 1901. Admiral Charles Sperry reported back to Roosevelt that their “sustained enthusiasm has not been equalled in our experience”.
But beneath the constant references to “blood ties” and “kin”, the real reason for the intense fervour stood out starkly: the sudden, acute sense of geostrategic isolation in the Pacific, now dominated by the potentially hostile fleet of an expansionist empire.
With the public and all the major political parties persuaded, it fell to Labor leader Fisher, long an advocate of an Australian navy, to carry through Deakin’s pledge.
And so to a snap of Ming and some other chap, Robert Menzies. Andrew Fisher.
Now to celebrate the singular achievement at Gallipoli ...
Unlike Curtin, who opposed necessary increases in defence expenditure in the lead-up to World War II, Fisher, his defence minister George Pearce and deputy leader Billy Hughes ensured that by 1914 Australia’s armed forces bore comparison with the world’s most advanced – a fact that underpinned their performance on the field of battle during the four hard years of World War I.
Deakin’s revolution in strategic outlook yielded enduring results, even though it took more than 40 years after the Great White Fleet’s Australian tour before a formal security alliance was cemented under the ANZUS Agreement of 1951. More than anything it highlighted, even as the recently formed commonwealth was taking its first steps, Australia’s need to strategically walk and chew gum at the same time: alliances and a substantive, credible commitment to the nation’s own military capacity, it showed, were not an either/or option; they marched, instead, hand-in-hand.
The same issues arose when prime minister Robert Menzies faced a strategic crisis of his own in 1963. In January that year, Indonesia’s authoritarian leader president Sukarno announced the Konfrontasi, an aggressive military confrontation with newly established Malaysia, a nation Sukarno declared a neo-colonial plot. Australia, a Malaysian ally that already had sent troops to its aid during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s, was involved not solely because of regional alliance but because of direct territorial threat. Konfrontasi forces projected north to Malaysia could just as easily be pointed immediately south towards Australia, including Papua and New Guinea.
In this situation Australian allies were little help. Britain was committed to Malaysia but its global reach was flagging. The US was playing a larger Cold War game and refused to oppose Indonesia, which it hoped to woo away from Soviet and Chinese support.
Australia, whose defence posture for more than a decade had been entirely forward, built to involve itself with allied conflicts in the wider region, suddenly found it had to think again.
Deakin’s revolution in strategic outlook yielded enduring results, even though it took more than 40 years after the Great White Fleet’s Australian tour before a formal security alliance was cemented under the ANZUS Agreement of 1951. More than anything it highlighted, even as the recently formed commonwealth was taking its first steps, Australia’s need to strategically walk and chew gum at the same time: alliances and a substantive, credible commitment to the nation’s own military capacity, it showed, were not an either/or option; they marched, instead, hand-in-hand.
The same issues arose when prime minister Robert Menzies faced a strategic crisis of his own in 1963. In January that year, Indonesia’s authoritarian leader president Sukarno announced the Konfrontasi, an aggressive military confrontation with newly established Malaysia, a nation Sukarno declared a neo-colonial plot. Australia, a Malaysian ally that already had sent troops to its aid during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s, was involved not solely because of regional alliance but because of direct territorial threat. Konfrontasi forces projected north to Malaysia could just as easily be pointed immediately south towards Australia, including Papua and New Guinea.
In this situation Australian allies were little help. Britain was committed to Malaysia but its global reach was flagging. The US was playing a larger Cold War game and refused to oppose Indonesia, which it hoped to woo away from Soviet and Chinese support.
Australia, whose defence posture for more than a decade had been entirely forward, built to involve itself with allied conflicts in the wider region, suddenly found it had to think again.
You see the cunning ploy, the way it's done? Why it's wholly admirable. Cut away from the past, and then allow yourself this remarkable line ...
Menzies’ response was a masterclass in political leadership.
What that's got to do with WWII is a tad moot, but on we go ...
On May 22, 1963, he announced to parliament a momentous overhaul of Australian defence forces. Previous defence forces had been designed to integrate with allies in repulsing enemies as far away from Australian shores as possible. That strategy had safeguarded Australia’s interests but, said Menzies, “as international strategic considerations change, so we must be ready to change our own defence arrangements … We have made our review in the light of our treaty arrangements, but particularly in reference to the security of our own country, and of the territories of Papua and New Guinea.” The government, Menzies declared, would now acquire “a capacity for independent action”.
