It is sickening. At every turn of Albanese I feel as if yet again duped - because Dutton would have been worse...a Minority ALP win with an expanded Independents - that would have been far more preferable. Thanks for this uncovering!
It's not entirely Albanese's fault. Australian public attitudes to the US are complex, to put it politely. On the one hand, views of Donald Trump are overwhelmingly negative, a fact that contributed to the scale of the LNP defeat. On the other hand, there has been little challenge to the general belief that our alliance with the US is both necessary and beneficial.
During Trump’s first term in office, these apparently contradictory views could be reconciled. Trump’s election was seen as an aberration. When he was defeated, Biden claimed "America is back"
That America is gone for good, but neither the political class nor the public in general has managed to process this fact so far.
I'll have a longer piece soon, arguing that we need to throw in our lot with ASEAN
I agree with you John, but when you say "...there has been little challenge to the general belief that our alliance with the US is both necessary and beneficial..." I would say, well when was there a chance to challenge this general belief? Has AUKUS even been debated in the Australian Parliament? So far as I can tell, it hasn't been. We can't call ourselves a democracy when the governing parties agree to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and tie us up to a foreign government for decades to come without a public debate.
This is what happens when the majors (I use the term loosely) converge on policy. Until Keating kicked up a fuss, the matter had very little public discussion. This is how "consent" is manufactured.
One of the articles I linked cited polling that suggests we still have a basically positive view of the US, as opposed to Trump, and I guess that is true: though I wonder how that tallies with more recent data of people avoiding travelling there? And what happens when an Australian citizen gets caught up in one of ICE's or Border controls Gestapo-adjacent gaolings or deportations to a third country? Maybe it takes something like that to cause people to change their views?
“Warmth” was doing a lot of work in that press conference. Not courtesy. Not caution. Just a kind of affable ease, like two old colleagues catching up over trade tariffs and submarines. It was jarring. Not because a Prime Minister took a call from the US President, which is expected, but because of the complete lack of friction in the moment. As if none of it meant anything.
The public’s disgust with Trumpism was a key undercurrent of the election. Dutton’s campaign stumbled in part because people recognised the shape of that politics, even in local costume. The cruelty, the conspiracism, the smug authoritarian lean did not play here. Yet within days, the newly emboldened Government is publicly embracing the same figure it had quietly warned us about by proxy. There was no hesitation. No awkwardness. Just smiles and vague references to ongoing engagement.
I see what John is saying with his comment, but if not now, when will Albo ever have the spine to do the right thing? Some will call this diplomacy. Maybe that is all it is. Still, there is a slow accretion of meaning in these gestures. They legitimise. They normalise. The warmth isn’t incidental. It smooths the way for deeper entanglement with a country that is growing more hostile to its own democratic foundations. Through AUKUS, we are locking ourselves into that trajectory, without much of a fight.
Labor positioned itself as the adult alternative to a radicalised right. What we are seeing now is the price of that strategy. Not resistance. Not even discomfort. Just continuity, wrapped in the language of stability and realism.
Dutton’s flirtation with Trumpist aesthetics rightly unsettled many Australians. Watching the Prime Minister accept the same figure with a grin and a nod does not feel like a rejection. It feels like a handshake across a fault line. Not explosive, not headline-grabbing, just one more step in a direction that we may later regret.
The ejection of Ed Husic from Cabinet, apparently as part of a grubby factional deal involving Deputy PM Richard Marles (Washington’s man in Australia by all accounts), says a lot about what is really going on. Of course, the ALP rusted-ons say this is just another routine balancing-of-the-factional-books exercise as happens after every election. Nothing to see here. But I find it hard to believe this is not a sign of who is really running things in the ALP - the same old US defence establishment, the arms industry, the fossil fuel giants and the usual rent-seekers. Labor got there with a little over a third of the first preference vote and to a large extent from the preferences of voters of the left who were truly terrified at the thought of a Dutton prime ministership. Now they are going and rubbing progressive voters’ noses in it, and within five minutes of the election, cosying up to Trump again. Once again, who is prosecuting the substantial case against the AUKUS debacle - a wedge that Albo signed up to in a flash and which former prime ministers of both persuasions and independent defence analysts like Paul White represents a selling out of our sovereignty. That both major parties are at one on this is truly sinister.
The Husic matter probably warrants a separate post. The idea that the factions just benignly install the best people from an embarassament of riches--an idea being peddalled on the socials--is just comical. No-one, even those inside the party, think this is how the factions work. And look, even if that was the case, the bland acceptance that these factions can just manipulate the party and the parliament in ways that suit them is disturbing in its own right. The extent to which the power structures of party politics--and ultimately, the two-party system--have been normalised in our politics is simply extraordinary.
