PERMANENT FRIENDS, PERMANENT ENEMIES?

I remember a lecturer at university saying, “There are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” I remember a cartoon from The Bulletin that depicted Australia as a small boy hiding behind a white picket gate and Queen Victoria walking arm-in-arm with the Meiji Emperor of Japan and the former saying, “Now, my good little son, I’ve just got married again. Here is your new father. You must be very fond of him.” In 1921, with the Versailles Peace Conference done and dusted, and Japan the beneficiary of German liquidated colonies north of the Equator in the Pacific and Australia the former German New Guinea (Queensland annexed the southern half of New Guinea in 1882, and Britain reluctantly agreed to annexe it the following year), Britain decided not to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, in part under pressure from its colonies.

With the prospect of the USA re-electing trump, Australia needs to reconsider its alliance with the USA, and perhaps the UK, not because of submarines that won’t be delivered for decades, but the incompatibility of a seemingly liberal democracy with a totalitarian state. Groups such as the Australian Liberty Alliance are a misnomer as they do not stand for individual liberties but against the liberties of minorities, such as the LGBTIQA Community and ethnic minorities.

Trumpians argue that the charges against him are trumped up (no pun intended) but the reality suggests otherwise! With Roe versus Wade overturned, various states in the USA have overturned abortion rights. And trump himself is on record as saying that he is the defender of the rights of the unborn. Not to mention his filthy statements about women.

Should Australia align itself with a Trumpian America? My answer is, absolutely not! LGBTIQA rights are individual rights and for an Australian Premier to call for people not to say gay and for right-wingers to ban books is an impingement upon human rights. Trump’s views on transgender folk will make them easier to clock and less safe.

Australia and the USA may have had similar values 70 years ago, and when Australia was still a country without its own defence capability maybe, but under a totalitarian regime, it is not. And let’s not forget that the Liberal Party removed the fool who knighted a prince who was the equivalent of Orban, and also a Hillsong PM, so why should it want to return one? And deals with the USA under trump are dangerous.