Down Under Australia - Underdog or pawn?

I still wonder if Australia will jump ship from the US as they crash. As time goes on, it seems less likely, but maybe not impossible.

Had a social chat with a career banker recently. His opinion from the perspective of housing, lending, rentals and investment is that there is absolutely no good in the Australian government at the moment. The skyrocketing costs associated with the above could be easily fixed by some simple regulations, but because the govt has gotten itself in so much debt, they are using the above areas to recoup costs and pay debts. Investors with rental properties are having increased compliance measures added to their outgoings that they are passing on to renters and the compliance measures can only be attended to by govt approved businesses and require annual inspections and fees.

Additionally he mentioned the AirBnB market where he says there are around 650,000 listed properties and this market is not subject to the same compliance measures as those properties that are listed for longer term rentals. The super wealthy local and international investors are attracted to the AirBnB market for negative gearing, but they don't have to actually get bookings in order to gain the tax benefits. They only have to have the property listed as being available for bookings and AirBnB properties have an average booking rate of 38 nights per year. The strategy that some are using is to buy properties close to family or other places they'd like to holiday, but set the booking rate too high for the market to ensure that the property mostly stays empty for their own use. That goes some way in explaining why, at a time of housing shortages, that complaints are heard about empty properties. Also why more people are competing for properties in rural and regional areas.

The next point he bought up was that prior to June last year, investors from India had to pay a 10% tax to the Indian government for funds taken out of the country. After June, that was raised to 25%, so there was a rush on Australian property investment from India to get their funds out at the cheaper rate.

If this banker was more aware of the global situation and the influence of the WEF crew etc., I don't know. The occasion didn't seem to suit raising the matter. He thought that the property prices should have dropped by now, but he believes the above influences are still supporting it despite interest rate rises.
 
With elections looming on the 3rd of May, Topher Field has done a video explaining how the preferential voting system works in Australia. I think he's a bit naive in that he doesn't address the potential for corruption in the ballot counting process and at the electoral commission etc., but if the goal is to break the hold of Liberal/Labour uniparty from what mostly seems to be a good cop/bad cop routine in favour of some of the better minor parties then understanding preferential voting and how to use it could be helpful.

 
I don't know much about Down Under politics, and I came across this article providing a current view on the situation in Australia. I'm not surprised as, after all, Australia IS one of the 5 Eyes and will do as UK/US tells it to do.

COVID era was particularly telling and awful; did people learn anything from it? In the current political atmosphere, is there any party or incline that Au could possibly move away from UK/US and focus on it's own interests?


Long-Range Strategy: Why Australia Is Arming Itself — and Who Should Be Worried

Rebecca Chan, June 22, 2025

Instead of seeking Asian balance, Australia is voluntarily becoming an outpost of Anglo-Saxon centralization. This approach reflects a broader U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific — using alliance-building as a mechanism to encircle and contain China through coordinated dependency.

Австралийские солдаты


For a long time, Australia hid behind the image of a sunlit outpost of Western civilization — quiet, reliable, almost ornamental. A piece of the storefront, but not the mechanism behind it. A satellite painted in democratic colors, but there was always someone else above — with the map, the compass, and the list of targets. Now the curtain has fallen. The new defense strategy from the Albanese cabinet is a snapping whip: China is declared a threat, the military budget is swollen to the ceiling, and AUKUS is no longer just a PowerPoint acronym, but a clear manufacturing directive. Western media outlets, as if on cue, picked up the chorus — but between the lines and figures, something deeper breaks through. Australia has finally confessed who it wants to be — and whom it is willing to betray for that role.

The air now smells of a new kind of gunpowder — a conflict where geography no longer saves even the islanders. And while analysts juggle arguments about submarine shortages and overpriced missiles, it’s worth looking deeper: into the war Australia has already been signed up for, who assigned it the role of cannon-fodder barrier — and how the region is being turned into an aquarium full of predators with less and less space and more and more teeth.

