 Hon Annastacia Palaszczuk
Premier and Minister for the Olympic and Paralympic Games
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Palaszczuk Tougher hate crime and serious vilification laws for Queensland
Queensland Government slash land tax by 50 per cent Build-to-Rent developments
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| Southport Rental Apartments Photo Blow the Truth |
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Jones Blows the Truth on Gates called out by Roberts in Parliament
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Bill Gates Called Out For Vaccine Mass Murder By World Leaders
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Dan Andrews Cementing Victoria’s Relationship With China
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| “I look forward to being the first Australian leader to visit China since the onset of the global pandemic – continuing our long-held relationship with China on trade and culture, and further strengthening our deep ties.” |
The Andrews Labor Government is cementing Victoria’s strong and enduring relationship with China, with Premier Daniel Andrews set to be the first Australian leader to visit the country since the onset of the pandemic.
As part of a four-day trip this week, the Premier will meet with senior officials from the Ministry of Education and Beijing Government to discuss our long-held trade and cultural ties, and the return of Chinese students to Victoria – continuing their studies at our world-class higher education institutions.
In addition to Beijing, the Premier will travel to Jiangsu and Sichuan, meeting with key senior officials from Victoria’s sister states – deepening our strong relationships with these provinces, and exploring ways to further strengthen partnerships.
Around 42,000 Chinese students are currently enrolled with Victorian providers, with the Labor Government recently announcing a $10 million investment in the Study Melbourne Hub in the CBD, which provides free help and advice to international students around accommodation, mental health and employment programs.
Additionally, Victoria’s first overseas Study Melbourne Hub was established in Shanghai in 2021 – offering a space for Victorian education providers to engage with prospective students.
China is Victoria’s main trading partner, with two-way trade valued at almost $40 billion in 2022.
This will be the Premier’s seventh visit to China since the Labor Government came to office, building on previous trips held in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and two in 2019.
Attribution: Premier of Victoria Dan Andrews
Katter MP if you take away coal, you bankrupt this country.
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| Hon Bob Katter MP |
Mr BOB KATTER MP (Member for Kennedy): I agree with my colleague on the necessity to restrain the exponential growth
in CO2. I do not agree with my colleague on abolishing coal. If my honourable colleague seriously thinks this
country can do without coal, well, let me point out that we have only three exports: iron ore, coal and gas. We
gave the gas away, so we get nothing at all out of it. All these things are worth over a hundred billion dollars.
The next things down the list are maybe gold, cattle and aluminium, worth about $15 billion—they were the
last time I looked, anyway. So we’ve got the big three and nothing else. This House gave away one of them
for nothing. It gave all the gas away for 6c a unit. We’re now buying our own gas back for $49 a unit. I speak
with authority because I was the Minister for Mines and Energy in what was then the biggest mining state in
Australia—Queensland.
Mr Speaker, if you take away coal, you bankrupt this country. Start picking out the hospitals that you’re going
to close—just pick them out—because there’s no money. Already in Queensland, because they’ve got no money,
they’ve closed, for the first time in 110 years, outpatient services. That’s in Queensland, where we were opening
up coal mines again and again.
There’s a second issue here. Von Clausewitz, in the best book on warfare ever written, said that if goods do not
cross borders then guns will. If you think a tiny little country of 24 million people, which happens to be Anglo
and European, in the middle of Asia is going to tell China and India that they can’t have any coal, well, mate,
you’re asking for trouble—big trouble. And you mustn’t have read many history books—I can tell you that!
In a concession to your point of view: surely, if you’re going to let the coal go, you say that all of the stations have to
be heli-stations, which halves the amount of coal? Surely you get off your backside and make sure your coal-fired
power stations in Australia are converted over? You have to do this—and I’m not being patriotic here—in North
Queensland because we’ve got all the water. I bless the new Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya
Plibersek, because she told me the name of the algae that’s used. Michael Kelly, who was a prominent minister in
this place, was advocating the use of algae some considerable time ago. If you’ve got a huge area of land and a lot
of water, you can take all of the emissions from a coal-fired power station and turn them into a profitable product.
So let’s not believe that coal is the great evil, when in fact you can convert that coal into food through algae. A
great advocate for the environment and dealing with climate change is no less a person than the minister, and the
great advocates are now looking at where the answers are. But to cripple Australia and bankrupt Australia is not
the answer. And to provoke a fight with China and India is just the act of an imbecile, quite frankly.
