The Guardian, UK
More Australians winced than applauded when they learned of their country’s very last vote at the end of its two year term on the security council.
Image: File photo of the UN General Assembly
Just look at the nations controlled by the grubby little bribe takers: Stephen Harper of Canada and Australia’s Tony Abbott
by Anthony Lawson
The Australian delegation has provided the comic relief in diplomatic circles for some time now. Its pugilist humanoid of a prime minister, Tony Abbott, has made inane remarks about “shirt fronting” Vladimir Putin, something which distinctly did not happen at the APEC summit in Beijing. Photos were taken showing a disinterested Putin feigning interest in some zygotic life form. And Canberra’s toadies have been doing their utmost best to keep climate change off any meaningful agenda ahead of the G20 gathering in Brisbane.
What we’ve seen [tonight] is, I think, a scary, disproportionate and unnecessary expansion of coercive surveillance powers that will not make anybody any safer but that affect freedoms that have been quite hard fought for and won over a period of decades.
— Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens, Sydney Morning Herald, September 26, 2014
The current prime minister of Australia may have never had it. If he did, he has certainly lost the plot. Every national image is bound to be wrapped in some ghastly ribbon, the sort that, when untied, looks as absurd as its producer. For Prime Minister Tony Abbott, it has become necessary to articulate the worst and the dullest of patriotic slogans. His latest addition, only cursorily dusted from his days as a brash pugilist, is that of Team Australia.
There is a thesis in it. Versions of it certainly circulate: smaller, and weaker powers, tend to pre-empt the wishes of their masters or those who would promise to protect them. If performed successfully, rewards might issue from the mighty protector, be it in the form of dispensations and further guarantees of security.
It is sometimes hard to know whether those in power adopt a policy of confusion purposely, or through grand design. When it comes to the flawed policy of data retention on a mass scale, a burden that is bound to fall on telecommunications companies, the problem is most acute of all. What is to be kept? What falls within that broad term metadata?
Reacting to antagonized Palestinian snowballing protests to her government’s decision on June 5 to reverse a 47-year old bipartisan consensus on describing eastern Jerusalem as “occupied,” Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on June 13 denied any “change in the Australian government’s position.”
On June 5, Australian Attorney-General George Brandis in a statement said:
The description of East Jerusalem as ‘Occupied East Jerusalem’ is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful.
