2.23am EST02:23
The employment minister, Stuart Robert, has spoken to 4BC Radio and got stuck into Queensland’s quarantine requirements.
Robert said:
“I am sitting in quarantine on the Gold Coast. Home quarantine because I’ve arrived from Canberra. So I’ve arrived from the sitting of the federal parliament from the most vaccinated city on earth, Canberra, and I have come to Queensland on a plane with the defence minister amongst others. We went straight into quarantine yet if I was in New South Wales, I could fly to Mumbai and back again and go to the footy and go out dancing all night. Indeed whilst I have been in quarantine the prime minister has gone to the G20 in Rome and COP 26 in Glasgow and come home and he’s now in the Hunter Valley, connecting with Australians and yet I went to the most vaccinated city on Earth and it is still a hotspot? I mean it’s ridiculous, Scott just ridiculous.”
Robert also took aim at the fact some Queensland residents won’t be allowed to return until 17 December, when the state reaches the 80% vaccination threshold.
He said:
It is dreadful. No government should ever have the power to decline one of its residents, one of its citizens, returning home like this. It is a wider discussion for another day but I find that simply outrageous and a complete negligence of duty by Premier Palaszczuk.
Robert is a frontbencher in the Morrison government, which not only has the power to prevent its citizens returning home but exercised that power temporarily excluding citizens returning from India to prevent the Delta strain entering Australia, in a move that was upheld by the federal court.
1.11am EST01:11
Some more from the new Lowy Institute podcast with Penny Wong:
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson was asked how she would reassure Southeast Asian countries about the Aukus arrangement. Wong said it required “engagement” and less emphasis on Anglosphere narratives:
“Whenever we’re dealing with Southeast Asia, we have to remember the way in which historical narratives can shape people’s interpretation of events. We still have a way to go in demonstrating to the Southeast Asian nations that we’re not simply a primarily Anglo-outpost post-colonial power, and we’ve only recently had a prime minister who kept talking lovingly of the Anglosphere.”
(That would be Tony Abbott.)
Wong continued:
“So, we have to remember that how some things are understood and received is in part informed by historical frames, and so we need to be very clear about the modern Australian narrative about who we are. Part of that on Aukus, I think is to remind people that this is ‘in addition to’ not ‘instead of’. So a partnership between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom that shares greater technology that is actually quite unremarkable. It’s what we already do. It’s been formalised into an agreement between governments. It’s not an alliance, it’s not a treaty. It’s an articulation and a formalisation of what we already do. And part of the problem with the way in which it was announced is because Mr Morrison sought to make it as big as he did, it was interpreted, I think, differently in the region.”
On China, Wong said Australia’s relationship with Beijing had “deteriorated in great part because China has chosen to become much more assertive, and at times aggressive, and … because China is engaging in coercive economic activity”. She said that was “something all of us should be pushing back on”.
Wong argued there were enduring differences in the relationship that would need to be managed regardless of who was in power in Canberra – including on human rights and the South China Sea – but added that the Australian government should not inflame rhetoric for domestic political purposes. Wong said as foreign minister she would “talk much more openly about the experience of Chinese-Australians through this period”, pointing to research showing it had been “a very difficult time”.
The full podcast can be found here.
12.57am EST00:57
Labor has called on the Australian government to conduct an internal review of the handling of the Aukus nuclear-powered submarines announcement.
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, said she believed the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had become less influential in Canberra, and she hoped that was “part of the explanation for the latest debacle”. She told the Lowy Institute podcast, The Director’s Chair:
“In terms of most recent diplomatic stoush, I hope that DFAT and the national security community do undertake an internal review about what has gone wrong in terms of the Aukus announcement and the clear diplomatic problems with the French, and some of the public statements of the Americans.
If it is the case that the advice was good, but [Scott] Morrison didn’t take it, then there’s clearly only an issue at the political level. But I suspect there are also things that should be learned about how this was managed in government, in terms of the advice of the department and whether that advice was influential. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
The submarine announcement is grounded in a capability argument and there is a compelling capability argument [for nuclear-propelled submarines]. But as you know, when you make a decision in the national interests which you know is going to be a difficult decision to land, you have to do the whole job and you have to focus on what is it that we can do to minimise the blowback, minimise the damage to Australia from landing such a decision. Clearly, that was not done. And I hope those in the leadership of the department and the broader national security community take this opportunity to reflect on that.
I think there are demonstrable failings from our leaders, politicians, some demonstrable failings from Mr Morrison, but I hope at a bureaucratic level that there is some thinking about it.”
The podcast was recorded on Friday but released today. Incidentally, former Labor prime minister Paul Keating is due to address the National Press Club on Wednesday and has been scathing about the Aukus plan.
Updated
at 1.02am EST
12.22am EST00:22
Save the Children was not alone in stressing the scale of the crisis in Afghanistan in a Senate inquiry this afternoon.
Tim Watkin, director of policy and advocacy at at the Australian Council for International Development, said the worst was yet to come as winter set in.
Watkin told senators:
“If there is one point we want to impress upon you, it is the scale of the humanitarian crisis unfolding across Afghanistan and the urgency that is needed in response … Over half the country is living in extreme poverty; 23 million people are forecast to face acute hunger; in the middle of a pandemic, the health sector is ‘hanging by a thread’; the situation is so desperate that starving Afghans are being forced to sell their own children to feed the rest of their family. We know the Australian government is working with its counterparts on how to deal with the Taliban, but the longer we take, the more the Afghan people will suffer.”
Watkin urged Australia to take an active and leading role in multilateral efforts to resolve operational challenges which are restricting the provision of life-saving aid.
“That means making the case for humanitarian safeguards in the UN sanctions regime. There are precedents at the UN on similar sanctions regimes, but for Afghanistan they are not being exercised. Beyond the immediate crisis, Australia – with its international partners – should plan to preserve the development gains that have been made. Humanitarian assistance is a bandage solution: it will not replace the provision of public services which are under threat and at-risk of collapse.”
Watkin also said the Australian government must strengthen efforts to support safe passage for those seeking to leave Afghanistan and increase the humanitarian refugee intake.
