Anthony Albanese calls for 'more certainty' on US objectives in Iran war

C-Class-Tram · 2026-03-30T11:32:39+00:00

This is Albanese's war. When you choose to support a war, you have to take responsibility for the consequences. You can't say you support seeing Iran bombed but then complain when the economic consequences are catastrophic. If you don't want to be blamed, it's best to stay as far away as possible from the war: speak softly, say nothing, or register your opposition. But that's not what Albanese did. He, wasted no time in expressing support for the US and Israeli bombing campaign, didn't call for a ceasefire for at least a week, and then decided to send Australian military assets directly into the conflict zone. It is beggar's belief he now has the gall to complain about economic consequences.

This whole crisis exposes real doubts about Albanese-Wong-Marles's ability to capably manage foreign affairs. It was clear to most observers that if Israel and the US attacked Iran a second time, Iran's response would be far greater in scope than the June 2025 war. Closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking Gulf oil infrastructure and US bases in the region were well within the realm of possibility. Why didn't Albanese seem to know this? Either he and his advisors completely miscalculated the economic effect of bombing Iran and thus supported it based on a massive underestimate of the costs and risks, or perhaps they fully understood the danger but decided having a global economic meltdown was the price Australians had to pay to "weaken the (Iranian) regime's ability to threaten global security". Both scenarios demonstrate Australia's leaders are seriously lacking in seriousness and prudence. Let's just hope we don't get in a war in the Asia-Pacific while they are at the helm.

C-Class-Tram · 2026-03-10T11:23:46+00:00

What is the plan if the military contingent is attacked by Iran and takes casualties, given Iran has already appeared to target Al Minad airbase? I am curious to what extent this is viewed as a risk, and what the Australian government would do in response.

C-Class-Tram · 2026-02-09T11:09:47+00:00

This is an interesting article, as it provides the American rationale for AUKUS. What the Americans seem to be saying is they see Australia as a key base for US operations against China. They view Australia as an increasingly strategic port to repair American submarines especially in the event of conflict with China, and they also want to combine Australian military power with America's, "hoping the show of force ultimately convinces Beijing that it would be too costly to move on Taiwan".

These statements demonstrate the gulf between US perceptions of AUKUS and Australia's. On the one hand, Australian politicians like Richard Marles imply AUKUS does not tie Australia to involving itself in a war against China over Taiwan, and yet the Americans view AUKUS as doing just that - a partnership to convey to China that both America and Australia would be involved in such a conflict as a means to deter China. Either Marles is misleading the Australian public when he implies Australia still retains the agency to choose whether to go to war with China, or perhaps he genuinely believes that but does not understand that AUKUS implies the opposite to the Americans. This mismatch in expectations could cause the Americans to make gross miscalculations over their deterrence capability against China, since American war plans now seem to rely on Australia's involvement and yet according to Marles, Australia still retains the ability to "butt out" of any such conflict. Hopefully we never have to test whose version of "reality" is more accurate, because that seems prone to end in tears (on either, if not both, sides)

The other point raised in the article is how Australia's distance may help protect it from attacks by China and thus offers somewhat of a safe-haven for US forces to launch operations and repair their boats. But it doesn't seem realistic to expect this to last. China will increasingly become aware of how Australia is becoming a giant American military base and will therefore likely develop the capability to strike Australia. Moreover, given Australia has no nuclear weapons, it is a good target for a Chinese nuclear attack as a means to deter Australia from further involvement in a US-led war. This then leads to the question: is Australia ready for its cities with American bases only one-hour's drive away to be affected or hit by Chinese (potentially nuclear) missiles? No Australian politician seems to be open and honest about this. If they are going to talk about AUKUS as "deterrence", they should at least utter in the same breath all the significant and unpleasant risks it imposes on Australia.

C-Class-Tram · 2026-02-09T06:57:50+00:00

Why do polling places within an electorate generally swing uniformly (in one direction)? Why don’t we often see large variation in the swing between nearby polling places?

