by Marcus Reubenstein

There’s an outcry over Australian government funding of think tanks. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s ego may have taken a hit but hardly its funding. Marcus Reubenstein looks at the future of Canberra’s biggest war cheerleaders.

It’s hard to know where to begin with the Varghese review into federal government funding of strategic policy think tanks that ultimately recommended ‘sweeping’ changes to the way the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is run and funded. 

It’s not the end of ASPI, which is this country’s loudest voice in whipping up fears of war with China – despite hysterical reporting in The Australian, and it’s not the end of ASPI arguments that rely on virtually no facts.

ASPI will not automatically lose its Commonwealth funding; at worst it may simply be required to justify the millions of taxpayer dollars it receives each year.  

Led by former prime minister John Howard, a gaggle of right-wing politicians, security hawks and China alarmists have lined up to bemoan the supposed hobbling of ASPI. One thing completely left out of the debate is the ASPI Charter, as outlined in cabinet papers from 2000, and the charter letter ASPI publisheson its own website. 

ASPI has strayed so far from its original charter, established under Howard, one might argue its closer to returning to what it is meant to be than Australia is to getting its AUKUS nuclear submarines. 

another $5m from foreign governments, weapons makers 

Under the leadership of its inaugural executive director, Professor Hugh White, ASPI stuck to its charter that deemed, “The purpose of the Institute would be to provide policy-relevant research and analysis to better inform Government decisions and public understanding of strategic and defence issues” and “The Institute would need to operate independently of Government and of the Defence Organisation.” 

White, who is no supporter of ASPI’s heavy-handed China-threat narrative, has become a pariah amongst its apparatchiks. 

Though he’s rarely been directly criticised for his view that the China-threat is based less on an actual threat and more on the US desire to maintain its global primacy, a number of those who’ve advanced his views have been publicly cast as mouthpieces for Beijing.  

In February the government commissioned Peter Varghese, the former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to conduct an independent review into commonwealth funding of strategic policy work. 

The review did not just look at ASPI but also the Australian National University, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC), National Security College (NSC), United States Studies Centre (USSC), Perth USAsia Centre (USAC), RAND Australia, The Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) and the Lowy Institute. 

Rather than shackle these strategic think-tanks, one of Varghese’s key recommendations is for total annual funding to be increased from $40 million annually to $50 million, although the government has poured cold water on that proposal. 

Of the nine think tanks reviewed, ASPI is currently gobbling up $7.5 million in commonwealth funds with another $5 million coming from foreign governments, weapons makers and technology companies, whose sponsorship of ASPI is now almost double that of weapons makers.

It’s a convenient way for ASPI to say, ‘look we only get four percent of funding from weapons makers’, however, its tech sponsors are all involved in providing services to the US and Australian defence and national security sectors. 

ASPI and its supporters are unhappy because there’s a sting in the tail. Rather than just doling out money to the loudest voice in the room, Varghese has recommended a levelling of the field by opening funding to competitive tenders. 

However, the government response is that it “notes this recommendation”, so there’s no immediate requirement for ASPI to specifically justify its core funding and government supply contracts.

Once again, a total misrepresentation of the facts is fuelling ASPI’s narrative, the only difference is this narrative is about ASPI itself. 

Since its inception, over and above its core funding of $4 million per year, ASPI has quietly picked up 166 government supply contracts worth more than $40 million. 

Apart from being buried deep in its annual reports, ASPI is very coy when it comes to admitting how much it picks up for running workshops and seminars for the Department of Defence and other departments. Last year ASPI picked up $3.5 million in such contracts; post-Varghese there is no restriction on the continued awarding of government contracts. 

Its 2023-24 financial statements show that ASPI has $4.4 million in bank deposits, hardly the sign of a struggling research group. 

Executive director, Justin Bassi picked up a tidy $421,272.78 for his services—bearing in mind his appointment was not via an open recruitment process, rather he was installed by, then defence minister, Peter Dutton, who had sole discretion as to the appointment of the ASPI boss.

In 2023-24, the US government tipped $1.4 million into ASPI’s coffers, once again there is nothing stopping Uncle Sam from stepping in to make up any shortfall from possible cuts to Australian government funding. 

John Howard told The Australian: “The whole purpose of establishing ASPI was to provide an alternative independent source of national security advice to the government. If the implementation of any of these recommendations threatens that, then I am against it.”

Writing in the same masthead, Varghese’s view is: “The sky has not fallen, ASPI will continue to do what it does, independent thinking will remain in the control of the thinker and how well ASPI fares in the competition for funds will depend entirely on how well it does its job.”

Under the new arrangements, current levels of funding for ASPI will remain unchanged until at least 1 July 2027 – more than enough time to find more money.

Anticipating a loss of the 2019 election, the Morrison government increased ASPI’s core funding and then locked in $4 million annual payments for four years. Now in the fifth year, that funding has not been touched. It hardly supports the notion that the Albanese government is determined to kill off ASPI. 