AUKUS as a Conflict Accelerator: What Has Changed Since 2021

When the AUKUS alliance was introduced in 2021, it was marketed as a “breakthrough”: a friendly initiative among three democracies to share technology, as if it were a science fair. Under this wrapper hid an old recipe: ride the wave of fear, deepen dependency, and drag the region into a scheme of “divide and militarize.” Back then, it seemed like yet another diplomatic puff of smoke. But, as is often the case with the Anglo-Saxons, behind the noise came the steel.

Three years later, AUKUS has morphed from a ghost into a machine. It has absorbed research centers, defense enterprises, ports, contracts, and logistics. All of this — not for “peace and stability,” as the press releases claim, but to lock the region into a new configuration of fear. Australia here is not a partner, but a cog. Or more precisely, the forward tooth in Washington’s gear. Submarine infrastructure expansion, missile transfers, the launch of joint production — none of this is “investment in security,” but staging for the next performance of coercion.

AUKUS is no longer a club for English-speaking elites — it’s a syringe injecting bipolar paranoia into the region. And Australia is no longer the little brother — it has become the proscenium. The first target. The first justification.

Australia’s New Defense Doctrine: Who’s in the Crosshairs?

For the first time in decades, Australia is no longer pretending to be a neutral beach in the Pacific Ocean. The new strategy marks a psychological breakthrough: from a hired accountant of peace, Canberra is turning into a paranoid guard in the service of empire. China has been officially declared a threat.
Let’s repeat that: its largest trading partner — now labeled a hostile force. Economic interdependence, years of mutual integration? All thrown under the knife. Because the master has spoken: threat.

It’s a blatant capitulation disguised as a strategic pivot. Australia is not forming its own policy — it is copying someone else’s, word for word, missile for missile. The doctrine lists long-range systems, drones, hypersonic weapons — but the most important weapon isn’t found in the figures. The main thing is the readiness to strike preemptively. Not to defend, but to signal a willingness to attack. It’s not hard to guess who taught them to think this way.

What’s telling is that for the first time in a long while, Australia is trying to project strategic agency. But this projection of autonomy is a mirage. A country long trained to march in formation is now just marching a little louder. And it’s not doing so alone, but under the gaze of alliance discipline approved in the Pentagon.

Military Sovereignty or U.S. Dependence?

The new strategy bears a proud signature from Canberra. But it smells like ink from another continent. In structure, terminology, and threat typology — this is pure Pentagon playbook, adapted to the southern hemisphere. Like an honors student, Australia repeats: AUKUS is our path. But there are far too many hooks in this “freedom of choice.” Drills, codes, standards, intelligence, logistics — everything is integrated into the American ecosystem of deterrence. Even procurement makes no attempt to feign diversification — instead of seeking Asian balance, Australia is voluntarily becoming an outpost of Anglo-Saxon centralization. This approach reflects a broader U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific — using alliance-building as a mechanism to encircle and contain China through coordinated dependency.

You could call it pragmatism: the country cannot sustain an independent confrontation with China. But it’s also a trap. Because Canberra, from a strategic player, is turning into a showcase for someone else’s will. It no longer projects security — it performs obedience. More alliances, less room for maneuver. And every step toward “sovereignty” makes Australia more vulnerable — and less itself.

The word “autonomy” comes up often. But this is the rhetoric of self-deception. In reality, Australia is becoming a relay station for imperial will. And if something flares up in the region tomorrow — guess whose territory will be first in the line of fire. And who will take the hit for someone else’s concept of “deterrence.”

Beijing’s Reaction: Diplomacy of Threats

Beijing, true to a civilization with a thousand-year memory, responded with surgically precise rhetoric — no hysteria. But behind the diplomatic phrasing — restrained, almost ceremonial — irritation breaks through: AUKUS is not an alliance but a trap. Its architecture is not built for defense, but for suffocation. Australia, eagerly playing the role of a neocolonial sentry, has taken on the position of eastern interceptor in a new containment line. China sees this not as defense, but as the preparation of a cage — one made of surveillance, export controls, technological blockade, and moral demonization.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry doesn’t just accuse AUKUS of “creating an Asian NATO” — it’s a deliberate allusion: in both Europe and Asia, the Anglo-Saxons are building not security systems, but exclusion zones. Geopolitical reservations where an “ally” is nothing more than a soldier on someone else’s chessboard. That’s why China responds symmetrically: with pressure, trade signals, and diplomatic pinpricks — not to start a war, but to signal to other players: you too are in the crosshairs if you fall in line.