The reptiles interrupted with another snap, Australian soldiers during World War II at Milne Bay, New Guinea.
See how Ming is celebrated, neigh worshipped ...
This required a dramatic increase in defence expenditure, which effectively doubled, allowing for the purchase of significant new weaponry from Britain (Oberon-class submarines) and the US (F-111 strike aircraft). At the same time, the reintroduction of conscription enabled the army to double in size. Menzies directly addressed an immediate strategic threat no great ally would or could effectively assist against.
Yet what followed confirmed Menzies’ statecraft. While greatly reinforcing Australia’s own defences, he intensified his efforts to engage the US in Asia-Pacific security. His government’s proactive encouragement of American commitment to South Vietnam – where Menzies was, in John Howard’s words, “an enthusiastic barracker” rather than a passive bystander or obedient suppliant – was an act of strategic alliance-building even more than it was a commitment to counter communist aggression.
Menzies’ leadership in those crucial years, Andrew Carr and Peter Dean argue in the forthcoming Melbourne University Press publication The Menzies Legacy, established a Defence of Australia doctrine that articulated the ADF’s primary focus as the immediate defence of Australian territory in the context of a wider, heavily cultivated, alliance relationship. That doctrine remained our defence policy’s core principle for decades.
But as the 2023 Defence Strategic Review emphasised, the dramatic upsurge in China’s overwhelmingly asymmetric offensive threat capabilities imposes a reconsideration of its substance and implementation. Yet while circumstances have changed, any reconsideration must be informed by the realities that emerge from our now more than century old experience in managing alliances.
At the heart of those realities is the simple fact that alliances are not like houses, something to construct and then simply live in. They are relationships whose endurance can be assured only by constant attention and cultivation, based on an acute awareness of the parties’ positions, priorities and concerns.
Central, in that respect, is a demonstrated willingness to bear one’s share of the load – as Deakin, Fisher and Menzies were clearly willing to do.
There are, for sure, times when the advantages to our larger partner of pursuing a mutually beneficial course of action are so great that it is willing to take on a disproportionate burden.
In World War II, for example, the overwhelming importance to the US of defeating Japan meant it could readily put up with Curtin’s hesitations about the regional scope of Australia’s commitment.
Yet what followed confirmed Menzies’ statecraft. While greatly reinforcing Australia’s own defences, he intensified his efforts to engage the US in Asia-Pacific security. His government’s proactive encouragement of American commitment to South Vietnam – where Menzies was, in John Howard’s words, “an enthusiastic barracker” rather than a passive bystander or obedient suppliant – was an act of strategic alliance-building even more than it was a commitment to counter communist aggression.
Menzies’ leadership in those crucial years, Andrew Carr and Peter Dean argue in the forthcoming Melbourne University Press publication The Menzies Legacy, established a Defence of Australia doctrine that articulated the ADF’s primary focus as the immediate defence of Australian territory in the context of a wider, heavily cultivated, alliance relationship. That doctrine remained our defence policy’s core principle for decades.
But as the 2023 Defence Strategic Review emphasised, the dramatic upsurge in China’s overwhelmingly asymmetric offensive threat capabilities imposes a reconsideration of its substance and implementation. Yet while circumstances have changed, any reconsideration must be informed by the realities that emerge from our now more than century old experience in managing alliances.
At the heart of those realities is the simple fact that alliances are not like houses, something to construct and then simply live in. They are relationships whose endurance can be assured only by constant attention and cultivation, based on an acute awareness of the parties’ positions, priorities and concerns.
Central, in that respect, is a demonstrated willingness to bear one’s share of the load – as Deakin, Fisher and Menzies were clearly willing to do.
There are, for sure, times when the advantages to our larger partner of pursuing a mutually beneficial course of action are so great that it is willing to take on a disproportionate burden.
In World War II, for example, the overwhelming importance to the US of defeating Japan meant it could readily put up with Curtin’s hesitations about the regional scope of Australia’s commitment.
The reptiles dropped in a borrowed snap, A picture of Curtin from the book, John Curtin: A Man of Peace, A Time of War.
And so to put the record straight ...
But even putting aside the high price Australia paid, in terms of sacrificed sovereignty, for Curtin’s hesitations, history is littered with instances in which the quality of alliances – and ultimately their persistence – has fallen victim to the resentments caused by perceived free-riding.
Moreover, the greater the capabilities Australia brings to the table, the greater the say we can legitimately claim and reasonably expect about critical decisions. And, crucially, the greater too are the options we have if and when the alliance falls short.