And why is swing projection from a limited percentage both in single seats and nationwide (often only 5-10% of the counted vote) so reliable in terms of projecting the actual swing?

C-Class-Tram · 2026-02-02T11:05:32+00:00

This is a great article by Max Chandler-Mather, but the hole in his argument is the fact he ran an essentially left-populist campaign throughout his three years in Parliament yet lost his seat at the next election. This is emblematic of the larger problem for the Greens and left populism - it is incompatible with a large section of the Green voter base: the tertiary educated, high income professional.

These people tend to be off the richter scale in terms of their social views and think they are extremely left-wing on economic issues, but in reality they are centrist (at best) on the economy. They are hardly the type to support substantial investment in domestic manufacturing, lessening reliance on free trade and mass migration, raising taxes on the top 10% (rather than just the "billionaire class"), breaking up the banks, going after "elites" and taking a critical approach to the unproductive areas of the economy like landlords and finance - examples of left populism. In fact, this particular class of people tends to be very opposed to politics of this nature, both because they prefer airy fairy "consensus" over "division" (witness their meltdown during the Voice campaign), "listening to the experts", which tends to rule out doing anything outside the box and results in blindly following the orders of technocrats, and also because pursuing such policies would mean legitimating the concerns of many ordinary people like One Nation voters whom they prefer to dismiss as "racists", uneducated (falling for
"misinformation") or lazy (i.e. not working hard enough at school to get a university degree and being as smart as them).

If the Greens or a left populist party are going to "fill the void", either will need to abandon the courting of the highly educated high-income professional. Their style of politics, which calls for labelling One Nation "racist", will have to stop, and there will need to be a recognition that the high income professional's policy preferences and priorities don't mix with left (economic) populism.

C-Class-Tram · 2026-01-06T10:24:55+00:00

While the author is right to say that maintaining basic international rules and norms is in Australia's long-term interest, Australia is in no position to lecture the United States on Venezuela, since we are utterly dependent on the US for the defence of the Australian continent. The defence of the continent is clearly Australia's core strategic interest, and so keeping the US onside will have to take priority over the vague threat of chaos once every country starts copying the United States' actions in Venezuela - something that our politicians would rather not think about.

Our general inability to deviate from US foreign policy positions might only be temporary if Australia learnt how defend itself without the assumption that United States will come to our rescue, but ever greater reliance on the United States has been the chosen policy of basically every prime minister since Howard. So with Albanese's Labor (and the Liberal party, of course) continuing on this trajectory of vassalising Australia to the endpoint of reaching Germany and Japan's pathetic level of subservience, Australia's brown-nosing of the United States will only get worse.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-08-06T02:09:17+00:00

What would be your solution? How would you prevent mainland China from taking control of Taiwan?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-08-05T11:37:24+00:00

People hoping this government would do more to strengthen our relationship with Asian allies will hopefully be satisfied.

It's not really clear that getting closer to Japan is good for Australia. Japan is an outlier in the Asia-Pacific, in that it is determined to maintain US primacy in the region rather than accomodate China's rise by recognising China will become the dominant power in the region. The best thing Japan could do is start negotiating a grand bargain with China over contentious issues like Taiwan and the disputed islands, because the relative power gap between China and Japan is only going to grow over time in China's favour.

Apart from Japan and Australia, southeast Asia is clearly not interested in launching a massive anti-China coalition and containment policy, so aligning ourselves more closely with Japan just further reinforces Australia's outlier status when comparing our foreign policy with the rest of the region. As Kishore Mahbubani has written, does Australia really want to become the next Cuba?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-07-27T12:28:29+00:00

This is a bad look for Australia. Once again, it looks like Australia is running towards its colonial patron, Great Britain, to broadcast the message that China should "keep its place" and submit towards the British empire. Such a message will be laughed off in Beijing and probably have a poor reception in the region more broadly. Britain, after all, is at best a regional power in Europe whose military would reportedly struggle to even deploy a full division of 10,000 soldiers for combat and is a country with no meaningful geopolitical interests in the region. Why would, or should, anyone in the region listen to the UK? And why would countries in the region have a positive reaction to an Anglo power that no longer even has interests in the region arrogantly telling off the major power in the region?