And it’s working. While AUKUS hands out promises of security, Beijing works to erode loyalty. It whispers into the ears of Seoul, Tokyo, Jakarta: do you want to share Australia’s fate, becoming a weather vane for someone else’s threat? This is not a cold war — this is a chess endgame under time pressure. And China has no illusions: AUKUS is not about submarines. It’s about submission.

Possible Scenario: A Region on the Brink of Militarization

If current trends continue, the Indo-Pacific ring will enter a phase of managed madness — militarization under the guise of stability. Every new radar, every new agreement is not protection, but a mark: this is no longer Asia, this is now a lease under foreign fear. Australia has already signed that lease. Japan hesitates. South Korea checks whether old scars have crusted over. The Philippines, sincerely hoping for protection, align their bases under a new umbrella. And China, sensing the tightening noose, moves fast — preemptively, and across multiple planes: sea, air, cyberspace, banking. These countermeasures include not only military responses but also economic retaliation designed to exploit structural weaknesses in the U.S.-led order.

This kind of armed balance has nothing to do with security. This is deterrence through exhaustion. The more bases, the less diplomacy. The more alliances — the fewer choices. The multipolar Asia that was once envisioned as a zone of dialogue has now become a strategic chessboard — where all the moves are pre-calculated, and roles are assigned based on usefulness to someone else’s scenario.

And the bitterest part: there is not even a main character in this play. Only the ensemble cast. Only predetermined victims who have yet to realize they’ve become bargaining chips — in a game whose rules were written not in Brisbane or Manila, but in Washington and London.

Emerging Into the Light

Australia has stepped out of the shadows — but not as a sovereign power, rather as a spotlight beaming into Asia’s face. With missiles at the ready, submarines on the drawing board, and alliances around its neck. Politicians in Canberra speak of “independence,” but every step, every figure, every map in this strategy reveals the opposite: dependence embedded in the genetic code of its foreign policy. The more Australia arms itself, the louder the commanding voice from across the Pacific becomes. This is no parade of independence — it’s a drill session in someone else’s army.

In trying to protect itself from a “threat,” Australia is forfeiting its historic opportunity: to be an arbiter, to be a voice of reason, to be the one offering an alternative to the duel between two imperial ambitions. Instead, it has chosen to become a weapons platform — even if it smiles while doing so, waving the flag of democracy. The paradox is clear: the more a country tries to control its destiny, the deeper it buries itself in a scenario written in foreign capitals.

The process is already underway. Alliances are hardening, the logic of confrontation is becoming the new normal, and rhetoric is growing less diplomatic and more existential. The submarines have not yet left their slips, but the region is already swaying in anxious syncopation. Because in this war, no one is firing — but they are already aiming. And in the crosshairs, Australia is not an observer, but a target. Not a strategist — but a bargaining chip in an old game, where old empires are still playing global monopoly — only now with nuclear stakes and digital sights.
 
I don't know much about Down Under politics, and I came across this article providing a current view on the situation in Australia. I'm not surprised as, after all, Australia IS one of the 5 Eyes and will do as UK/US tells it to do.

COVID era was particularly telling and awful; did people learn anything from it? In the current political atmosphere, is there any party or incline that Au could possibly move away from UK/US and focus on it's own interests?
I like Rebecca Chan's stuff, she's entertaining and on point about the nature of the US and its vassals. I think she tends to inflate the importance of Australia to the empire, though. Australia doesn't really do much for the US except provide tribute in the form of raw materials and agricultural produce, as well as a little fawning adulation of the sort that the empire likes. It has no sovereignty to speak of, and is pulled this way and that by the whims of whatever special interest groups can get their hands on the levers of power overseas.