One of the most controversial recommendations – accepted by the government – is the withdrawal of funding for ASPI’s Washington D.C. office.  The official response is: “The government agrees with the review’s conclusion that influencing foreign government policy in Australia’s interests is best done through a single voice representing the full authority of the Australian Government, principally the Australian Embassy.”

An editorial in The Australian misstated that, “The closure of ASPI’s Washington office at a time of great upheaval with the return of Donald Trump as president can only be seen as a crimping of our strategic flexibility.” It’s a line echoed across ASPI’s hawkish constituency, but the government has not stated its closing the Washington D.C. office, merely that it will no longer be funding it.

It would be a fairly safe assumption that the ASPI sales team is right now knocking on doors in Washington, soliciting cash from the State Department, weapons makers and tech companies like Amazon, which is already an ASPI sponsor. And Amazon doesn’t just sell books and employ gig workers to deliver packages; it has a $1 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Central Intelligence Agency. 

Writing in The Australian, current executive director Justin Bassi and his immediate predecessor Peter Jennings, supported by a pro-ASPI editorial, highlighted ASPI’s work on China research. 

There is no mention that the majority of its China reports are reliant on the work of junior researchers, interns, undergraduates and at least one university dropout. While ASPI has often been right to call out China, its reports have overwhelmingly been poorly researched and written, reliant on dubious source material and, at times, blatant misinformation. 

In a non-sensical defence of ASPI, The Australian editorial says, with the recommendation to justify its funding, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” The Australian calls this a brave (and unfair) new world for ASPI? 

For years, the U.S. government, death merchants and corporate interests have been paying the piper – admission from ASPI’s biggest media benefactor that ASPI plays to the tune of foreign interests. What’s more the Varghese review and its recommendations adopted by the government will not in any way stop ASPI collecting cash to continuing playing its benefactors tunes.

https://michaelwest.com.au/red-alert-attack-on-anti-china-think-tank-aspi-overblown/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME CHINA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.

Only in Australia could such an edgy political satire be put on stage. Sharp and witty, Donald’s Inferno, written and directed by Jon-Claire Lee, was launched in Sydney this month to a modest but discerning audience. Buried in its wacky story, the comedy pulled no punches in its description of current tensions between the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan. It concluded with a surprising message of hope.

The Donald of this story is Australian journalist W.H.Donald (1875-1946), who was a senior advisor to Chiang Kai-Shek during the Second World War and subsequent civil war in China. The story revolves around his afterlife in purgatory where he is appointed host of the television station. In this capacity he interviews Chiang and his arch enemy Mao Zedong, who naturally engaged in some biffing.

Both Chinese leaders had several wives during their lifetimes. Soong Mei-Ling and Jiang Qing both appear on stage. A fifth character is American Communist Sydney Rittenberg, eternally faithful to the Chinese Communist Party in spite of two prison sentences condoned if not ordered by Mao. The twist in the story is that a mysterious train trip takes Mao to Taipei and lands Chiang in Beijing. When a bomb explodes in the middle of the Taiwan Straits, the two leaders have to prevent an international crisis. They suspect the US is responsible, aiming to prolong conflict between the two sides and therefore they decide to resolve matters between themselves.

The excellent cast of local Chinese Australian actors is led by Les Asmussen who steals the show as Donald. Jon-Claire Lee, writer and director, is a graduate of acting and directing from New York University who has been working in Australia since the 1990s and has many film, TV and stage credits to his name. A review of the play is available on the Facebook page of Sydney Talent Company.

In his program notes for Donald, Lee writes:

“You may wonder why I would write a play about a Lithgow-born journalist not many people have even heard about… Do I write a historical drama or documentary about his sojourn in China when the last dynasty turned into a new republic? … I decided to use my Catholic upbringing to write a comedy in purgatory… in a ‘Truth or Consequences’ game show with conflicts revisited, alliances tested, or even new possibilities explored.”

Donald is presented in English. The audience was expected to have a modicum of understanding of the events of the Chinese Revolution, the Civil War, the Cultural Revolution and of the reasons why the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan, causing continuing political and military tensions between it and the Communist government in Beijing.  In decades past both here and in East Asia I observed deep hostility between pro-mainland and pro-Taiwan elements. A play that presented even a fictional account of a meeting between Nationalist and Communist leaders would have been unthinkable. That feeling has moderated over the years, although even today Donald would not be staged in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. In Sydney relations between the two sides are managed in an elegant way and the community is tolerant and respectful of differences of opinion. That is why I believe that this performance could only take place here.

The play is generally even-handed in its account of historical events. I found it interesting that the performance was endorsed by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia, particularly as the plot suggests that political tensions with the mainland are to some degree farcical and certainly are capable of solution if both sides can meet either here or in heaven.

As 2024 lurches to a close with wars and rumours of wars like thunderclouds looming on the horizon, it is refreshing to find a comedy like Donald to lighten the mood and even promise that things can get better if there is dialogue and compromise.

https://johnmenadue.com/a-chairman-and-a-president-walk-into-a-bar-review-of-donalds-inferno/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.