Malcolm Turnbull, Marketing Man for Coal in India – despite the glut in India’s coal market
Malcolm Turnbull talks up coal in Delhi, despite India’s aim to stop imports Glut in Indian coal market, plans to phase out imports and lower than forecast energy demands cast doubt on future for exports from proposed Adani mine, Guardian, Michael Safi , 11 Apr 17, Malcolm Turnbull is adamant that Australian coal will play “a very big role” in powering India’s future despite a glut in the local market and clear signals from Delhi that it aims to eliminate imports of the fossil fuel as soon as possible. ………..On Monday Turnbull met Gautam Adani, the mining magnate whose company will soon decide whether to begin building the world’s largest coalmine in Queensland’s Galilee basin. Continue reading
Turnbull in India, for talks with Mr Adani, who will press him for $900 funding for coal project
Adani to press Turnbull on $900m boost during visit , THE AUSTRALIAN, DAVID CROWE, Political correspondent, Canberra, @CroweDM, 10 Apr 17, Malcolm Turnbull will be asked to seal a $900 million deal to clear the way for the mammoth Adani coal mine in central Queensland during his visit to India that also seeks to inject momentum into a trade deal between two countries.
The Prime Minister arrived in New Delhi last night for a three-day state visit that will include talks with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, meetings with business leaders and a focus on the country’s demand for energy.
The $21 billion coal project towers over other items on the agenda, with Adani pushing for action within months on financing agreements and regulatory hurdles. Its Carmichael mine is being opposed by green groups in the courts and on the ground.
“We’ll certainly be talking about the importance of energy exports to India,” Mr Turnbull said before flying to New Delhi from Port Moresby, where he concluded a two-day visit yesterday morning. “India has a massive program of expanding electrification across the country and Australian coal has a very big role to play in that.”
Adani founder Gautam Adani told Indian media last month the company was eligible for $900m from the Turnbull government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund to build the rail line from the mine to the company’s port at Abbot Point.
The backing from the fund, which uses federal guarantees to finance commercial projects, will help Adani limit its equity contribution to the rail project to about $800m of a total investment of about $2.5bn in the next two years, with the rest coming from debt and the NAIF.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met Mr Adani in Mumbai last month and announced most approvals had been concluded for the project. At the same function, Mr Adani said he expected final approval from the federal government by May.
Mr Turnbull is expected to see Mr Adani during the visit after meeting him at least twice, in November 2015 and December 2016, when the billionaire pushed for more help to get the mine open.
After the 2015 meeting, Mr Adani said he had pressed Mr Turnbull to legislate to stop environmental groups delaying the project in the courts. The Abbott government’s attempt to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop “vigilante” activists was stymied in the Senate a month before Mr Turnbull became Prime Minister.
Writing in The Australian today, Mr Turnbull emphasises the opportunities for Australia as the Indian economy grows, increasing demand for Australia….. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/adani-to-press-turnbull-on-900m-boost-during-visit/news-story/6beae575a49aacfad4d51eca3dfe0846
Trump administration informed Turnbull in advance, of USA strike on Syria
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had pointedly said before news of the strikes broke that the chemical attack on civilians “cries out for a strong response”.
On Friday morning, Mr Turnbull linked the attacks to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and blamed Russia for failing to rein in its ally.
But Mr Turnbull carefully sidestepped questions about what action Australia might take against the regime after Washington appeared to ramp up its rhetoric about the need for Mr Assad’s removal.
“This is a war crime of the worst sort. It is inhumane and it has been universally condemned,” Mr Turnbull told radio 3AW………
Asked on Friday morning whether Australia would step up its military effort in Syria beyond air strikes against the so-called Islamic State group, Mr Turnbull said he had spoken “a little while ago” to Defence Minister Marise Payne and Chief of the Defence Force Mark Binskin but refused to say if any action was being discussed.
“I don’t want to speculate any further about that. You know where we stand. We have condemned this attack, utterly. It cries out for a strong response and we are in very close touch, as we always are, constant communications with our allies, in particular the United States.
In a slap at the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr Turnbull said that “Russia obviously is the principal foreign sponsor of the Assad regime”.
Asked whether Russia had behaved appropriately, Mr Turnbull said, “No.”…….
Greens senator Scott Ludlum issued a statement on Friday condemning the US strikes on Syria and calling on Mr Turnbull to rule out Australian involvement in any new military campaign.