There are a few nutjobs; the empire needs its local 'elites' and 'capos' to keep the tribute flowing, after all. But on the whole, the relevance to the US was pretty well demonstrated recently by Australia's PM, a man who seems to have no concept of self-respect when it comes interactions with world leaders, who has been desperate to meet Trump to score some domestic political points. He almost got there recently at the G7 meeting, but then consoled himself about the brush-off by saying that at least he "got to hug Zelensky". I kid you not. The guy is so weak and feckless that the only reason he was re-elected is because his opponent was a long-known predatory puppet (and former corrupt cop) that nobody could stand, not even his own base.

The pool of sub-mediocre nobodies that makes up Australian politics occasionally parts way for a principled voice or two, but then usually does everything possible to drown them out again, before they can have any effect on the sleeping masses, who are usually quite happy to let it happen, because of the near-pathological level of 'tall poppy syndrome' that seems to hobble the Australian psyche. You can be successful at sport or entertainment in Australia, but start making people think too hard and question their own faults and you'll be shown the door fast. Just ask ex-senator Gerard Rennick.

Australians don't much care for politics, and thus I don't expect any strong support for anti-China policies or propaganda, but then again I don't expect much pushback against them, either. Australia will probably just BBQ and surf its way into the next chapter of geopolitical history, to the point where if the elites were evacuating on boats headed for the US as a Chinese armada surrounded the country, the average Australian would probably shrug and ask who they need to pay their taxes to now.

China is signing up the Pacific nations, Vietnam and Indonesia are getting on-board with Russia, Malaysia will likely align with the Pakistani-Iranian Muslim "Axis of Resistance" and India will most likely play a careful game to establish regional influence without getting any of their neighbours 'off-side'. AUKUS is just another failed wishful-thinking means of looting the vassal populations before the empire falls.

Just like covid, the elites will likely take as many 'pounds of flesh' as they can before they go, but maybe that suffering will wake a few more people up. There are new geopolitical realities shaping the Global South, and I don't think Australians, 'elite' or otherwise, will have much say in the outcome, osit.
 
There's a new paper out by a geopolitical analyst called Hugh White. Arnaud Bertrand highly recommended it, and has a summary on his substack.


This is probably the single most important geopolitical analysis that I’ve heard this year, if not this decade.

Hugh White is widely recognized as one of Australia’s foremost strategic thinkers. He was the inaugural Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the former Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Australian Department of Defence.

He just published a new 70-page essay called “Hard New World: Our Post American Future”, in which he argues - with considerable evidence to prove it - that while everyone debates about whether America will ultimately let China become the dominant regional power in the Western Pacific, it has in fact already withdrawn. White says that, effectively, beyond all the rhetoric, the contest is already over.

This article looks at all of White’s arguments and the evidence he presents, which I must say completely changed my understanding of what's actually happening in geopolitics right now like nothing I'd read in a long time.

Here's the intro of the paper itself. Maybe it would be interesting to understand Australia/China/America.


A quarter of a century ago, the world was a pretty comfortable place for Australia. Our prosperity seemed assured by the apparently irresistible and irreversible forces of globalisation, driven by free trade and the free movement of investment, technology, ideas and people. That in turn was turbo-charging our Asian neighbours, especially China, offering us economic opportunities that were the envy of the world. Our security seemed assured by the apparently unchallengeable power of the United States, its manifest determination to uphold a global order in which aggression would be swiftly and surely punished, and its deep commitment to close allies, of which we were among the closest. The values that we like to think define us – our commitment to electoral democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech, respect for human rights, tolerance of diversity – were now, we thought, becoming truly universal, as the long arc of world history bent towards freedom and justice. All this – what our political leaders have in mind when they talk about the “rules-based order” – was thanks to America. Australia was flourishing in a world made safe and easy for us by American power, influence and ideas.