In that sense, a willingness to bear, and be seen to bear, Australia’s fair share of the costs is a double insurance policy: it helps strengthen the alliance, with all the protection it brings; and it ensures we are not left entirely bereft should the alliance falter or collapse. That is why Deakin and Menzies responded so positively to the prompts they received from alliance partners about the need to increase Australia’s defence preparedness: from Britain in Deakin’s case, from the US in Menzies’.
Unlike Curtin, they recognised that accepting those prompts did not jeopardise Australia’s sovereignty; on the contrary, it placed that sovereignty on a surer footing.
But bearing the load is not merely a question of resource commitment. It is also a matter of taking the views and interests of allies seriously into account, in the process giving due weight to the importance of preserving the confidence and respect of one’s alliance partners.
No one understood that better than Winston Churchill, a favourite bete noir in Labor mythology.
In early 1942, as Japan’s advance posed an ever-greater threat, Churchill suggested to Curtin that Singapore be evacuated and its Allied troops – including an Australian division – be redeployed. However, with Curtin having momentarily vanished from the scene as he dealt with one of his recurring physical and nervous breakdowns, Canberra responded that such an act would be an “inexcusable betrayal.” Against his better strategic judgment, Churchill acquiesced.
Moreover, the greater the capabilities Australia brings to the table, the greater the say we can legitimately claim and reasonably expect about critical decisions. And, crucially, the greater too are the options we have if and when the alliance falls short.
In that sense, a willingness to bear, and be seen to bear, Australia’s fair share of the costs is a double insurance policy: it helps strengthen the alliance, with all the protection it brings; and it ensures we are not left entirely bereft should the alliance falter or collapse. That is why Deakin and Menzies responded so positively to the prompts they received from alliance partners about the need to increase Australia’s defence preparedness: from Britain in Deakin’s case, from the US in Menzies’.
Unlike Curtin, they recognised that accepting those prompts did not jeopardise Australia’s sovereignty; on the contrary, it placed that sovereignty on a surer footing.
But bearing the load is not merely a question of resource commitment. It is also a matter of taking the views and interests of allies seriously into account, in the process giving due weight to the importance of preserving the confidence and respect of one’s alliance partners.
No one understood that better than Winston Churchill, a favourite bete noir in Labor mythology.
In early 1942, as Japan’s advance posed an ever-greater threat, Churchill suggested to Curtin that Singapore be evacuated and its Allied troops – including an Australian division – be redeployed. However, with Curtin having momentarily vanished from the scene as he dealt with one of his recurring physical and nervous breakdowns, Canberra responded that such an act would be an “inexcusable betrayal.” Against his better strategic judgment, Churchill acquiesced.
So it was all Curtin's fault, and to add to the proof, the reptiles ran a snap, Curtin with British politician prime minister Winston Churchill and British politician Herbert Morrison in 1944.
...Churchill was clearly astounded, and greatly troubled, by Wavell’s message. He responded: “It was with feelings of painful surprise that I read this message on the morning of the 19th. So there were no permanent fortifications covering the landward side of the naval base and of the city! Moreover, even more astounding, no measures worth speaking of had been taken by any of the commanders since the war began, and more especially since the Japanese had established themselves in Indo-China, to construct field defences. They had not even mentioned the fact that they did not exist.”
On 19 January, Churchill wrote to General Ismay, his military adviser and link with the Chiefs of Staff Committee, about Singapore. “I must confess to being staggered by Wavell’s telegram of the 16th and other telegrams on the same subject. It never occurred to me for a moment…that the gorge of the fortress of Singapore, with its splendid moat half a mile to a mile wide, was not entirely fortified against an attack from the northward.”
Churchill asked Ismay that a plan be made at once while the battle in Johore was going forward. He outlined what the plan should comprise. Among the ten elements of the plan, Churchill included: “(i) Not only must the defence of Singapore Island be maintained by every means, but the whole island must be fought for until every single unit and every single strong point has been separately destroyed. (j) Finally, the city of Singapore must be converted into a citadel and defended to the death. No surrender can be contemplated, and the Commander, Staffs and principal officers are expected to perish at their posts.”
In his memoirs, Ismay told of reporting to Churchill on the morning of 19 January: “I found him in a towering rage. Why had I not told him that there were no defences on the north side of Singapore Island? Before I could protest that he must have been misinformed, he thrust into my hand a telegram from Wavell reporting that little or nothing had been done in the way of constructing defences to prevent the crossing of the Johore Straits. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
“The Prime Minister continued: ‘You were with the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) for several years before the war broke out. You must have known the position. Why did you not warn me?’”