“The horror of the chemical weapons attack in Syria this week requires a credible, independent investigation, not a random barrage of missiles ordered by a clueless President,” he said. http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-says-syria-chemical-attack-demands-strong-response-as-military-threats-grow-20170406-gvfnqh.html
Australia unprepared for foreign policy making, in this era of America’s “mad king”
The arrival of what many on both sides of the aisle in Washington, now openly describe as the mad 
king, has left the foreign policy establishment struggling to even craft a considered response.
This is particularly so in Canberra, where none of this was predicted.
big global issues — large scale immigration, historic disparities between the haves and have nots, massive technology change led by ubiquitous networked platforms, not to mention climate change — are wreaking their consequences at warp speed. All while the US is consumed with its own political civil war, led by none other than the president himself.
Tom Burton: mokita and the mad king, http://www.themandarin.com.au/77426-tom-burton-mokita-mad-king/ by Tom Burton 31.03.2017 The sudden and rapid collapse of US foreign policy administrative infrastructure has left Australia particularly exposed, leaving our diplomats scratching their heads about what to do.
Mokita is the word the people of the tiny New Guinea island of Kiriwina use to describe the “truth we all know, but agree not to talk about.” Mokita was on display big time this week when all of Australia’s ambassadors met in Canberra to consider the shape of the government’s foreign policy white paper.
The meeting was addressed by Minister Bishop who in a long, wide ranging speech, referenced the new US President Donald Trump and the profound impact of his election, in but a single line: “The United States has a new President, driving an economic nationalist agenda.”
The reference was in the context of the international windback of the global economic liberalism which has served Australia well since the end of World War II. But while the otherwise eloquent speech traversed some of the obvious implications of this shift, there was no further public mention of the sheer madness that has characterised the Trump presidency to date and the fundamental effect this is having on world geopolitical order.
Tyro US Ambassador, Joe Hockey, was in similar Chamberlain appeasement mode as he later advised Australians to not join the chorus of constant criticism of Trump, Continue reading
Australia – America’s Deputy Sheriff again, as USA opposes nuclear-weapons-ban talks
UN nuclear treaty: Australia plays deputy as US ‘sheriff’ baulks at ban Daniel Flitton, The Age, 29 Mar 17 Nikki Haley marched in on her first day as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations with a blunt warning to the world: “For those who don’t have our backs, we’re taking names.”
Australia has now gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure its name stays off Trump’s naughty list. With negotiations for a new treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons kicking off on Monday (New York time), Haley called an extraordinary press conference outside the UN to declare the US opposition to the talks.
And there, at her heels, was Australia.
At the very moment representatives from more than 120 countries were starting their negotiations inside, Australia stood with Trump’s appointee and a group widely known as the “weasel countries” who are opposed to banning the bomb.
According to anti-nuclear campaigners, 21 countries joined Haley’s protest. They included Albania, Turkey, Croatia, Romania, Poland, Estonia, Slovenia, Hungary and South Korea. Britain and France, both nuclear armed, also spoke against a ban. Other NATO allies joined in, although not all……
Back in January, Haley had made plain the attitude the Trump administration would take to the world body. “Our goal … is to show value at the UN, and the way to show value is to show our strength, show our full voice,” she declared. “Have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our backs as well.
“For those who don’t have our backs, we’re taking names, and we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”
On Monday, after the protest at the UN, she told a key lobby group for Israel in Washington: “For anyone who says you can’t get anything done at the UN, they need to know there’s a new sheriff in town.”
And she made the nuclear issue personal…….
Tilman Ruff, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, told Fairfax Media from New York that the US action was alarming and Australia was “aligning itself with the extremes of the Trump administration”.
“What credibility does Australia have to criticise North Korea’s reckless nuclear proliferation when it continues to claim protection itself through the very same weapons, and oppose efforts to ban them?” Dr Ruff said. http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/un-nuclear-treaty-australia-plays-deputy-as-us-sheriff-baulks-at-ban-20170328-gv8bge.html
Australian public supports UN talks towards a ban on nuclear weapons, but the Australian government is not listening.
Nuclear test survivor Sue Coleman-Haseldine International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons look what Aunty Sue Coleman-Haseldine said to 115 Governments assembled at the UN to ban nuclear weapons!
