Last week Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and his red tie flew to Washington to spend some time in the vicinity of several members of Donald Trump’s alarming inner circle. Was this an official meeting or just a random encounter on the way to the men’s room? Was anything of substance discussed? Who would know?
Marles’ office provided zero useful information to the Australian public, who were only paying the bills, while American officials said the get-together with J.D Vance and Pete Hegseth was a ‘happenstance encounter’. A few hours later they backtracked, apparently deciding Australia deserved something for its protection money after all, by saying the meeting at the White House had been ‘co-ordinated in advance’.
Former weekend Fox News host and now US defence czar Hegseth later boasted that allies in the Indo-Pacific, which presumably includes Australia, have agreed to lift defence spending, as demanded by his leader, but the main business of Trump’s flunkeys last week was their regular session of publicly praising their naked emperor’s fine threads, followed by bizarre explanations for his rapidly declining physical and mental health, which weren’t helped by his unusual absence in recent days.
While rumours of the Donald’s death turned out to be exaggerated, the life signs of American democracy remain seriously compromised, with troops on the streets of Washington, masked men arresting brown people and dragging them away to illegal camps, and Big Brother-style Trump banners hanging from buildings in sizes that would make Stalin or Mao blush.
Watching from across the Pacific, the Marles mission served only to illustrate and underline the chaotic mess formerly known as the US government. Australia needs to be looking at ways to extract itself from AUKUS and other relationships with this abusive ‘ally’, rather than following the red hat brigade deeper into the Big Muddy.
Mad as a Katter
Speaking of people who have more loose screws than Bunnings, North Queensland political representative and Akubra poster boy Bob Katter inadvertently demonstrated what Sunday’s anti-immigration rallies were all about when he threatened to punch a reporter for daring to mention his Lebanese ancestry.
Did he have a point though? Is the ethnic background of a politician relevant, if the relative in question arrived over 100 years ago? Yes, actually. Australia is a nation of immigrants, and the resulting diversity has been a big part of this country’s strength, even though people like Bob Katter’s grandfather weren’t always welcomed.
If every immigrant and descendant of immigrants was removed from Australia’s federal parliament, the place would fall silent. This is nothing new. Anthony Albanese’s father was Italian. Julia Gillard was born in Wales. Penny Wong was born in Malaysia. Tony Abbott was born in England. Sussan Ley was born in Nigeria to English parents. One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts was born in India. Even Bob Katter’s old boss Joh Bjelke-Petersen was born in New Zealand, to Danish parents.
None of this means we can’t have a conversation about migration (numbers have actually fallen recently), but how about starting with the truth about who we Australians actually are? 97 per cent of us come from people who came from somewhere else, and the remaining three percent tend to be the most welcoming among us, despite all that’s been done to them.
Internalised, cross-generational racism and self-hatred sits at the heart of a lot of dangerous bigotry in this country. Consider the Asian origins of the Perth white supremacist Jack van Tongeren, who used to enjoy fire-bombing Chinese restaurants, or the nine percent Middle-Eastern DNA of Pauline Hanson. Katter and his flag-waving friends have far more in common with the people they are attacking than any of them are prepared to admit.
Bob Katter’s forbears anglicised their name from Khittar to avoid precisely the kind of ugly racism that Australian neo-Nazis and their fellow travellers are now encouraging.
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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