Ismay wrote that he was tempted to explain to Churchill that the CID had concerned itself with the installation of the heavy guns to meet a sea-borne attack and with the period for which the fortress had to be prepared to hold out until relief arrived. In addition, it had been taken for granted that the commanders on the spot would see to the local defenses against land attack from the north. “But I remained silent,” Ismay wrote, “What did my own feelings matter when so ghastly and humiliating a disaster loomed ahead?”
On 3 February, Churchill had lunch with King George VI at Buckingham Palace. Among the discussions was Singapore. The King entered the following entry in his diary: “The PM is worried & angry over events in the Far East. Singapore has not been fortified from the land-ward side even with tank traps & pill boxes hidden in the jungle. These could have been done by the troops themselves. 15 [inch] gun emplacements pointing out to sea are no form of defence. He fears great loss of life by air bombardment.”
In The Hinge of Fate, Churchill ultimately took responsibility for the lack of permanent fortifications: “I do not write this in any way to excuse myself. I ought to have known. My advisers ought to have known and I ought to have been told, and I ought to have asked. The reason I had not asked about this matter, amid the thousands of questions I put, was that the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.”
Churchill continued: “I am aware of the various reasons that have been given for this failure: the preoccupation of the troops in training and in building defence works in Northern Malaya; the shortage of civilian labour; pre-war financial limitations and centralized War Office control; the fact that the Army’s role was to protect the naval base, situated on the north shore of the island, and that it was therefore their duty to fight in front of that shore and not along it. I do not consider these reasons valid. Defences should have been built.
On 19 January, Churchill wrote to General Ismay, his military adviser and link with the Chiefs of Staff Committee, about Singapore. “I must confess to being staggered by Wavell’s telegram of the 16th and other telegrams on the same subject. It never occurred to me for a moment…that the gorge of the fortress of Singapore, with its splendid moat half a mile to a mile wide, was not entirely fortified against an attack from the northward.”
Churchill asked Ismay that a plan be made at once while the battle in Johore was going forward. He outlined what the plan should comprise. Among the ten elements of the plan, Churchill included: “(i) Not only must the defence of Singapore Island be maintained by every means, but the whole island must be fought for until every single unit and every single strong point has been separately destroyed. (j) Finally, the city of Singapore must be converted into a citadel and defended to the death. No surrender can be contemplated, and the Commander, Staffs and principal officers are expected to perish at their posts.”
In his memoirs, Ismay told of reporting to Churchill on the morning of 19 January: “I found him in a towering rage. Why had I not told him that there were no defences on the north side of Singapore Island? Before I could protest that he must have been misinformed, he thrust into my hand a telegram from Wavell reporting that little or nothing had been done in the way of constructing defences to prevent the crossing of the Johore Straits. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
“The Prime Minister continued: ‘You were with the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) for several years before the war broke out. You must have known the position. Why did you not warn me?’”
Ismay wrote that he was tempted to explain to Churchill that the CID had concerned itself with the installation of the heavy guns to meet a sea-borne attack and with the period for which the fortress had to be prepared to hold out until relief arrived. In addition, it had been taken for granted that the commanders on the spot would see to the local defenses against land attack from the north. “But I remained silent,” Ismay wrote, “What did my own feelings matter when so ghastly and humiliating a disaster loomed ahead?”
On 3 February, Churchill had lunch with King George VI at Buckingham Palace. Among the discussions was Singapore. The King entered the following entry in his diary: “The PM is worried & angry over events in the Far East. Singapore has not been fortified from the land-ward side even with tank traps & pill boxes hidden in the jungle. These could have been done by the troops themselves. 15 [inch] gun emplacements pointing out to sea are no form of defence. He fears great loss of life by air bombardment.”
In The Hinge of Fate, Churchill ultimately took responsibility for the lack of permanent fortifications: “I do not write this in any way to excuse myself. I ought to have known. My advisers ought to have known and I ought to have been told, and I ought to have asked. The reason I had not asked about this matter, amid the thousands of questions I put, was that the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.”
Churchill continued: “I am aware of the various reasons that have been given for this failure: the preoccupation of the troops in training and in building defence works in Northern Malaya; the shortage of civilian labour; pre-war financial limitations and centralized War Office control; the fact that the Army’s role was to protect the naval base, situated on the north shore of the island, and that it was therefore their duty to fight in front of that shore and not along it. I do not consider these reasons valid. Defences should have been built.