Australia has consistently maintained that as long as nuclear weapons exist, it must rely on the American nuclear umbrella, the protection of the deterrent effect of the US’s nuclear arsenal, the second largest in the world.
But political sentiment in Australia appears to support the ban treaty negotiations.
The Australian Senate passed a motion Monday urging the government to participate in the talks, and polling shows nearly three-quarters of Australians want Australia to be part of negotiations on a nuclear weapons ban treaty.
proponents say a nuclear weapons ban will create moral suasion – in the vein of the cluster and landmine conventions – for nuclear weapons states to disarm, and establish an international norm prohibiting nuclear weapons’ development, possession and use.
Negotiations to ban nuclear weapons begin, but Australia joins US boycott https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/28/negotiations-to-ban-nuclear-weapons-begin-but-australia-joins-us-boycott At least 113 countries meet at UN to discuss ban, but US ambassador says the world is too unsafe for the US not to have nuclear weapons, Guardian, Ben Doherty, 28 Mar 17, Negotiations on a treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons have begun in New York, but have been publicly condemned by the United States, which is leading a coalition of more than 40 countries – including Australia – boycotting the talks.
At least 113 countries are part of the negotiations which have begun at UN headquarters in New York this week, aiming to negotiate a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”.
But, Nikki Haley, appointed as the United States’ ambassador to the UN by Donald Trump in January, spoke outside the meeting saying the world was too unsafe for the US not to have nuclear weapons……
France and the UK, fellow nuclear weapons states, also spoke against the ban treaty negotiations, saying they would not assist in disarming nuclear states.
Support for a ban treaty has been growing steadily over years, with frustration at the ineffectiveness of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in reducing nuclear arsenals. More than 123 nations – the majority of nations at the UN – voted in favour of negotiations to outlaw nuclear weapons.
But a ban treaty has no support from the states that actually have nuclear weapons. The nine known nuclear states – the US, China, France, Britain, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – all oppose a ban treaty.Of the non-nuclear states opposing the ban treaty, Australia has been one of the most outspoken. Continue reading
Australian government is wrong to boycott UN conference on banning nuclear weapons
The only true guarantee to save humanity from its own destructive ability is to completely rid the world of nuclear weapons stockpiles. Much as we have become inured to the danger over the years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the heightened tension of the Cold War, there is no managing this risk. Too many atomic bombs remain ready to fire at a moment’s notice; there are too many chances for human error that would see a catastrophic mistake.
At a time when the temperament of many leaders is rightly questioned, this should be the time to redouble efforts for nuclear disarmament, rather than trust the luck of the last 70 years will hold.
In that spirit, on Monday, negotiations will commence in New York for a new treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons – not regulate, but ban the bomb outright. More than 120 countries have pledged to participate. Regrettably, however, Australia is not among them.
The Turnbull government has decided to stand apart from the negotiations believing that the proposed treaty is not “practical”.
The declared nuclear-armed powers, the US, Russia, France, Britain and China, have refused to participate, nor will the rogue nuclear states, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea, who have developed atomic weapons in the face of international law.
But a proposed ban on nuclear weapons offers the chance for the rest of the world to declare, forthrightly, that it has tired of living under the ever-present threat of annihilation.
Australia’s boycott sends a poor signal about this nation’s commitment to disarmament, especially as a crucial player in the nuclear industry as a supplier of uranium. Such a treaty would carry moral force, to pressure the nuclear-armed powers to fulfil the obligations of what the government presumably does see as a practical agreement, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The genius of that document was to strike a grand bargain between the nuclear-armed countries and the rest of the world; forgo the pursuit of the bomb, and in turn, the nuclear powers agreed to eliminate their own over time. For nations such as Australia, this swayed a decision not to pursue an independent nuclear weapon capacity.
The non-proliferation treaty has been extraordinarily successful, in that no signatory (other than North Korea, who withdrew as a party to the treaty) has developed a nuclear weapon. But the pledge by the nuclear powers to work towards disarmament has been fitful at best and at worst cynical, as the trend appears to be the opposite.
Under the guise of a modernisation program, the United States is actually increasing the destructive yield of its nuclear arsenal, while Donald Trump complains about past disarmament deals with Russia. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has belligerently pushed the flight path of Russia’s strategic bombers closer to European nations in blatant provocation.
