Australian Politics

The stumping of Jonny Bairstow reminded me of reaction chains. Bairstow, in case you didn’t waste winter nights watching the Ashes, was the English batsman controversially stumped by Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey during the second Test at Lord’s. Pandemonium ensued, with the poohbahs of the Marylebone Cricket Club berating the Australian team during the lunch break as they filed through the holiest of holies, the Long Room. The brouhaha led news bulletins around the cricketing world; even the prime ministers of Australia and the Old Enemy weighed in.

Pressure is mounting on the Albanese government to recognise Palestine as a state. Following a resolution moved by Penny Wong, this became ALP party policy in 2021, and it will almost certainly be reaffirmed at this year’s party conference in August. Former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans has written a powerful defence of the policy, which has been assailed, predictably, by the Israel lobby.

In 22 May 2023, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Papua New Guinea (PNG) Defence Minister Win Bakri Daki signed a defence and maritime cooperation agreement in Port Moresby. Blinken stepped in after US President Joe Biden’s last-minute cancellation. Had he attended, it would reportedly have been the first time a US president had visited a Pacific Island country other than US territories such as Hawaii and Guam. This is on the back of having pledged an additional US$800 million at a US-Pacific Summit in late 2022 to help tackle climate change, overfishing, and maritime security.

On 27 May 1967, a proposal to change two clauses of the Australian Constitution won the approval of 90.77 per cent of those who voted, the highest ever achieved in an Australian referendum. In the forthcoming referendum, according to various opinion polls, the best the advocates for a ‘yes’ vote can hope to achieve is a bare majority. How can this difference be explained? Several factors appear to be at work. They range from the simple, which are acknowledged, to the complex, which don’t seem to be known. 

In 2008, at the Australian zenith of the American custom of rating the first hundred days in power, Kevin Rudd issued a fifty-five-page booklet to mark his new government’s quotidian ton. Inevitably, it proved nothing much at all. Critics said it was both premature and simply validated the critique that Labor under Rudd had ‘hit the ground reviewing’. The Sydney Morning Herald worked out that Rudd had initiated an inquiry every four days, which sounded bad. But after eleven years of John Howard’s government, many things required attention. As Rudd countered, Howard had initiated ‘495 inquiries and reviews in 2005–06 alone’.