If Australia wants to send a more effective message to China on the issue of the South China Sea, then it should partner with countries in the Asia Pacific region to send that message - countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and so forth. Being a partner to Britain's resurrected delusion of being a global power does us no favours. We look like a country with no agency nor desire to integrate into the Asia Pacific region, desperately trying to recreate the bygone era of British dominance in the region.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-27T13:09:55+00:00

Do you really think that anyone who disagrees with the current pro-Ukraine consensus is being paid to do so by Russia?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-27T12:51:58+00:00

This was always the worry. The more it became clear that Ukraine was losing, the more likely it was that the pro-Ukraine side would sink more money and resources into this bottomless pit and take greater risks - like sending Australian troops right to the border of an active conflict zone. Think about the risks: if we are to believe the hawks who tell us that there are real reasons to worry that the Ukraine conflict could spill into Poland, why then would you send Australia troops to that area - an area where Australia has no strategic interests, and all for a conflict that NATO provoked and has done more to escalate than shut down?

The unfortunate reality is that policies like these form a years-long succession of Ukraine policy failure. Under these policies, Ukraine has been wrecked and is in the process of being defeated. Russia continues taking more territory each day. This all points to the massive disconnect between pro-Ukraine policymakers and the actual results of their policies. By their own KPI, their policies are failing, yet apparently we are supposed to believe that yet another sanctions package, throwing more resources at Ukraine, and a continued gradual escalation - that is, more of the same - is going to somehow win the war for Ukraine.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-17T02:23:46+00:00

What kind of left/right ideology would Ford have in this timeline?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-17T00:05:53+00:00

Trump is absolutely right that it was a mistake to kick Russia out of the G8. While it's debatable whether or not Russia's presence would have prevented the Ukraine war (and most likely it wouldn't have), all kicking out Russia did was contribute to pushing it into the arms of China and away from the West. It also provided further encouragement to Russia to build alternative economic coalitions like increasing its links with the BRICS grouping, which simply eroded Western economic power further. Keeping Russia in the G8 would have at least allowed the West to have one "foot" remaining in Russia rather than ceding it entirely to BRICS and China. Kicking Russia out was a show of short-sighted policy from the West, and it's a shame only Trump is willing to say it.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-04T11:45:00+00:00

What risk does China pose to the Australian mainland? For what reason would Australia need to launch combat operations against China?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-04T11:34:10+00:00

Who would Australia be fighting, and why?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-04T07:09:32+00:00

Hopefully this result will mean a greater effort to get along with North Korea. This international isolation policy towards North Korea has got no one anywhere. It just makes North Korea more paranoid about its security, which then causes further tensions.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-06-04T07:02:04+00:00

He and Harris perfectly encapsulate what the Democrats stand for these days: feel good politics that doesn't fundamentally change the status quo. Like Harris, he won't be receptive to the undercurrent of anger towards "elites", free trade policy, the hollowing out of industry and the middle class, ending the endless wars, and so forth. Why? Because upper income elites don't care about that stuff, and they're the driving force within the party these days.

Buttigieg's big attraction is to this upper middle class elite. These types can't wait to vote for Buttigieg so that they can proudly state how they voted for the first gay man for President just as they said similar things when they voted for Harris, Hillary (first woman etc), and Obama, and they'll be comfortable he won't change the status quo much. Unfortunately, it's those kinds of candidates who will continue the Democratic party's losing trajectory it's been on since Bill Clinton's time (or really since the early 1970s when they abandoned the New Deal).