The conundrum to solve has always been one of trust. How can anyone be sure that a country would truly surrender its nuclear weapons, and who will have the faith to move first? Australian defence planners may feel a need to rely on the nuclear arsenal of its US ally for deterrence, but that deterrence is only required as long as nuclear weapons exist.
Australia stands out- in self-imposed exile from global summit on treaty to ban nuclear weapons
Tim Wright, the Asia-Pacific director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said Australia was turning its back on the UN at a time when multilateral cooperation was more important than ever. He accused Australia of “taking orders from the Trump administration”.
“Every country in south-east Asia and nearly all countries in the Pacific have declared their strong support for the upcoming UN negotiations. Australia will be sitting in self-imposed exile from one of the biggest and most important international treaty-making initiatives in recent history.
“This will be the first time that Australia has ever boycotted disarmament negotiations.
Australia to boycott global summit on treaty to ban nuclear weapons https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/australia-to-boycott-global-summit-on-treaty-to-ban-nuclear-weapons
Anti-nuclear campaigners accuse Australia of turning its back on the UN and ‘taking orders from the Trump administration’, Ben Doherty, Australia will boycott global negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons at the United Nations next month.
The global summit, to be held in New York on 27 March, will go ahead with Australia out of the room. Continue reading
A responsible global citizen would not sell uranium to Ukraine
7 Feb 17 Selling Australian uranium to Ukraine would increase the risks of war, civil unrest and corruption in the eastern European country, the Australian Conservation Foundation said today.
The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties today recommended the conditional ratification of the nuclear co-operation agreement with Ukraine even though the committee’s own investigation conceded existing safeguards were ‘not sufficient’ and there was a risk Australian nuclear material would disappear off the radar in Ukraine.
“Australia, the nation that fuelled Fukushima should not sell uranium to the country that gave us Chernobyl,” said ACF’s Dave Sweeney.
“The treaties committee’s report found ‘Australian nuclear material should never be placed in a situation where there is a risk that regulatory control of the material will be lost’ (2.53), yet that is exactly what could happen under the inadequate checks and balances that apply to exported Australian uranium.
“The committee’s report clearly states the Australian government must undertake a detailed and proper risk assessment and develop an effective contingency plan for the removal of ‘at risk’ Australian nuclear material.
“There can be no justification for seeking to fast-track uranium sales based on this report.
“Australia should be very cautious about contributing nuclear fuel to an already tense geo-political situation in eastern Europe. Tensions recently flared again in Ukraine.
“Ukraine’s nuclear sector is plagued by serious and unresolved safety, security and governance issues.
“Two-thirds of Ukraine’s aging fleet of 15 nuclear reactors will be past its design lifetime use-by date in just four years.
“This is an insecure and unsafe sector and a risky sales plan.
“ACF calls on the federal government to be a responsible global citizen and not to advance uranium sales to Ukraine.”
Chief Scientist Alan Finkel warns of Trump’s Stalin-like attack on science
Australia’s chief scientist compares Trump to Stalin over climate censorship
Alan Finkel warns that forcing EPA data to undergo political review before publication will ‘cause long-term harm’, Guardian, Gareth Hutchens, 7 Feb 17, Australia’s chief scientist has slammed Donald Trump’s attempt to censor environmental data, saying the US president’s behaviour was comparable to the manipulation of science by the Soviet Union.
Speaking at a scientific roundtable in Canberra on Monday, Alan Finkel warned science was “literally under attack” in the United States and urged his colleagues to keep giving “frank and fearless” advice despite the political opposition.
“The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere,” he said.
“It defies logic. It will almost certainly cause long-term harm. It’s reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union.
“Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions.”
Last month Trump’s administration mandated that any studies or data from scientists at the EPA undergo review by political appointeesbefore they can be released to the public.
The communications director for Trump’s transition team at the EPA, Doug Ericksen, said the review also extended to content on the federal agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence showing the Earth’s climate was warming and human-induced carbon emissions were to blame.
Finkel compared the Trump administration’s attempt to censor science to the behaviour of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
“Soviet agricultural science was held back for decades because of the ideology of Trofim Lysenko, who was a proponent of Lamarckism,” he said……..https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/06/australias-chief-scientist-compares-trump-to-stalin-over-climate-censorship
Trump’s military power – timr for Australia to re-evaluate its US bases
Australia urgently needs to re-evaluate its American bases and promote steps that defuse rather than intensify regional tensions. Having senior Australian defence personnel integrated into the US defence force hinders Australia acting independently. Do we want Australia to be capable of making strategic decisions in the national interest? New Zealand clearly acts in its own interest and remains an ally.
