In the same week that Donald Trump and his pet Republicans went to war against their own poor huddled masses with the passing of his Orwellian Big Beautiful Bill, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong ventured to Washington to meet the man Trump once called Little Marco.
Representatives of the other two Quad partners, India and Japan, were also present, but nothing publicly emerged from that meeting apart from a brief statement about securing critical minerals independently of China. Haven’t these people heard of Zoom?
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is supposed to be the (relatively) sensible face in this cruel, insane clown car of an administration, reassuring the international community that the American experiment has not gone disastrously wrong, even as evidence steadily mounts that it’s going, going, gone.
Rubio expressed disappointment to Minister Wong that Albo and the Orange One had not yet managed to endure a handshake in the Oval Office, as the threat of tariffs and the AUKUS review continues to loom over what Wong described as a ‘strategic partnership’. There is still no meeting between the leaders organised.
Rather than looking for any excuse for Australia to escape from being handcuffed to a collapsing empire, Penny Wong appears to be digging in, saying of her conversation with Rubio, ‘We spoke about deepening cooperation across the Alliance – including through AUKUS and its part in ensuring regional security.
‘The Albanese government will continue to invest in partnerships that shape a region where sovereignty is respected and prosperity is shared,’ she said.
Lucky we don’t live anywhere near Greenland or Canada I guess.
Shared priorities?
For his part, Secretary of State Rubio continues to pretend the destruction of domestic democracy and the international rules-based order under Trump isn’t happening.
Last week he said of Australia and the other Quad partners: ‘These are very important countries, these are very important strategic partners and allies of the United States.
‘Together we have a lot of shared priorities, a lot of things we care about in the world, I think. There are many global problems but also problems that we face in our respective countries that can be solved by us cooperating together.’
The most obvious of these problems is the international climate emergency, which the Heritage Foundation and other fossil-fuel funded organisations controlling the US government are intent on accelerating.
Much has been made by Nine and the Murdoch media of the ‘uncertain’ status of the relationship between Australia and USA since the return of Trump, as though this was somehow Anthony Albanese’s fault, but the fact is that the relationship between the USA and most countries in the world is now uncertain, apart from perhaps Putin’s Russia and Netanyahu’s Israel.
While making random threats like a senile gang boss, Donald Trump is also demanding that we and other countries in the Indo-Pacific increase defence spending, presumably to counter China, although nothing concrete has been offered in return, and there’s been no suggestion that Australia’s $800 million down payment on AUKUS will be paid back if the nuclear sub agreement is dishonoured, or ripped up.
US free trade agreement
As for trade, Penny Wong told the media following her meeting with Marco Rubio, ‘We have a free trade agreement. That free trade agreement enables free trade. We want to see that free trade agreement honoured.’
Unfortunately what we want is irrelevant, and no agreement with Donald Trump is worth the paper it has ketchup smeared on.
When pressed, Wong conceded: ‘I think that the Trump administration and President Trump has made it very clear to the world that he envisages a different role for America. We understand that, and we respect that. We continue to advocate for our interests.
‘What I would say is our strategic partnership is deep. It is trusting,’ she said. ‘It is to the benefit of both nations.’
But is any of that true any more, or just wishful thinking?
Running from alligators
While Penny Wong was in Washington, Donald Trump was opening what he calls ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, (described by others as ‘Alligator Auschwitz’), a new prison camp for migrants in the middle of the Florida Everglades, which flooded days after it was completed in record time.
This facility heralds an alarming new phase in the United States, in which immigrants are demonised and potentially enslaved, and the Gestapo-like US Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) has a bigger budget than most of the world’s militaries.
Apart from delivering tax cuts to the richest people in America, killing the poor by eliminating their health care, and allowing the sale and destruction of America’s remaining wild places, this massive increase in the ICE budget and the accompanying militarisation of the organisation was the central goal of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, the passage of which Republican lawmakers celebrating by dancing and singing along to YMCA.
Marco Rubio and Penny Wong are both the children of people who left other countries seeking a better life. Now they occupy senior positions in governments that seek to stop others doing the same thing, even as those same governments create more refugees by destabilising the world via war and accelerating climate catastrophe.
How do their parents feel about that, I wonder?
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
You can find more of his writing at Patreon and Gumroad.
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