Comment

There is a pattern in history that keeps repeating. It is that every meaningful stride towards equality has always been met with a coordinated backlash and a corresponding retreat into grievance and contempt. The same pattern of backlash is happening to the feminist movement and to its vision to advance gender equality.

Australia has long been regarded as a successful multicultural society, integrating people from many different social and cultural backgrounds. Now, however, the sense of shared community that underpins this success is showing signs of strain. Racism and cultural intolerance have re-emerged as pressing social concerns.

It’s a timely visit for Mark Carney in Canberra, where the Canadian prime minister had fresh evidence for his contention that the old-world order is not coming back. Anthony Albanese agrees with his counterpart’s view that middle powers like ours need to actively pursue complementary strategies to advance their security and prosperity.

It’s fitting that it took a lawsuit led by a children’s educational toy company to derail Donald Trump’s petty and destructive trade war. 

Imagine a society where the government sought to outlaw its opponents, used the instruments of the state to intimidate if not terrorise, used fear to silence debate, declared some of its citizens enemies of the state, and targeted and dehumanised domestic populations.

Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines is not in fact the most important part of the AUKUS deal – they are a distraction ... AUKUS’s main game is the base that Australia intends to give to the US.

Young people who are not on the generational train of transporting wealth are trying to survive within a cruel tax system. A system that is unfair for many working people, small businesses and young people. A system that taxes not just their incomes but also their dreams.

Last weekend, I spent two days undercover at Advance’s conference, titled Evolve: Because being right isn’t enough. As a campaigner for GetUp! – the organisation Advance was created to defeat – I wanted to see this machine from the inside.

‘When the dogs are at your throat,’ Paul Keating would tell journalists, ‘you get a chunk of red meat and you throw it as hard as you can in the opposite direction.’ It works every time, he would chuckle. The media pack chases the lure, momentarily distracted from a story that was causing discomfort to its subject. Last Tuesday, Anthony Albanese went for the projectile.

As a former leader of the Liberals, I am very sad to write in these terms, but I fear the party is in its final days or, at the very least, will not govern again in the foreseeable future.