“I’m not going to, as Australia’s Prime Minister, give a daily commentary on statements by the US president.”
So said Anthony Albanese on February 5 in response to United States President Donald Trump’s declaration that the US would “own” and “level” Gaza.
To be sure, no one could respond to every bit of unhinged drivel that drops out of Trump’s mouth.
But this was more than that.
The president of the most powerful state in the world, one to which Australia has committed to go to war with via the AUKUS agreement, has proposed the mass ethnic cleansing of 1.8 million people.
It is a violation of international law.
Whether we actually see US troops on the ground in Gaza, or resorts built over the mass graves of Palestinians, is not the point.
It was Trump’s way of giving apartheid Israel free rein.
Albanese’s mealy-mouthed dodging of Trump’s declaration was his way of signaling that Australia will tag along, albeit with a little bit of hand-wringing.
None of this comes as a surprise. Behind the scenes, in late 2023, the Joe Biden administration unsuccessfully tried to convince Israel’s Arab neighbours to accept a mass population transfer.
Furthermore, the muted response of other Western leaders to Trump’s refusal to rule out using force to seize control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, on top of their support for Israel’s genocidal violence, has exposed their shallow commitment to international law.
Labor’s capitulation to the language and substance of Trump’s agenda has dire implications for politics here.
Take the spate of antisemitic arson and graffiti attacks. For the last 16 months, Labor, the Coalition and much of the corporate media have dishonestly smeared defenders of international law and human rights as antisemitic.
But when tech billionaire Elon Musk throws a double Nazi salute, or promotes the far-right, racist Alternative for Germany party in Germany and the jailed British fascist and thug Tommy Robinson, they have nothing to say.
The real promoters of antisemitism get a free pass.
Just as insipid was foreign minister Penny Wong’s response to Trump’s executive order rejecting transgender identity.
This raises the possibility that transgender people could be blocked from entering the US under their legally recognised name and gender identity.
But when quizzed by ABC Radio, Wong passed the buck saying: “It is a matter for the United States”.
Labor in government has long been wedded to pro-capitalist neoliberal economic policy. It tries to combine this with some progressive posturing on social issues, but its pragmatic adaptation to Trump has ripped even this fig leaf away.
While the far-right may still hyperventilate about Labor being too “woke”, it is now more obvious than ever that Labor Party stands for nothing at all — other than try to cling on to office.
Albanese’s refusal to counter, let along condemn, Trump’s most egregious executive orders, is a green light for Dutton to emulate Trump’s approach.
Dutton may be sounding more measured, but he is running hard on the same talking points.
An example of this is his attempt to capture the angry young man’s vote by talking up the “anti-woke revolution” in an interview with millionaire podcaster Mark Bouris.
After their obsequious grovelling and references to Australia's “special relationship” with the US, Trump’s decision to slap a 25% tariff on Australian steel and aluminium puts both Albanese and Dutton in a difficult spot.
It would be some irony if Bissaloy Australia, which supplies steel to the US nuclear submarine production industry, becomes caught up in this tariff war.
Even more extraordinarily, Trump’s move came less than a week after the federal government made its first payment of US$500 million as part of the AUKUS deal, a US$3 billion untied and non-refundable contribution to US submarine building capacity.
There is no reason to expect that Trump would exempt Australian imports, given he has imposed a 25% tariff on Canada, the US’s largest trading partner.
Even if he does, there is no certainty that he won’t keep the US$3 billion AUKUS payment and then cancel the deal.
It’s worth taking things back to first principles.
AUKUS has nothing to do with defending Australia from any external threat; it is a project to block China’s growth and influence, by force if need be.
The rhetoric about defending a “rules-based order”, always hypocritical nonsense, now lies in tatters.
AUKUS is a fundamentally aggressive project that threatens peace, not just in South East Asia and the Pacific, but across the planet.
The hundreds of billions spent on gearing up for war precludes a serious effort to confront global warming: It’s a promise for a savage war for resources.
The apocalyptic violence unleashed on Gaza is just a taste of the future.
We need to fight for an independent foreign policy, based on peace and justice, across the world. That begins with cancelling AUKUS and resisting the Trump agenda.
[Sam Wainwright is a national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance.]