Since then, a lot has gone wrong: 9/11 and the War on Terror, the global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the fractious and faltering struggle against global warming, to name just the most obvious. And now we seem to face something even more fundamental: a shift from a world which worked well for us to one that looks a lot harder to navigate. The basis of our prosperity is imperilled by the collapse of globalisation and the prospect that rival trade blocs will be built on its ruins. The foundation of our security is undermined by the eclipse of the US-led rules-based order. And the power of our values is undermined by the persistence of strong authoritarian governments in many powerful states, and the rise of populism and the erosion of democratic norms in places where these once seemed strongest, especially the United States. The world America made for us is passing away. Its place is being taken by a new and harder post-American world, and we are at a loss to know what to make of it and how to make our way in it. Our leaders are still in denial about all this. They hope that the old rules-based order will somehow revive and survive so that things go back to the way they were in John Howard’s day.

They grew complacent when the shock of Trump’s first term gave way to the misleading normality of the Biden presidency, which somewhat restored confidence in democratic values and institutions. They were reassured too by Washington’s apparently robust response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while its commitment to resisting China and upholding our nation’s security seemed to be reaffirmed by AUKUS.

But now Trump is back, worse than ever. His first months back in office have been an astonishing spectacle. His absurdly inappropriate appointments to key jobs. His grotesque ideas on Gaza. His open contempt for US allies. His threats to Canada, Panama and Greenland. His treatment of Ukraine. His frontal assault on the global trading system. The wrecking ball he has swung at the machinery of US government. His contempt for democracy and the rule of law. We must now recognise that Trump and the movement he inspires constitute a decisive shift in the way America works and in how this shapes the world. We must now see just how much we have already lost of the old world order, and how much more we are in danger of losing.

But the can’t-look-away spectacle of Trump’s second presidency should not mislead us. Everything that is happening is not just because of Trump. Deeper forces are also at work, and we must understand them if we are to understand this hard new world and how to make our way in it. That is what this essay is about. It focuses especially on the strategic elements of the current crisis. Ever since Imperial Japan destroyed Britain’s position in Asia almost eighty-four years ago, our security and our place in the international system have been built upon our dependence on America, formalised seventy-four years ago in the ANZUS Treaty. Now that long era is ending, and we come face to face with our post-American future.

We are not alone. US allies in Europe and Asia have also relied on America, but they are now thinking seriously about their post-American futures. We have not even started. In February, as the full extent of Trump’s abandonment of Europe over Ukraine was becoming clear, Anthony Albanese blithely confirmed that he believed our alliance with the United States was “rock solid.” Peter Dutton was equally confident. Our alliance, we are told, stands above the ebb and flow of politics and policies in either country. Presidents may come and go, but nothing can shake the sure foundations of this great partnership.

America has strategic alliances with a lot of countries – over fifty, by one count. But the custodians of Australia’s alliance with America – political leaders, officials, commentators and assorted schmoozers – believe that ours is something very special. They are convinced that between Australia and America there is a unique intimacy and mutual commitment that lifts our alliance under the ANZUS Treaty to a different level, above the cool and sometimes cynical calculus of national interests where ordinary alliances operate. Faced with the prospect of a second Trump presidency, Penny Wong said last year that the US–Australia relationship “is bigger than the events of the day” and is “shaped by enduring friendship and timeless values.”

The claim is that we are more than allies, we are “mates.” Tony Abbott once went so far as to tell an audience in Washington that Australians did not really regard America as a foreign country. “We are more than allies, we’re family,” he said. Thus the proud boast that Australia has fought alongside America in every war it has fought since 1900. How else to explain America’s generosity in letting us share its most prized military assets under AUKUS?

This is an illusion, and like many illusions it springs from anxiety. We are eager to claim that the alliance is built on foundations firmer than the shifting sands of national policies and interests precisely because we are unsure that policy and interests alone are enough to keep it alive. For all the sentimental talk of imperishable bonds, Australians have always been the most anxious of allies, and for good reason. No country in history has depended so much, and for so long, on allies so far away from us and to whom we matter so little for the defence of their most vital interests.

That is why for 150 years, since the splendour of Pax Britannica first began to fray, “Can we depend on our allies?” has always been one of the central questions of our national life. And what we have learnt, again and again, is that all alliances, without exception, are transactional. That is what we discovered when Singapore fell in 1942, when the vaunted imperial ties of history, language, values and kinship were outweighed by the demands of Britain’s own vital interests.

