They're all "really bad ideas" and an exercise in "total wankery", according to Rigby.

Current realpolitik makes Australia more exposed than it has been since the height of

World War II.

As Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the ANU and a former deputy

secretary of Defence, says, "we are clinging harder to an image of the way the world

works which was always idealised and is now completely divorced from reality".

He calls it Australia's "Pollyannerish approach" which was under strain last week amid

renewed moves to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom, China giving

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop a proverbial clip around the ears, and a US

court overturning President Trump's second iteration at a travel ban from six Muslim majority

countries.

What all this means is unclear, beyond more evidence that the old world order is

unravelling.

According to Professor Rigby, a former Australian consul general in Shanghai, and

executive director of the ANU's China Institute, Australia has been living under the

"relatively benevolent tutelage" of the "Anglosphere" – first Britain, then the US – for

almost 230 years.

 read more:

www.afr.com/.../australia-its-time-to-grow-up--we-cant-rely-on-the- anglosphere-to-help-us-20170316-gv0885

Malcolm Turnbull made an announcement today about race. Nominally it was about jobs. But it was really about race.

Moments after the prime minister announced that 457 visas for skilled foreign workers would be abolished and replaced with a different set of visas, Pauline Hanson tweeted that “The Government will deny their tough talk on immigration & plan to ban 457 visas is because of One Nation but we all know the truth!”

And we do.

Hanson wasn’t exactly right, because Turnbull didn’t exactly deny it. When asked that question – an obvious question even without Hanson’s tweet (which came around the time that Turnbull began speaking) – he bumbled through an answer about it being the result of government processes.

To be fair to Turnbull, he’s not the first politician to have made a race announcement under the pretext of a jobs announcement. Six months ago Bill Shorten – who had already pledged that “we're not going to lose our blue-collar voters like the Democrats did” – achieved a very similar thing by announcing his own (not quite so drastic) crackdown on 457s.

And sure enough, not long after Shorten’s announcement, Hanson tweeted, “It seems Labor’s now taking its cues from One Nation. Good to see.”

Hanson may not be a very reliable witness, but as I wrote at the time, Shorten’s rhetoric cynically played to the resentment felt by some Australians about migrants. Foreign workers, he said, are “taking the jobs of nurses, motor mechanics, carpenters, auto-electricians. These are the jobs which can be done by Australians and we make no apology for saying Labor’s approach to the Australian economy is buy Australian, build Australian, employ Australians.”

Turnbull’s rhetoric tells the same story. This announcement was about “Australian jobs” – fine, fair enough – but also about “Australian values”. Got that? Still not enough evidence for you? He managed to sneak in references to “border protection” and “people smuggling” as though they were relevant in any way. It was almost comical. This is about pesky foreigners and all the troubles they bring.

Shorten’s policy was termed “Australia first”. Turnbull today said his policy was about “putting Australians first”.

In other words, no one wants to be left out of the nationalism auction.

read more:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/sean-kelly/2017/18/2017/1492498491/r...

remember when — march 1959