Yes, agreed, this deserves a post in its own right because the factional manoeuvres (and the rusted-ons defence of them as nobody else’s business and just how the party works) gets to the nub of the broadening disillusionment with the two-party system. That big tent political parties - like the Democrats in the US or the ALP here - require factions to organise themselves and manage policy formulation is completely understandable. These, after all, are themselves coalitions of disparate interests and goals, albeit under the umbrella of leaning more to equity over efficiency on the ideological pendulum in this case. But the reality is the factions are no longer true to label. They are not groupings of like-minded individuals on the left-right spectrum (centre-left, right, left etc;), but personal fiefdoms run by regional warlords dispensing favours to ambitious apparatchiks irrespective of policy intent or ideological bearing. They operate like the Mafia - hierarchical structures with ‘made men’ (always men) at the top, helped by a consigliere, captains and crew - and each ‘family’ controlling different rackets and regions. People outside the dominant power structures are prone to be ‘whacked’ (what we saw with Husic and Dreyfus) so the Dons (literally in the ALP’s case) can promote their most loyal soldiers, regardless of their competence or sense of public service. This has absolutely nothing to do with democratic will of the people. The dynamics are all for the internal service of party and reflect nothing more than avarice and ambition and power-seeking for its own sake. That the rusted-ons on social media can’t (or won’t see) how this is a travesty of democracy is beyond me. And by the way, this isn’t confined to the ALP. Anyone remember the hoots of laughter when Malcolm Turnbull told a NSW Liberal Party conference that what distinguished Menzies’ creation was an absence of factions. Morrison was every bit as bad as a Victoria ALP Right factional warlord when he was in office. He was the Don of the party’s centre right faction and had a ruthless consigliere in Alex Hawke. Arguable, his over-reach with the factions is what finally did him in. Albo needs to watch his step.
I ask myself what difference does the existence (or otherwise) of ALP factions makes to me, and all the other voters. Did it feature in any way in the election campaign? No. Then why should the jostling and horse trading mean anything now? Sure it might be seen as an internal anchor for stability within the party, but if the party is not prepared to be open and honest with voters, then it needs to be done away with.
Please do. Leigh's piece is still on my to-read list.
Even First Dog on the Moon said it about factions: "Ministers! Even after resoundingly winning power the ALP factions have still fought bitterly over scraps of it and behaved rudely. Here in the ALP we hate each other almost as much as we hate the Greens.
"The press gallery once again tries to figure out what this all means as if it was the first time it ever happened."
Once again you hit the nail on the head, Tim. As Mr Denmore (above) says, it is a sign of who is really running things, defence, the arms industry, etc. What would it take for us to leave AUKUS? Does anyone know? Why doesn't anyone talk about leaving it? If it would cost us the whole contract to exit, shouldn't we know that? Otherwise why are we still in it? Useless waste of money to start with, let alone what it means now that America is owned by fascists - SFA.
It was concocted by Morrison and Johnson - when they were both on the nose politically - and Biden, who probably saw that it was a good deal for the US - if he saw anything in it at all. Albanese the Managerialist was too scared to do anything other tha support it during the 2022 campaign (he'd learned from Kevin Rudd that Me-Tooism was the way to go) and then he appointed Marles Defence Minister, so after that it was never going to be killed. The Department of Defence is such a basket case administratively, it wouldn't have the capacity to cope with a change of direction.
Our previous PM (and his boofhead defence minister) caused a lot of grief for Australian trade with their megaphone diplomacy against one of the great but thin-skinned powers in our region. I don’t fault Albanese for not repeating those mistakes with the other great power, especially now it’s in the grip of a regime and a leader so capricious.
But that’s all just the kiddie pool end of statecraft. AUKUS was a truly expert operation that dove in deep, isolated and played Morrison like a fiddle, and then with Labor’s acquiescence successfully cleaved us to the US for decades to come. One could admire it if the consequences weren’t so appalling.
World history is full of examples of brilliant diplomacy leaving hostages to fortunes that end in disaster, so I accept your point--and the PM's--but we would be foolish to not recognise the risks. I'm not sure our national interest is served in any way by giving even token diplomatic succour--if that's all it is, which I doubt--to a corrupt, authoritarian regime like the Trump Administration.
Goes to the heart of what is crap about the way this country is governed. Elections are just personality contests are they not? Policies are set by the, as Mr Denmore put's it so succinctly: ' a sign of who is really running things in the ALP - the same old US defence establishment, the arms industry, the fossil fuel giants and the usual rent-seekers'. They are mere personality contests. Yanis Varoufakis has said as much and Claude AI seemed to confirm that (but Caude would wouldn't it).