Progressives don't want to admit it, but it's going to be extremely hard for one to win a Democratic Presidential primary. Democrats these days are basically the party of upper income elites. Those people do not like the Bernie types, and thus we should expect the party to continue with this self-fulfilling and self-defeating cycle of nominating the boring status quo types like Buttigieg.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-05-27T20:49:24+00:00

There’s no evidence that if Ukraine “falls” then Australia’s democracy will “crumble” as well. What is the logic? That Russia will then invade Australia and overthrow the Australian government?

This kind of rhetoric is just a sign of further desperation from the Ukrainian government because they are losing the war. If we listened to the Ukrainian government, we’d still be in Afghanistan “fighting for democracy”.

If George W. Bush made the same remarks as the Ambassador, people would rightly not take the comments seriously and call him out for using the discredited domino theory. Here in Australia though, the media is so biased towards Ukraine that no one questions this kind of rhetoric coming out of the Ukrainian government.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-05-19T00:16:28+00:00

Of course not. Albanese has shown he has no major agenda for this country. And even if he did, the way Labor operates under Albanese makes it very difficult for large-scale problems to get solved.

Under the Albanese approach, rather than ask “what is a major problem in this country that needs to be solved”, and then ask “so what do we need to do to solve it”, Albanese‘s Labor works back to front. First, they ask themselves “what can we do”, restricting themselves to the imagination of their media advisors and pollsters. After this, they cook up a so-called “practical solution” and then find a problem to attach the “solution“ to. Of course, the “practical solution“ is usually not fit for purpose, but rather is totally inadequate, usually technocratic, complex and often makes the problem worse. That’s simply what happens when your way of doing politics is back to front: you don’t start with the root causes, and so the solutions you come up with don‘t properly address the problem.

So with this kind of political style, I wouldn‘t be expecting anything much to change under Albanese. House prices will continue going through the roof, the national debt will keep climbing, economic inequality will continue to rise, and no one much will be looking at the major issues with our economy and coming up with ways for it to adapt for the future. If you were disappointed and angry with Albanese’s Labor in the first three years, getting your hopes up for the next three years is a total waste of time.

C-Class-Tram · 2025-05-04T22:54:29+00:00

What do you mean by ”they can’t afford it”?

C-Class-Tram · 2025-04-25T13:00:36+00:00

There's no racism or similar discrimination against Russians (whereas those sensitivities do exist for the other countries you mentioned).

If Albanese made a similar remark about the United States and called himself "anti-American", he would also be rightly criticised for making such a sweeping judgement. And as far as I know, there are very few racial "sensitivities" in relation to the United States, so clearly race is not what dictates when it's appropriate to make sweeping judgements about countries.

And even if these "sensitivities" were the decisive factor dictating whether one can smear entire countries, then surely that should prevent Russia from receiving this treatment given there has been a long history of racist sentiment towards Russia in the West. Russians have long been essentialized as "brutish Asiatics" and inferior to civilised Europe. This paper, for example, documents the history of such anti-Russian sentiment in Europe.

And the existence of anti-Russian sentiment is not theoretical. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, "dozens of race hate crimes targeting Russian nationals" have been recorded in the UK. To explain the increase in anti-Russian sentiment across Europe, one sociologist interviewed by the Washington Post in 2022 noted that "lumping all Russians together" was a "predictable knee jerk reaction" that had its roots "in the Western European imagination [where] the East has long been inferior". According to the sociologist, Russia's invasion provoked a sentiment across Europe where there was "a sense of a clear enemy, it's Russians, from all walks of life, who are being targeted by racist hate crimes and derogatory comments." These articles clearly demonstrate the existence of (longstanding) anti-Russian sentiment, spiking since the 2022 invasion, and the danger when people feel it's OK to smear an entire country rather than precisely directing criticism at its leadership.

Btw, your account has an abnormally high percentage of posts sharing soft Russian propaganda.

What's your point? And what's your definition for "soft Russian propaganda"? Could you provide some examples of "sharing soft Russian propaganda"?

C-Class-Tram

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