It was a lesson imprinted indelibly on the minds of the wartime and postwar generations, for whom the Fall of Singapore was a touchstone, reinforced by Britain’s final withdrawal east of Suez after 1968 and America’s uncertain support in regional crises of the early 1960s. But the lesson needs relearning today, as we emerge from the era we still call the “post–Cold War,” when American power and resolve appeared to be limitless and unchallenged – rather like Britain’s seemed at the height of its nineteenth-century imperial power. In a world with only one global power, an alliance with that power seemed to offer all we needed to make our way in the world. That era has now passed.

Recognising this and adapting to it is especially hard because the flipside of our deep comfort with the world America has made for us has always been a certain ambivalence about Australia’s embrace of an alternative, Asian destiny. That has offered opportunities for politicians to exploit if they dare. John Howard was one who did. His mantra was that Australia does not have to choose between its history and its geography, by which he meant that we can bow to the logic of geography and comparative advantage by building our economy on Asian markets, but still look to America and Europe for our identity and our security. Australians would feel, he used to say, more “relaxed and comfortable” that way.

It seemed to work in the 1990s, when America’s power seemed unchallengeable, and it was possible to think that Asia need be no more to us than a market for our exports. It made less sense by the time Howard left office in 2007, as I think he may have understood, because by then Asia was already more than just a market for us. But it didn’t work for Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton in 2020 and 2021. They tried to make political hay from Australians’ growing anxiety about China’s power and ambition by talking up the China threat and accusing their opponents of being agents of Beijing. Their David and Goliath act played well for a time, but not so much in the 2022 election, when Chinese Australian voters deserted the Coalition in numbers sufficient to cost them a couple of seats. For an electorally significant number of Australians today, Asia is not just a market: it is where they come from, and it means a lot to them. A lot more of us may be starting to understand, with or without Trump’s help, the truth of Paul Keating’s mantra that Australia must look for its security in Asia, not from Asia.
 
With elections looming on the 3rd of May, Topher Field has done a video explaining how the preferential voting system works in Australia. I think he's a bit naive in that he doesn't address the potential for corruption in the ballot counting process and at the electoral commission etc., but if the goal is to break the hold of Liberal/Labour uniparty from what mostly seems to be a good cop/bad cop routine in favour of some of the better minor parties then understanding preferential voting and how to use it could be helpful.
It's a great system, in theory, but there's only one problem - They! Don't! Do! That!

I've tried to explain it to other people, candidates, even Topher himself, but alas to no avail. If they took a step back and examined the amount of time and resources they would actually need to do preference voting, then they would see that it simply couldn't work in the time necessary to produce a result. So they do something entirely different.

And it's one that the Australian Public has absolutely no awareness of, but it means they don't have to cheat to control the outcome.

It's called the Two Party/Candidate Preferred System and it means that when Australians go to the polls they are actually voting for one or other of the top two candidates and those have been chosen by the AEC. Those two candidates will have a preference number against their names on every ballot, and the one with the lowest preference is the one that gets that person's vote. It's a ranking system for the top two candidates, it's not a preference system. The top two candidates are chosen by the AEC and they might not get it right either (like the last election in my division where they chose the Labor candidate - the incumbent, and the Liberal candidate - when the second most popular was the Greens candidate).

Australians are very programmed to believe in and be obedient to authority. If they knew HOW their votes were counted at election time, they could get their power back. But, no-one seems to want to have it back. There's an awful lot of railing against the system, but absolutely no awareness of, and in some cases no desire, to look at hard truth and facts. Like blustering ostriches with their heads stuck up their arses. Maybe that's the way it is in so many so called "free" Western countries now?

How do I think that's going to work for Australians in the future? Not very well, that's for sure, as you can't comply your way out of tyrany and be ignorant of all the forces working against you. That'll never work out well. Current Australians will probably go the same way as the Aboriginal Australians: subsumed, taken over, or disappearing into complete irrelevance. And the Government is at the forefront of this and is just as capable of having that done to them.
 
Back
Top Bottom