What happens when people no longer trust a Government that abandons whistleblowers, surrenders its citizens to a foreign power and hides behind ever-increasing secrecy, Michael Pascoe asks.
I no longer trust Australia’s Government.
That statement will seem trite to some, perhaps to many, naïve to more. It is not to me. The sense of betrayal is visceral. Wrestling with the words at this keyboard, the realisation hurts. It would not be hard to cry.
This is not a matter of party politics. Yes, one mob is worse than the other – you chose which one. It is the culmination of decades of bipartisan failure eating away at faith and then, the way such things do, a sudden collapse.
“There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen” wrote Lenin, someone with experience in the matter. It’s the decades-in-weeks thing happening now.
I like to think I’ve maintained a healthy sense of optimistic scepticism over more than half a century of journalism. I am not given to conspiracy theories, possess no tinfoil hats and will happily offer my upper arm for vaccinations. I’m not a political idealist – the elector’s responsibility is only to select the least worst option. I’m even pragmatic about what our spooks get up to. (Of course we bug our neighbours, doesn’t everyone?)
Years of incrementalism and wedge politics enabled the slide of trust, the bipartisan abrogation of sovereignty greased it, set it up for the plunge amidst our flailing reaction to the Trump circus with a single trigger, the proverbial straw.
Daniel Duggan
The realisation that our Attorney-General wants to surrender an Australian citizen to a dysfunctional foreign power, hand him over to a now overtly politicised and manipulated justice system for something the Australian might have done way back in 2011 that wasn’t illegal at the time anyway, certainly not in Australia.
The case of Daniel Duggan is not of itself enough to lose faith, as murky as it is, but it comes on top of Australian government abandoning whistle blowers, becoming steadily more secretive, paying lip service to greater transparency, watering down the promise of integrity oversight.
From “prize recruit” to prisoner: Dan Duggan’s ASIO links exposed as US extradition looms
And now the pettiness of domestic wedge politics is defining the nation’s stance in the face of the greatest challenge to “western values” since 1939. The old order changeth and we prioritise preserving loose change in the cracks and shadows of imperial whim.
Donald Trump
In brief, Albanese dare not antagonise the Trump mobsters lest he be blamed for any tariff lashing while Dutton can sound a little tougher, befitting his own “strong man” image, enjoying the lack of accountability in opposition for any fallout even while echoing Trump. It comes down to the wedge.
Duggan, also in brief, after a secretive legal hearing for reasons the Attorney General will not disclose, is up for rendering unto the Imperial capital over training Chinese pilots in South Africa 14 years ago, back when we were all friends with China. There might be more to it, there might not be, we’re not allowed to know. Duggan is appealing the AG’s decision. Good luck with that.
When our foreign policy has been largely outsourced to a febrile power that votes with Russia against the west and nearly everybody else in the UN and when our defence forces have been surrendered to that power’s strategic desires, what are a single Australian citizen’s chances against the will of the empire?
And can I trust whatever the government might tell me about that citizen’s chances?
I can’t anymore.
Independence surrendered
It hasn’t always been thus. There was a time when Australia conducted itself as an independent nation.
When the US invaded Grenada in 1983 to change a Marxist government, Australia voted with the majority in the UN to condemn the move.
In 1985 when the US wanted to use Australia as a base for planes monitoring MX missile testing in the Tasman Sea, caucus and Labor more broadly revolted, forcing Prime Minister Hawke and his pro-American defence minister, “Bomber” Beazley, to backflip, withdrawing the permission they had granted. The Reagan administration diplomatically withdrew its request.
But in 1989, when the US invaded Panama – has everyone forgotten that – and the death of a thousand or so Panamanians followed? We went along with it, one of the 19 nations to support the US in the UN against the majority.
If you are the exceptional United States of America, invading another country is fine with us. Heck, we’ll help. Cue Iraq.
Hardman Netanyahu a century out of date, feeding Dutton’s colonial narrative.
In service to the US empire
It’s been all downhill from there. Julia Gillard inviting a permanent US Marines base on our soil, only we’ll call it “rotation” as a nicety. Throw in a base for B52s in the Northern Territory and another for nuclear-powered and armed warships in WA, we are glad to be of service.
All the while, there’s been the American eavesdropping facility at Pine Gap and the US submarine communications link at Exmouth, neither of which we are allowed to reject.
The summary is to weaken Australia’s actual defence,
to make this land of ours, our country, a target that it otherwise would not be.
Instead of, say, investing half a trillion dollars in developing our own protective drone technology, our biggest defence spend is on submarines – and dubious submarines at that – designed to serve as part of an imperial force far from our shores.
This is bipartisan policy. In what way can I trust Australian government?
Albanese, the small target man, was wedged into swallowing AUKUS by Morrison and remains wedged by Dutton.
Election looming
In the shadows of an official election campaign, the worthwhile improvements managed by Labor since May 2022 are overshadowed by Dutton’s impressionism politics – the “strong” man versus the “weak”.
Labor has clearly superior offerings in two supposedly key policy areas – housing and climate – but they are overshadowed by posturing, by impressionism, by regurgitating the complaints of focus groups.
We’re down to announcing a few billion here for road improvements, a few million there for GP clinics, matching each other on GP payments, and Dutton “back on track” for Morrison-style grants corruption.
Neither side dares promise genuine leadership, dares stray more than incrementally from the status quo. If there’s an integrity issue left on the table, it is not before Labor or the LNP. It will be before the cross bench in the event of a minority government.
The obvious suspects will side with the parties they always side with, leaving the community independents to decide whether they will stand by the principles of the key issues they have campaigned on or fall for the siren call of staying in parliament beyond the next three years.
I’ve lost faith in Australian government.
Safety grants. Dutton promising Morrison-era electoral bribery
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.