With Trump now the new US Commander-in-Chief, is it wise that we allow ourselves to be so automatically tied to American foreign policy? War in our region would be a humanitarian catastrophe for all involved.
With Donald Trump in power, Australia urgently needs to re-evaluate its US bases http://www.smh.com.au/comment/with-donald-trump-in-power-australia-urgently-needs-to-reevaluate-its-us-bases-20170131-gu2qph.html, Margaret Beavis
Recent changes to the US National Security Council should be ringing loud alarm bells in Canberra.
By demoting the highest-ranking military officer and the highest-ranking intelligence officer, and appointing political adviser Stephen Bannon as a permanent member of the NSC, Donald Trump has seriously escalated the risk of the US launching into ill-advised conflicts. Bannon comes from a role as chairman of the racist, Islamophobic website Breitbart.com, and is reported as having been in charge of writing the recent executive order that has banned US entry for refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations.
It is no secret that Australian foreign policy and defence forces are closely enmeshed with the US. Since Trump has taken office he has loudly proclaimed an “America first” foreign policy, and his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, talks of denying China access to artificial islands in the South China Sea. Any such blockade is likely to be seen by the Chinese as an act of war. Continue reading
Australian company in Greenland’s battle over uranium and rare earths mining
You can’t live in a museum’: the battle for Greenland’s uranium, Guardian, Maurice Walsh, 28 Jan 17 A tiny town in southern Greenland is fighting for its future. Behind it sits one of the world’s largest deposits of uranium. Should a controversial mine get the green light?
But uranium has made Kvanefjeld the most controversial project, and the focus of a debate about whether this is the economic path that Greenland should pursue. (The most common argument raised against is the danger that radioactive dust will fall on neighbouring settlements and farmland.) An Australian-owned company, Greenland Minerals and Energy (GME), has spent nearly £60m developing a plan for an open pit mine here. It was due to submit an environmental impact assessment by the end of 2016, but the deadline has been extended……….
In a move that sounds counterintuitive, GME is promoting its mine as a contribution to the new global green economy. According to the company, 80% of the commercial deposits in Kvanefjeld are rare earth minerals, commonly used in wind turbines, hybrid cars and lasers; uranium accounts for only 10%. “The market for rare earth minerals is deciding this,” says operations manager Ib Laursen. “Everybody is looking for them. Instead of Greenland being a passive receiver of global warming from the western world, it could contribute to green technology.”
It is a clever pitch. Greenland’s ice sheet has become the benchmark measurement for the march of global warming; research published in September showed that ice loss is accelerating more rapidly than previously feared. Greenland is also the emblematic victim of climate change: Inuit hunters and fishermen are called on in international conferences, to describe how their traditional lifestyles are being destroyed by warming seas.
But what the rest of the world see as creeping ruination, local politicians see as an opportunity. The melting ice sheet will make some minerals more accessible, and reveal others that are so far unknown.
……….Most of the world’s rare earth minerals come from China (six state-owned enterprises control nearly 90% of the planet’s supply), and the scale of environmental degradation there has given open pit mining a bad reputation. Concerned locals in Greenland invoke images of wasted landscapes and pools of toxic and radioactive waste, gleaned from a Google search. Similarly, the history of uranium mining has been one of blithe disregard for the environment……
Laursen.presents his mine as an environmentally friendly alternative to Chinese mines, modelled on international standards of best practice. He says the fears of radioactive dust floating over south Greenland are groundless. The crushed rock discarded once the minerals have been extracted, known as tailings, will be turned into slurry and carried in a pipeline to the bottom of a nearby lake. “It would never surface as dust,” Laursen says: the lake will be sealed in perpetuity by an impermeable dam……..
Frederiksen (sheep farmer) was alert to the dangers of radioactive dust because he had studied sheep farming in Norway in the mid-90s, when animals there were still affected by the fallout from Chernobyl. The scientists said they would remove dust from the mine by sprinkling it with water. “Well, water is usually frozen here in the winter,” Frederiksen tells me now, “so I asked them, ‘How are you going to have water to sprinkle then?’ And they said they would answer that when the environmental impact assessment arrived. When someone asked if it was possible to have no pollution in a mining area, the elderly man told us there had never been mining without pollution.” Frederiksen and Lennert believe most of the sheep farmers oppose the mine, but they avoid too many conversations about it just in case: polarisation risks harmony, and they might need each other in difficult times……….
