Australia currently has a Labor-Coalition political class which is committed to serving the interests of the United States as its highest priority, and within that frame the most significant conflicts that exist internally between the main factions of that class, Labor and Liberal — party labels which bear no relationship to the meaning of “labor” and “liberal” — are centered on base competition for favored status in Washington.
The Labor-Coalition politicians gained about 65 percent of the primary vote at the 2022 election, but together they represent, in practice, a much smaller section of the Australian population. They do not represent anyone who in real terms can be described as “liberal” or “labor” in their political orientation, because all the policies which they endorse and implement are carefully designed to tokenistically address poverty, socio-economic inequality, environmental destruction and climate change.
Such domestic issues are very much secondary considerations compared with the fanatical and vitriolic competition in how best to serve bosses in Washington, irrespective of who sits in the White House and runs the Pentagon. Ingrained colonial forelock-tugging instincts have been honed by years of training within a sheltered cocoon which excludes all voices not aligned closely with US interests.
So it is with AUKUS and the associated “force posture” garbage agreements, which have already handballed control of Australia, “land, sea, air and cyber”, to the US, to use unilaterally as they see fit. Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong affirmed that reality in her statement that Australia “understands and respects” US ability to use Australia as a forward base of operations without informing Canberra.
Under AUKUS, Australia becomes a first strike target if — more likely when — the US decides it’s time for war with China. Australia has already become a uniquely huge tribute-paying vassal of the US, voluntarily agreeing to fund AUKUS to the tune of $370 billion, roughly equivalent to the amount the US provided to Israel between 1948 and 2023.
Paul Keating’s description of Australia as the US’s 51st state falls short, for it is already much worse than that. The US has more use for Australia as a servile outpost with no voting rights in US elections, with Australia being a willing acolyte within the US imperial menagerie quite happy to sit below Guam or Puerto Rico in that structure. Australia is in a class of its own within the US territorial arrangements, an odd-ball offshore territory terrified of being anything else except a beggar for a “forever alliance”, meaning a “forever puppet”.
To be blunt, Australian Labor-Coalition politicians are all yes-men and women to the United States, full stop. They perceive that as their unquestioned role, and cloak the servility in euphemisms. When the Labor-Coalition political class speaks endlessly about how they represent “Australian values”, which they mash with “democratic values” and then mash together as “shared values” with the US, they are oblivious to how these fatuous utterances serve to publicly confirm their obeisance to Washington.
Their claim to be “serving the national interest” is absurd when all the evidence indicates a desire to forsake any notions of Australia ever becoming “a nation for a continent”. Indeed, in their hope for due recognition as loyal servants, they are following on a path well-worn by empire loyalists since Robert Menzies. The exceptions to this general rule have been Gough Whitlam and a number of ministers in his short-lived government, Paul Keating and several others in the Hawke-Keating governments and a small number of Labor politicians opposed to the Bush-Blair-Howard war in Iraq.
As supplicants to the US, Labor and the Coalition are now as one, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton fulsomely united in accepting US defense and foreign policies as their marching orders, whether it be in providing ships and aircraft to US military maneuvers off the coast of China, or in the Persian Gulf, or supplying assistance to US operations against Yemen in the Red Sea and military equipment to Ukraine.
Further, Australia is fully committed to providing support to Israel in its genocidal war in Gaza, as part of its sycophancy to Washington. Diplomatic support for Israel has been intensive and extensive, defying summary here beyond some key examples. One clear recent example was the Australian boycott of the commemoration of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki because the Japanese excluded Israeli representation. Another, more flagrant in its disregard for international humanitarian law, was Dutton’s recent goodwill visit to Benjamin Netanyahu to express solidarity with his policies by the Coalition faction of the Australian political class.
Most importantly, Australia has continued to provide material support to Israel, while denying that it does. A telling example relates to Australia’s “support” for the UK decision to suspend 30 of its 350 arms licenses to Israel. This is disingenuous and misleading, because the British decision does nothing to halt essential parts for the main weapon of genocide in Gaza, the F-35 fighter-bomber aircraft, but simply alters the way the parts find their way to Israel via a more opaque distribution chain.
The depth of this deceit is chilling when it is understood that Australia has taken no action to cease supply of Australian-made components for F-35 warplanes, which have conducted daily indiscriminate strikes for nearly a year, turning Gaza into a gigantic killing arena, a sheer hell on earth.
Australia has no intention of stopping its support for Israeli policies in relation to the Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. There is no difference between Labor and the Coalition on this substantive issue, although it is unequivocally in plain view that the current Israeli goal is to annex all Palestinian land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.
Significantly, Australian political leaders, in their servility to the US policy agenda, are dishonest and duplicitous in their statements about adhering to international humanitarian law or what they love to call a “rules-based international order”. They routinely reject, ignore or directly violate UN conventions and ICJ rulings. Their consistent rejection of UN advice about actions which could be complicit in genocide since January 2024 is damning, the most recent example being allowing Israel to showcase its weapons at the Land Defence Expo in Melbourne.
When they speak of upholding a “rules-based international order”, Australia’s Labor and Coalition politicians are not referring to the UN and its agencies, although they pretend that they are. They are referring to a “rules-based order” as determined unilaterally by the US.
This is a fundamental element in Australia’s abject vassalage, and will increase Australia’s growing irrelevance within international forums and regional forums except as a reliable agent conveying US views. As it now stands the Australian Lablibs, as de facto branch members and aspiring careerists within the US imperium, automatically and reflexively prioritize allegiance to Washington above representation of the interests of the vast majority of Australians.
Peter Henning was an activist small farmer in Tasmania who opposed the building of Gunns’ pulp mill in Tasmania, and the destruction of water catchments and agricultural land by MIS monocultural agribusiness and the industrial pulpwood industry.
The article is a republication from PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website at: https://johnmenadue.com/australia-a-very-fine-example-of-the-ultimate-vassal-state/
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