When you write: 'Even if the hapless Democrats do manage over the next term—or even two terms—to wrest back control and set the democratic ship to rights, they are not going to thank us for having given succour to Trump and his cronies' - I really think Australia would have rocks in its collective head if we think things will return to the halycon days <Trump. Is it now not more a chaotic pseudo- Trump V deep state battle being fought out? Why in the blazes would anyone trust the US to be a consistent entity anymore? It's at war with itself in addition to always being at war with someone else like it was in the good old days.
Yes, I was being very optimistic--even ahistorical--suggesting some return to "normal" was possible. The country has been self-interested Republic/Empire for a long time now. What's more, Trumpism has taken hold amongst a significant plurality and it won't be washed out easily. But I thought the point was worth making.
Absolutley the point is worth making - apologies, my comment is not directed at you but Marles & co who are just blindly carrying as though the Trump in the room doesn't exist.
I agree again Tim! I do not know the politicians too well but have been cross with the deputy who displays a stubbornness towards his direction that is questioned and has now removed those who as cabinet tried hard in their fields to further peace rather than defend Trump .Marles could go and Labor work out what Greens have been saying .for a while shame. ☹️
I agree with you Tim. It was bad enough that Australian Prime Ministers, even Labor ones, had to pretend to like whoever the US President was. But you could argue, they were doing what they had to do. But now? Trump is a fascist and boasts about it. Where is the sense in sucking up to him?
People have this really weird idea about how "diplomacy" works and the idea that it is smart politics to extend public warmth to a leader like Trump is just a nonsense. It speaks to a failure of the foreign and defence "community" to really allow themselves to come to terms with how the place has changed. That is the opposite of real politicks.
Albanese could dial back on the warmth with Trump just a few notches, let Aussies know what he really thinks - at least a little. He can still be civil, but cool. None of this 'all the way' attitude we've seen in our pollies since the 60s.
It is sickening. At every turn of Albanese I feel as if yet again duped - because Dutton would have been worse...a Minority ALP win with an expanded Independents - that would have been far more preferable. Thanks for this uncovering!
It's not entirely Albanese's fault. Australian public attitudes to the US are complex, to put it politely. On the one hand, views of Donald Trump are overwhelmingly negative, a fact that contributed to the scale of the LNP defeat. On the other hand, there has been little challenge to the general belief that our alliance with the US is both necessary and beneficial.
During Trump’s first term in office, these apparently contradictory views could be reconciled. Trump’s election was seen as an aberration. When he was defeated, Biden claimed "America is back"
That America is gone for good, but neither the political class nor the public in general has managed to process this fact so far.
I'll have a longer piece soon, arguing that we need to throw in our lot with ASEAN
I agree with you John, but when you say "...there has been little challenge to the general belief that our alliance with the US is both necessary and beneficial..." I would say, well when was there a chance to challenge this general belief? Has AUKUS even been debated in the Australian Parliament? So far as I can tell, it hasn't been. We can't call ourselves a democracy when the governing parties agree to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and tie us up to a foreign government for decades to come without a public debate.
This is what happens when the majors (I use the term loosely) converge on policy. Until Keating kicked up a fuss, the matter had very little public discussion. This is how "consent" is manufactured.
Look forward to the piece.
One of the articles I linked cited polling that suggests we still have a basically positive view of the US, as opposed to Trump, and I guess that is true: though I wonder how that tallies with more recent data of people avoiding travelling there? And what happens when an Australian citizen gets caught up in one of ICE's or Border controls Gestapo-adjacent gaolings or deportations to a third country? Maybe it takes something like that to cause people to change their views?
“Warmth” was doing a lot of work in that press conference. Not courtesy. Not caution. Just a kind of affable ease, like two old colleagues catching up over trade tariffs and submarines. It was jarring. Not because a Prime Minister took a call from the US President, which is expected, but because of the complete lack of friction in the moment. As if none of it meant anything.
The public’s disgust with Trumpism was a key undercurrent of the election. Dutton’s campaign stumbled in part because people recognised the shape of that politics, even in local costume. The cruelty, the conspiracism, the smug authoritarian lean did not play here. Yet within days, the newly emboldened Government is publicly embracing the same figure it had quietly warned us about by proxy. There was no hesitation. No awkwardness. Just smiles and vague references to ongoing engagement.
I see what John is saying with his comment, but if not now, when will Albo ever have the spine to do the right thing? Some will call this diplomacy. Maybe that is all it is. Still, there is a slow accretion of meaning in these gestures. They legitimise. They normalise. The warmth isn’t incidental. It smooths the way for deeper entanglement with a country that is growing more hostile to its own democratic foundations. Through AUKUS, we are locking ourselves into that trajectory, without much of a fight.