The pond quoted it at length but please remember that line about it all being Curtin's fault, and this ...
... the city of Singapore must be converted into a citadel and defended to the death. No surrender can be contemplated, and the Commander, Staffs and principal officers are expected to perish at their posts.”
Ah, the old perish at their posts routine, that worked out well, but back to lumping it all on Curtin in a passingly outrageous way ...
The ignominious outcome – which should forever tarnish Curtin’s reputation – was the fall of Singapore and the devastating loss of 15,000 Australians from the 8th AIF Division and 80,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers.
Churchill put the needs of his alliance relationship above what he thought “a purely military decision should have been”. He sought to reassure an already thoroughly alarmed ALP government and solidify its commitment to the war effort, even though he was rightly convinced the Australian position was militarily unwise.
The contrast with Curtin’s conduct in refusing to redeploy Australian troops to Burma could not be starker. Those troops were intended to protect the allies’ supply routes to China, where most of Japan’s army continued to grapple with Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, significantly slowing Japan’s southward momentum. But Curtin’s instincts were, as they had been for years, strictly insular and parochial, leaving the overall impression that he really wasn’t up to the scale and strain of the job – and notably to the job of maturely managing an alliance.
Last but not least, sustaining an alliance requires the courage to bear political costs at home, when decisions that are controversial domestically need to be taken to keep the alliance fully intact.
Churchill put the needs of his alliance relationship above what he thought “a purely military decision should have been”. He sought to reassure an already thoroughly alarmed ALP government and solidify its commitment to the war effort, even though he was rightly convinced the Australian position was militarily unwise.
The contrast with Curtin’s conduct in refusing to redeploy Australian troops to Burma could not be starker. Those troops were intended to protect the allies’ supply routes to China, where most of Japan’s army continued to grapple with Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, significantly slowing Japan’s southward momentum. But Curtin’s instincts were, as they had been for years, strictly insular and parochial, leaving the overall impression that he really wasn’t up to the scale and strain of the job – and notably to the job of maturely managing an alliance.
Last but not least, sustaining an alliance requires the courage to bear political costs at home, when decisions that are controversial domestically need to be taken to keep the alliance fully intact.
Cue a few more distracting snaps, Elated Japanese troops on Singapore waterfront after the surrender of British forces. Japanese troops with fixed bayonets guarding British prisoners after the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
Then cue this egregious line ...
Menzies repeatedly displayed that courage.
But what about? (warning, Facebook link)
..in 1938, a Port Kembla wharf dispute begins, leading to Attorney-General Robert Menzies earning the nickname 'Pig Iron Bob'.
On 15 November 1938, Port Kembla dockworkers refused to load scrap or ‘pig iron’ onto the SS Dalfram destined for Japanese arms factories. While the dispute dragged on for ten weeks, other ships bound for Japan were not loaded or ‘worked’ by Australian labour, almost bringing some industries to a standstill.
Sydney's Chinese community lent their support, providing food to the families of the striking workers. This was one of the earliest signs that the White Australia Policy was slowly cracking.
With the full backing of the Lyons government, Menzies threatened to invoke the Transport Workers Act 1928 which would have allowed the government to effectively sack anyone refusing to load the iron.
The union eventually backed down, and the dockworkers agreed to load the iron. However, the dispute paved the way for other social campaigns by organised labour in Australia.
Cartoon by Will Mahony, February 1939.
On 15 November 1938, Port Kembla dockworkers refused to load scrap or ‘pig iron’ onto the SS Dalfram destined for Japanese arms factories. While the dispute dragged on for ten weeks, other ships bound for Japan were not loaded or ‘worked’ by Australian labour, almost bringing some industries to a standstill.
Sydney's Chinese community lent their support, providing food to the families of the striking workers. This was one of the earliest signs that the White Australia Policy was slowly cracking.
With the full backing of the Lyons government, Menzies threatened to invoke the Transport Workers Act 1928 which would have allowed the government to effectively sack anyone refusing to load the iron.
The union eventually backed down, and the dockworkers agreed to load the iron. However, the dispute paved the way for other social campaigns by organised labour in Australia.
Cartoon by Will Mahony, February 1939.
None of that nonsense please ...have more of this hatchet job instead ...