In the past two elections, the people have decided, by voting for parties that support the uranium mine. Now, Qujaukitsoq says, it is a decision for the government. “Are we hesitant? No. We have no reservations about creating jobs.” For him it is the only way of saving Narsaq from stagnation. Whatever image the rest of the world cherishes, one thing is clear: Greenland will make its own way in the age of climate change.
• Maurice Walsh travelled as part of the Arctic Times Project, an international team exploring the transformation of the Arctic.more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/28/greenland-narsaq-uranium-mine-dividing-town
Good riddance to the Trans Pacific Partnership: it could have furthered nuclear waste import plans
Paul Waldon, Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 25 Jan 17
CIA feared that Australian govt would close Pine Gap
CIA documents reveal Pine Gap fears http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/cia-documents-reveal-pine-gap-fears/news-story/78dd781a58fe89fd6b7d455a662c8596 22 Jan 17 TENSION over world wheat prices led to fears by the US Government that Australia could shut the secret spy facility at Pine Gap.
A memo prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of East Asian Analysis shows the Americans were nervous Australia could lash out and use US-Australian joint facilities as a “bargaining chip” during the wheat prices stand-off in 1986.
It is among more than 900,000 documents, some of which were previously top secret, released by the CIA this week.
The briefing document says then-prime minister Bob Hawke was under political pressure from “militant farmers” to stand up for their interests as the US prepared to extend its “export enhancement program” to include the Soviet Union and China, which was expected to drive down wheat prices worldwide.
According to the memorandum, the Americans did not take the threats to close joint facilities seriously “but if the Senate proposal becomes law, tensions will be high and thoughts of making such threats will remain just below the surface”. “Our worst case scenario, on the other hand, would have the Australians refusing to negotiate a new ten-year agreement for the Joint Defense Space Research Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory (thus the facility would be subject to closure after October 1987 with a year’s notice),” the document read.
It said wheat farmers were the most vocal primary producers “and protest most often in Canberra”.
“Hawke undoubtably believes he cannot afford to ignore wheat farmers’ pleas to use his claimed ‘special relationship’ with the US administration to win them relief,” the memorandum read.
With an election looming, domestic pressure was on the prime minister to prove he could exert influence with the Americans. “In our judgment, the current US Senate proposal, if it becomes law, would confirm Australian farmers’ suspicions that Hawke is powerless to win relief from the US government and that Australia’s faithfulness to its responsibilities in the ANZUS alliance is meaningless to the US administration,” the document said.
Trump’s USA could drag Australia into a nuclear war with China
US ‘threatens to involve Australia in war with China’: Paul Keating condemns US secretary of state nominee’s comments, The Age, Fergus Hunter, 14 Jan 17
Former prime minister Paul Keating has rounded on President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, accusing him of threatening to bring on war with China and making “ludicrous” comments on the tense South China Sea dispute.In a statement released on Friday, Mr Keating warned the Australian government to reject Rex Tillerson’s declaration this week that a “signal” needed to be sent to Beijing that the construction of artificial islands in the contested region must stop and “access to those islands also is not going to be allowed”. The remarks from the former chief of Exxon Mobil, in which he also called for regional allies “to show backup”, have set the stage for sharply increased tensions between the US and China as the Asian superpower builds up its military presence on the islands to defend against competing territorial claims from neighbouring countries.
According to Mr Keating, Mr Tillerson’s testimony to his US Senate confirmation hearing “threatens to involve Australia in war with China”. And he has urged the Australian people to “take note” and recommended the government tell the Trump administration, which will take over on January 20, “that Australia will not be part of such adventurism, just as we should have done in Iraq 15 years ago”. “That means no naval commitment to joint operations in the South China Sea and no enhanced US military facilitation of such operations,” the former Labor prime minister said.
“Tillerson’s claim that China’s control of access to the waters would be a threat to ‘the entire global economy’ is simply ludicrous. No country would be more badly affected than China if it moved to impede navigation. On the other hand, Australia’s prosperity and the security of the world would be devastated by war.”……… http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/us-threatens-to-involve-australia-in-war-with-china-paul-keating-condemns-us-secretary-of-state-nominees-comments-20170113-gtqy0k.html
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 