Labor positioned itself as the adult alternative to a radicalised right. What we are seeing now is the price of that strategy. Not resistance. Not even discomfort. Just continuity, wrapped in the language of stability and realism.
Dutton’s flirtation with Trumpist aesthetics rightly unsettled many Australians. Watching the Prime Minister accept the same figure with a grin and a nod does not feel like a rejection. It feels like a handshake across a fault line. Not explosive, not headline-grabbing, just one more step in a direction that we may later regret.
The ejection of Ed Husic from Cabinet, apparently as part of a grubby factional deal involving Deputy PM Richard Marles (Washington’s man in Australia by all accounts), says a lot about what is really going on. Of course, the ALP rusted-ons say this is just another routine balancing-of-the-factional-books exercise as happens after every election. Nothing to see here. But I find it hard to believe this is not a sign of who is really running things in the ALP - the same old US defence establishment, the arms industry, the fossil fuel giants and the usual rent-seekers. Labor got there with a little over a third of the first preference vote and to a large extent from the preferences of voters of the left who were truly terrified at the thought of a Dutton prime ministership. Now they are going and rubbing progressive voters’ noses in it, and within five minutes of the election, cosying up to Trump again. Once again, who is prosecuting the substantial case against the AUKUS debacle - a wedge that Albo signed up to in a flash and which former prime ministers of both persuasions and independent defence analysts like Paul White represents a selling out of our sovereignty. That both major parties are at one on this is truly sinister.
HUGH White sorry
The Husic matter probably warrants a separate post. The idea that the factions just benignly install the best people from an embarassament of riches--an idea being peddalled on the socials--is just comical. No-one, even those inside the party, think this is how the factions work. And look, even if that was the case, the bland acceptance that these factions can just manipulate the party and the parliament in ways that suit them is disturbing in its own right. The extent to which the power structures of party politics--and ultimately, the two-party system--have been normalised in our politics is simply extraordinary.
Yes, agreed, this deserves a post in its own right because the factional manoeuvres (and the rusted-ons defence of them as nobody else’s business and just how the party works) gets to the nub of the broadening disillusionment with the two-party system. That big tent political parties - like the Democrats in the US or the ALP here - require factions to organise themselves and manage policy formulation is completely understandable. These, after all, are themselves coalitions of disparate interests and goals, albeit under the umbrella of leaning more to equity over efficiency on the ideological pendulum in this case. But the reality is the factions are no longer true to label. They are not groupings of like-minded individuals on the left-right spectrum (centre-left, right, left etc;), but personal fiefdoms run by regional warlords dispensing favours to ambitious apparatchiks irrespective of policy intent or ideological bearing. They operate like the Mafia - hierarchical structures with ‘made men’ (always men) at the top, helped by a consigliere, captains and crew - and each ‘family’ controlling different rackets and regions. People outside the dominant power structures are prone to be ‘whacked’ (what we saw with Husic and Dreyfus) so the Dons (literally in the ALP’s case) can promote their most loyal soldiers, regardless of their competence or sense of public service. This has absolutely nothing to do with democratic will of the people. The dynamics are all for the internal service of party and reflect nothing more than avarice and ambition and power-seeking for its own sake. That the rusted-ons on social media can’t (or won’t see) how this is a travesty of democracy is beyond me. And by the way, this isn’t confined to the ALP. Anyone remember the hoots of laughter when Malcolm Turnbull told a NSW Liberal Party conference that what distinguished Menzies’ creation was an absence of factions. Morrison was every bit as bad as a Victoria ALP Right factional warlord when he was in office. He was the Don of the party’s centre right faction and had a ruthless consigliere in Alex Hawke. Arguable, his over-reach with the factions is what finally did him in. Albo needs to watch his step.
It blows my mind that some supporters either don't know or don't want to know this. Most are fine with it, which is another matter.
I ask myself what difference does the existence (or otherwise) of ALP factions makes to me, and all the other voters. Did it feature in any way in the election campaign? No. Then why should the jostling and horse trading mean anything now? Sure it might be seen as an internal anchor for stability within the party, but if the party is not prepared to be open and honest with voters, then it needs to be done away with.
It's really worth rereading that Andrew Leigh piece I mentioned in an earlier post. I might have to write something more detailed on it. https://www.fabians.org.au/a_more_competitive_labor_party
Please do. Leigh's piece is still on my to-read list.