He had already shown the importance he placed on alliances during the Suez crisis when, at Britain’s request, he agreed to undertake the thankless task of attempting a mediation with Egypt. Years later, when he was asked point blank “why he had let himself be the ‘fall guy’ over Suez”, his answer was simple: “When your friends are in great difficulty and ask for help, you don’t let them down”, even if responding to their request was likely to cause political grief at home.
The same willingness to bear political costs for the sake of strengthening Australia’s domestic and international security was evident when he proposed the reintroduction of conscription in 1964. “There comes a time in the life of any government where it just has to make decisions in the best interests of the country even if they believe they are committing political suicide,” Menzies told colleagues.
Curtin, in contrast, showed few signs of that sort of political courage on the same critical issue. He preferred a strategically ludicrous political fix for the ALP’s persistent problem with conscription: conscripts would be allowed to fight overseas, but only as far north as the equator.
This retained Labor Party unity – just – but at the cost of ensuring American conscripts were deployed at the heart of the regional battlefront, bearing the brunt of Australia’s defence, while our own soldiers were kept in arrears.
In short, effectively managing the alliances crucial to Australia’s security presents an immense political and intellectual challenge. This task is complicated by what one of us calls “Gallipoli syndrome”, a pervasive belief on Australia’s left (and beyond) that all alliances are destined to repeat supposed British ineptitude at Gallipoli or betrayal at Singapore.
The same willingness to bear political costs for the sake of strengthening Australia’s domestic and international security was evident when he proposed the reintroduction of conscription in 1964. “There comes a time in the life of any government where it just has to make decisions in the best interests of the country even if they believe they are committing political suicide,” Menzies told colleagues.
Curtin, in contrast, showed few signs of that sort of political courage on the same critical issue. He preferred a strategically ludicrous political fix for the ALP’s persistent problem with conscription: conscripts would be allowed to fight overseas, but only as far north as the equator.
This retained Labor Party unity – just – but at the cost of ensuring American conscripts were deployed at the heart of the regional battlefront, bearing the brunt of Australia’s defence, while our own soldiers were kept in arrears.
In short, effectively managing the alliances crucial to Australia’s security presents an immense political and intellectual challenge. This task is complicated by what one of us calls “Gallipoli syndrome”, a pervasive belief on Australia’s left (and beyond) that all alliances are destined to repeat supposed British ineptitude at Gallipoli or betrayal at Singapore.
Cue another snap, Australian soldier Corp Leslie Allen carries an American soldier to safety after he was knocked unconscious by a mortar bomb at Mount Tambu, New Guinea during WWII.
The past is a different country. People make of it what they will. They infest the past with their own fetishes, bigotries, fears and loathings. They don't see clearly, they take from it what they will, and they use it to pursue their current agendas.
What you leave out, discreetly omit, write over, use an eraser on, is as important as what you put in ...
In short,
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Curtin
And I must pause till it come back to me.
And so to the final gobbet of hatchery, a form of bestial, brutish, bloody minded, boofheaded revisionism, which some might consider not our Henry's finest hour, especially as there's not a single mention of Thucydides or a decent ancient Greek war ...
It’s also driven by an attitude of self-entitlement – what Hirst described as a quasi-colonial assumption that we are so valuable and cherished we shall never be left to fend for ourselves, and that even adolescent tantrums won’t endanger an alliance.
But it is a fact of life that the US is becoming more selective in its alliance relationships, and even more inclined to conclude that allies, rather than being force multipliers, are an unnecessary hindrance. Its own global system of bases, coupled with increasingly advanced long-range weaponry, suggests it could eventually decide to simply protect itself and advance its own immediate interests, which it defines in increasingly narrow terms.
Nor is that solely a risk with the Trump administration; rather, that administration’s conduct reflects longer-term economic and political forces that are likely to become only stronger in the years ahead.
As a result, our long-held, baked-in assumption that we are the indispensable ally, whose antics will always be forgiven, may well be wide of the mark – and even if it still has some validity today, it would be foolhardy to rely on the belief that it will retain that validity tomorrow.
That is why we need to get our history straight and fully grasp its lessons. Sure, if the ALP needs saints, let it beatify Curtin. But if the government thinks his insular mindset exemplifies what the times demand, Australia is in for a rude awakening.
Henry Ergas is a columnist with The Australian. Alex McDermott is an independent historian.
But it is a fact of life that the US is becoming more selective in its alliance relationships, and even more inclined to conclude that allies, rather than being force multipliers, are an unnecessary hindrance. Its own global system of bases, coupled with increasingly advanced long-range weaponry, suggests it could eventually decide to simply protect itself and advance its own immediate interests, which it defines in increasingly narrow terms.
