Former believer in the light on the hill. Long gone. Strong lefty leanings, though formally unaligned. Pacifist, human rights, animal rights, free Assange!
@WarPowersReform The next Australian government needs to ensure that aukus is ripped up in its first year. Australia doesn't need nor want this war mongering US anchor around its neck. The US brings conflict and division. It's the world's leading cause of instability. End AUKUS.
@WarPowersReform One hopes it collapses before the end of this term. It should never have been ratified. We voted out the corrupt moron who proposed it and his party. It's unforgivable that #ALP then betrayed us.
Never forget what Peter Dutton did—
Two little Australian girls put in detention. Then dragged out & thrown on a plane, destination Sri Lanka. Not seated with their parents. Terrified.
It took fast work from supporters to turn that plane around. Next? Imprisoned on Xmas Island.
@Pollytics I've been thinking this the last couple months too. Every new policy announcement has been a welcome surprise. I'm not used to Labor being bold, being brave, having courage. And you're right, it's basically because he has to.
To be clear, I have nothing but respect for Steven Miles and this isn't a slight against him. He should have been Premier two years before he was, and things would have been dramatically different. But the Labor Party Labor Parties hiding behind the couch
Doing the good and proper and right things regardless of the corporate or institutional power you make enemies of should be the purpose, not the last resort. Because if it's your last resort - you clearly think it has value, so why not recognise it and do it first?
The biggest ALP failure is that the best Oz ALP Premier in 40 years in terms of their policy action and dealing with what is on their plate (that's 90% of gov, folks!) is Steven Miles. And he's doing it because he has nothing to lose. It should be the blueprint from Day One.
Menstruation IS NOT A CHOICE WE GET TO MAKE, ARSEHOLES. DON'T YOU DARE, @AlboMP @billshortenmp.
"Period products to be classified as ‘lifestyle related’ like vapes and gaming consoles under NDIS plan" #auspol
https://t.co/yumJgkLBG9
@RnaudBertrand It needs to be an election issue.
Who gave the right for the major parties to give away our sovereignty, put 🇺🇸 bases here, sign us up to secret political commitments, make us a target, cost us billions for no return?
Nobody was asked to vote on this.
There's now an incredible number of extremely senior Australian figures rallying against AUKUS.
The latest is former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans calling it "one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions our country has made" 👇
https://t.co/notekD6BER
He says this is because AUKUS is "not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect".
Specifically on Australia's loss of sovereignty, here's what he says:
1) Australia would lose operational independence and sovereign decision-making: "The notion that we will retain any kind of sovereign agency in determining how all these assets are used, should serious tensions erupt, is a joke in bad taste."
2) Australia would be expected to automatically be involved in US conflicts: "But also now the ever-clearer expectation on the US side that 'integrated deterrence' means Australia will have no choice but to join the US in fighting any future war in which it chooses to engage anywhere in the Indo-Pacific, including in defence of Taiwan." Especially given that he apparently has bad memories of being a junior ally of the US: "I have had personal ministerial experience of being a junior allied partner of the US in a hot conflict situation – the first Gulf War in 1991 — and my recollections are not pretty."
3) It'd increase US military presence in Australia: "Not only the now open-ended expansion of Tindal as a US B52 base; not only the conversion of Stirling into a major base for a US Indian Ocean fleet, making Perth now join Pine Gap and the North West Cape – and increasingly likely, Tindal – as a nuclear target..."
He also quotes former French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who said: "The Australians place themselves entirely at the mercy of developments in American policy. I wish our Australian partner, who made the choice of security – justified by the escalation of tensions with China – to the detriment of sovereignty, will not discover later that it has sacrificed both."
Le Drian was right, Australia is sacrificing both, as Evans now recognizes...