Even First Dog on the Moon said it about factions: "Ministers! Even after resoundingly winning power the ALP factions have still fought bitterly over scraps of it and behaved rudely. Here in the ALP we hate each other almost as much as we hate the Greens.
"The press gallery once again tries to figure out what this all means as if it was the first time it ever happened."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/may/12/ministries-even-after-winning-power-the-alp-factions-are-still-fighting-bitterly-and-behaving-rudely
Once again you hit the nail on the head, Tim. As Mr Denmore (above) says, it is a sign of who is really running things, defence, the arms industry, etc. What would it take for us to leave AUKUS? Does anyone know? Why doesn't anyone talk about leaving it? If it would cost us the whole contract to exit, shouldn't we know that? Otherwise why are we still in it? Useless waste of money to start with, let alone what it means now that America is owned by fascists - SFA.
They really have no interest in leaving it as far as I can see. They are all in.
It was concocted by Morrison and Johnson - when they were both on the nose politically - and Biden, who probably saw that it was a good deal for the US - if he saw anything in it at all. Albanese the Managerialist was too scared to do anything other tha support it during the 2022 campaign (he'd learned from Kevin Rudd that Me-Tooism was the way to go) and then he appointed Marles Defence Minister, so after that it was never going to be killed. The Department of Defence is such a basket case administratively, it wouldn't have the capacity to cope with a change of direction.
What Marles wants, Marles gets, it seems.
Our previous PM (and his boofhead defence minister) caused a lot of grief for Australian trade with their megaphone diplomacy against one of the great but thin-skinned powers in our region. I don’t fault Albanese for not repeating those mistakes with the other great power, especially now it’s in the grip of a regime and a leader so capricious.
But that’s all just the kiddie pool end of statecraft. AUKUS was a truly expert operation that dove in deep, isolated and played Morrison like a fiddle, and then with Labor’s acquiescence successfully cleaved us to the US for decades to come. One could admire it if the consequences weren’t so appalling.
World history is full of examples of brilliant diplomacy leaving hostages to fortunes that end in disaster, so I accept your point--and the PM's--but we would be foolish to not recognise the risks. I'm not sure our national interest is served in any way by giving even token diplomatic succour--if that's all it is, which I doubt--to a corrupt, authoritarian regime like the Trump Administration.
Excellent, pithy piece TD.
Goes to the heart of what is crap about the way this country is governed. Elections are just personality contests are they not? Policies are set by the, as Mr Denmore put's it so succinctly: ' a sign of who is really running things in the ALP - the same old US defence establishment, the arms industry, the fossil fuel giants and the usual rent-seekers'. They are mere personality contests. Yanis Varoufakis has said as much and Claude AI seemed to confirm that (but Caude would wouldn't it).
When you write: 'Even if the hapless Democrats do manage over the next term—or even two terms—to wrest back control and set the democratic ship to rights, they are not going to thank us for having given succour to Trump and his cronies' - I really think Australia would have rocks in its collective head if we think things will return to the halycon days <Trump. Is it now not more a chaotic pseudo- Trump V deep state battle being fought out? Why in the blazes would anyone trust the US to be a consistent entity anymore? It's at war with itself in addition to always being at war with someone else like it was in the good old days.
Yes, I was being very optimistic--even ahistorical--suggesting some return to "normal" was possible. The country has been self-interested Republic/Empire for a long time now. What's more, Trumpism has taken hold amongst a significant plurality and it won't be washed out easily. But I thought the point was worth making.
Absolutley the point is worth making - apologies, my comment is not directed at you but Marles & co who are just blindly carrying as though the Trump in the room doesn't exist.
No problem at all. I realised
I agree again Tim! I do not know the politicians too well but have been cross with the deputy who displays a stubbornness towards his direction that is questioned and has now removed those who as cabinet tried hard in their fields to further peace rather than defend Trump .Marles could go and Labor work out what Greens have been saying .for a while shame. ☹️
Marles will get a lot more attention this term and rightly so.
Let's hope so. He deserves it!
I agree with you Tim. It was bad enough that Australian Prime Ministers, even Labor ones, had to pretend to like whoever the US President was. But you could argue, they were doing what they had to do. But now? Trump is a fascist and boasts about it. Where is the sense in sucking up to him?
People have this really weird idea about how "diplomacy" works and the idea that it is smart politics to extend public warmth to a leader like Trump is just a nonsense. It speaks to a failure of the foreign and defence "community" to really allow themselves to come to terms with how the place has changed. That is the opposite of real politicks.
Albanese could dial back on the warmth with Trump just a few notches, let Aussies know what he really thinks - at least a little. He can still be civil, but cool. None of this 'all the way' attitude we've seen in our pollies since the 60s.