Nor is that solely a risk with the Trump administration; rather, that administration’s conduct reflects longer-term economic and political forces that are likely to become only stronger in the years ahead.
As a result, our long-held, baked-in assumption that we are the indispensable ally, whose antics will always be forgiven, may well be wide of the mark – and even if it still has some validity today, it would be foolhardy to rely on the belief that it will retain that validity tomorrow.
That is why we need to get our history straight and fully grasp its lessons. Sure, if the ALP needs saints, let it beatify Curtin. But if the government thinks his insular mindset exemplifies what the times demand, Australia is in for a rude awakening.
Henry Ergas is a columnist with The Australian. Alex McDermott is an independent historian.
And there you have it, all so that that comrade Albo might be diminished ...
And so to wrap up the day's proceedings with an infallible Pope, and because it comes so late, the pond reserves the right to use it again if the reptiles start having another beef ...but as boofheads have been mentioned, how could the pond resist a beefy boeuf head?
It's always in the detail and the pond must look out for this delicacy when next shopping ... Tamworth's shame has never before looked so delicious, such an edible ...
Further evidence that the Reptiles have zero creativity, with Killer starting off with the old “Lucky Country” cliche without a hint of irony. Nevertheless, I find myself in the odd position of sorta agreeing with him in that yes, the justifiably-high taxes on tobacco proud have indeed had the unfortunate side effect of boosting the illegal trade. The obvious next question is what, if anything, should be done in response to- how best to discourage both tobacco consumption and the illegal trade? Well, don’t bother asking Killer, because he clearly doesn't give a stuff. Apart from requiring some creative thinking rather than just whinging - something clearly beyond his capabilities- he admits himself that the Durrie Wars are just an excuse to segue to his favourite topic, bagging renewables. *sigh* - so bloody predictable, and tedious. All that’s missing is the usual bitch about Covid-era rules and masks.
ReplyDeleteStill, perhaps Killer could get a new side-gig with Big Tobacco promoting smoking. What kind of catchy slogan could he come up with, given his limited imagination? Marlboro Are Great Again? Make Alpine Great Again?
Make Supa Great Again... "yes masa...
ReplyDeleteThe reptiles are fantastic fire bombers... of the ABC, and 'super unrealised' losses...
Ed Zitron said... "The Magnificent 7 is almost certainly a big part of their retirement plans, even if they’re not directly invested."
But we reptiles are "mulling a damaging tax on unrealised capital gains in superannuation – which might raise a few billion dollars in revenue over the coming years".
Might raise a few billion. Disingenuous strawmen defecting reptiles. Definately trolling & sniping, suckering on the +$3m teat of big superdoopers and big tobacco and big crime to make a "point".
Super!
"The Magnificent 7 stocks — NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta, Tesla and Amazon — make up around 35% of the value of the US stock market, and of that, NVIDIA's market value makes up about 19% of the Magnificent 7. This dominance is also why ordinary people ought to be deeply concerned about the AI bubble. The Magnificent 7 is almost certainly a big part of their retirement plans, even if they’re not directly invested.
"Back in May, Yahoo Finance's Laura Bratton reported that Microsoft (18.9%), Amazon (7.5%), Meta (9.3%), Alphabet (5.6%), and Tesla (0.9%) alone make up 42.4% of NVIDIA's revenue. The breakdown makes things worse. Meta spends 25% — and Microsoft an alarming 47% — of its capital expenditures on NVIDIA chips, and as Bratton notes, Microsoft also spends money renting servers from CoreWeave, which analyst Gil Luria of D.A.Davidson estimates accounted for $8 billion (more than 6%) of NVIDIA's revenue in 2024. Luria also estimates that neocloud companies like CoreWeave and Crusoe — that exist only to prove AI compute services — account for as much as 10% of NVIDIA's revenue."
"The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble"
EDWARD ZITRON
JUL 21, 2025
55 MIN READ
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/?ref=ed-zitrons-wheres-your-ed-at-newsletter
"Jillian Segal’s critics disqualified by ignorance and rage,". Classic case of projection as Freud called it: a defence mechanism where an individual assigns their own positive or negative traits, emotions, and urges to another person or .... whatever they want.
ReplyDeleteSo obvious to some of us, but others have "hides thick as elephants" and another old insightful Australian saying I remember that some people "think their shit doesn't stink".
