On a local note, well done to Leanne Castley and the local Canberra Liberals, Fiona Carrick, and Shane Rattenbury and his local Greens for forcing our minority Labor government to withdraw their ridiculous $11 impost on volunteers in the ACT.
We need more cooperation like this between the Opposition and the crossbench, and if it’s forthcoming on other matters, this Assembly will be better than the last.
Well, Donald Trump has now been President for a little over six months, and after an initial hiccup over Ukraine, he now seems to realise that his mate Putin is a very nasty dictator who has been playing him for a fool. Trump’s strong support for Israel and his precise, clinical bombing of Iran’s nuclear program have signalled to the world that the US is far from finished, and it remains the world’s foremost military and economic power and is prepared to use its strength when necessary.
I’m still very sceptical about Trump’s tariffs, which may cause everyone a lot of grief. But if he’s mainly using them as leverage to pressure otherwise very average Western leaders — like the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer and French President Macron — into spending more on defence, then that’s a good thing.
To his credit, Sir Keir appears to have boosted defence spending and is on track to meet the 3.5% target set by the US. That said, Trump will need to keep a tight leash on both of them, as I’m sure Sir Keir’s government in particular would much rather spend billions of pounds on unproductive welfare programs or excessive benefits for illegal boat arrivals than on the much-needed equipment and improvements for the UK’s very weak defence force.
Albo, of course, is a fellow Labor man like Sir Keir and shares the same built-in aversion to spending what’s needed on defence — they prefer butter before guns.
If anything, he’s worse than his Pommie mate, who seems to have more or less accepted Trump’s push for Western Europeans to stop bludging off the US and take more responsibility for their own defence.
For Australia’s own good, Trump and his administration need to really pressure our government to immediately dramatically increase our defence expenditure to 3.5% of GDP.
I’ve been going on about this for the last three years of writing this column — and for good reason. Human nature dictates that there will always be nasty dictators with some idiotic desire to rule the world, or at least expand their country’s power at the expense of others.
If Australians value our freedom, we need to step up to the plate. For the first time ever, we can no longer feel safe as a country tucked away at the far end of the world. An aggressive China has shown in recent years just how vulnerable we really are. We must be able to deter them — or any other aggressor — and give them a very bloody nose if they try anything.
Trump and the US are doing us a favour by pushing us to do more for ourselves, especially if we can’t rely on the US as we’ve done since 1942. So Donald, keep up the pressure on Albo — it’s not only in the interests of the US, but of Australia too.