Freud did have some insights into rich white people who worry what other richer people think about them.
ReplyDeletePeter Woit has been writing about the situation at Columbia University for a while. This post https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15069 is worth a read, including the comments.
Autocrats can't succeed, at least in the beginning, without a goodly host of 'fellow travellers' (or brownshirts if you prefer) and in Trump's case that seems to amount to about half of the population (m and f).
DeleteGood to see that Albo is finally expressing some reservations about the Gaza situation. He might turn out to be human after all.
The venerable mead...
ReplyDelete"One colleague “does not have the strength to hold a camera any more”, has lost 34kg and can hardly talk on the phone, Doran wrote."
Then...
"Old dog still barks
"Gerard Henderson’s byline photo on Sky News Australia
"Another ABC critic, Gerard Henderson, is using his new platform on Murdoch’s Sky News Australia to continue his decades-long criticism of Aunty.
...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2025/jul/25/abc-alarm-gaza-famine-palestinian-journalists-freelancers-weekly-beast-ntwnfb
Hopeful... they lost 10k subscribers and are marked for eternity...
ReplyDelete"One of the top YouTube comments says: “Holy shit this is insane. War criminal. You will be remembered for centuries for this interview.”
Netanyahu carrying out his wish...
"In 2001, for example, Netanyahu said his approach to Palestinians is that you should: “Beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable.”"
"his wife, Sara, told him that Trump “is a good person with a good heart”. He claimed that most civilian casualties in Gaza are Hamas’s fault and, engaging in a little pinkwashing, said that it was nonsensical for women and gay people to support Gaza: “It’s like chickens for KFC, right?” He also said that everyone in Gaza wants to be transferred to another country, and falsely claimed that Hamas isn’t letting them leave. He also said Hamas was responsible for the fact Gaza is starving.
"the Nelk Boys asked what Netanyahu’s favourite McDonald’s order is and Netanyahu replied that he preferred Burger King. “That’s your worst take, I think,” Steinberg responded jokingly.
Hilarious, right? It’s just side-splittingly funny that kids are dying of starvation in Gaza thanks to a man who is a big fan of Whoppers.
Nelk Boys received a lot of publicity for the interview, I’m not sure they’re happy with the backlash they’re getting. They’ve lost more than 10,000 subscribers in less than a day and the comment section isn’t exactly flattering. (One of the top YouTube comments says: “Holy shit this is insane. War criminal. You will be remembered for centuries for this interview.”)"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/24/netanyahu-nelk-boys-podcast
Maybe I do live under a rock. I'd never heard of the Nelk Boys.
You're not the only one, Anony; there's some real big rocks lying around.
DeleteTruth Park is always South... when you say "The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end" you are already at the Pole. Obviously unknowingly!
ReplyDelete"Donald Trump’s White House is melting down over Wednesday night’s South Park premiere, which just so happened to attack the president’s “teeny tiny” manhood and depict him as literally in bed with the devil, effectively taking over the role held on the show for years by the late genocidal dictator Saddam Hussein.
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” Trump White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Rolling Stone in a statement this morning. “Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history — and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”
...
Earlier this week, Colbert responded to a Truth Social post from Trump in which the president said he hoped he was the reason Colbert had been fired.
“Go fuck yourself,” Colbert said.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-white-house-rages-south-park-premiere-1235393132/
Detailed...
South Park Aired Its Ballsiest Episode Yet. It’s the Only Possible Response to the Trump Era.The long-running sitcom risked it all and took on both POTUS and Paramount.
...
"Trump was all over the Season 27 premiere, which aired Wednesday night—and not in ways that are likely to please our thin-skinned commander in chief. “Nobody makes fun of me and gets away with it!” Trump screams in one scene, right before stripping naked, revealing a micropenis, and jumping into bed to have sex with Satan. (Indeed, Rolling Stone reported Thursday that clips of the show were circulating among administration staff, prompting the White House to release a statement bashing South Park as an irrelevant “fourth-rate show.”)
"Like some of the series’ best work, the episode was shamelessly crude and juvenile but also shockingly sharp and current, including even references to the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s showon sister network CBS, the cowardice over 60 Minutes on that same network, and Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
...
https://slate.com/culture/2025/07/south-park-season-27-trump-epstein-satan-paramount-new-episode.html
Dot, will you weave in tomorrow the devil, jesus, micropenis and Colbert.
Refs for Trump refs.