Attribution Parliament of Australia
The transcript is in Original Form to comply with the Parliament of Australia Media Guideline
20 years on, how the invasion of Iraq War backfired on the US
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| Soldier, Humby and Tank in Iraq War |
March 2003, then President George W Bush approved the military attack, with major repercussions for US politics, and global perceptions of the country
Twenty years ago, the world was shaken by one of the major geopolitical events of this century. On the morning of March 20, 2003, the US officially launched its illegal invasion of Iraq. The rationale was based on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties with terrorists, and intelligence regarding the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, both claims turned out to be false and were later refuted.
Russian political analysts believe that the real reasons behind the invasion of Iraq included a desire for control over oil fields, the naive hope of creating a ‘showcase of democracy’ in the Middle East, and a demonstration of the ‘fight against terrorism’ to US voters. None of these goals was achieved, but the grievous consequences of the endeavour are evident.
The reasons behind the invasion
Seniors, More social housing being delivered in Cairns
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Housing Queenslanders a priority for the government Fund to $2 billion.
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Pentagon releases video of doomed drone chased by Russian Su-27 fighter jet
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| Russian Su-27 fighter jet |
The US Department of Defense had previously accused pilots of reckless flying over the Black Sea.
The Pentagon released a video on Thursday, which it said was shot from a US MQ-9 Reaper drone – during a close encounter with a Russian Su-27 fighter jet – before the American aircraft plunged into the Black Sea earlier this week.
The 50-second clip provided to the media shows an interceptor plane approaching the drone from behind and apparently ejecting fuel as it climbs.
The Pentagon claimed that Russian jets made several such maneuvers on Tuesday, including one in which the unmanned aircraft’s tail propeller supposedly got hit and damaged. The footage appears to show two of them, with the camera glitching both times.
Source: rt.com
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Paul Keating lashes Albanese government over AUKUS, calling it Labor’s biggest failure since WW1
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| National Press Club |
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has launched a swinging attack on the Labor government over the AUKUS submarine agreement, accusing Anthony Albanese of relying on “two seriously unwise ministers, Penny Wong and Richard Marles”.
Keating lashed the deal for a tripartite build of nuclear-powered submarines as “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription” in the first world war.
“We have gone from a defend Australia to a forward defence policy,” Keating said, while insisting China posed no threat to Australia.
He made his criticisms in a long speech and question-and-answer session at the National Press Club.
In a direct challenge to Albanese, Keating said:
I dare the prime minister to explicitly suggest or leave open the question that Australia might go to war over Taiwan – at the urgings of the United States or anyone else.
Keating said the Chinese had never implied or said they would threaten Australia. He added that threatening Australia would mean “an invasion”.
It doesn’t mean firing a few missiles off the coast like the Japanese submarines did in 1943, firing a few things into the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
It would mean bringing an armada of ships with a massive army to invade, which it would not be possible for the Chinese to do. “We wouldn’t need submarines to sink an armada,” he said.
Keating said one of the critical problems in Australian policy was “that defence has overtaken foreign policy. As a consequence, we’re not using diplomacy.”
He recalled saying previously that Taiwan was not a vital interest of Australia’s – and that remained the case.
In earlier times, he said Labor has “invariably got the big international ones right”. This includes former Labor leaders Arthur Calwell opposing Australian military participation in the Vietnam war and Simon Crean opposing the Iraq war.
This one, AUKUS, is where Labor breaks its winning streak of now over a century.
Falling into a major mistake, Anthony Albanese, befuddled by his own small target election strategy, emerges as prime minister with an American sword to rattle at the neighbourhood to impress upon it the United States’ esteemed view of its untrammelled destiny.
Labor quickly supported AUKUS while in opposition after then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced it with the US and UK leaders in 2021.
And after the announcement of the submarine program details, which could cost Australia up to A$368 billion over three decades, Albanese said “a new chapter in the relationship between our nation, the United States and the United Kingdom begins”.
Anthony Albanese with US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the AUKUS announcement in San Diego.
Keating said he had generally found Albanese to be responsive to his calls, texts and emails. But last month when he spoke to an Albanese staffer seeking a conversation with the PM, especially about AUKUS, the message was delivered but Keating said he “heard nothing” from the prime minister.
“The fact is, he did not wish to hear the message or have the conversation,” he said.
Keating was especially scathing about Wong, the foreign minister, and Marles, the defence minister.
“Penny Wong took a decision in 2016, five years before AUKUS, not to be at odds with the Coalition on foreign policy on any core issue,” he said. Under this approach, “you may stay out of trouble but you are compromised. Self-compromised.”
Though Keating said Marles was “well-intentioned”, he believed the defence minister was “completely captured by the idea of America.”
And the then-opposition leader [Albanese] not ever having displayed any deep or long-term interest in foreign affairs, fell in with Wong and Marles as leader of the great misadventure.
Keating said Albanese this week “screwed into place the last shackle in the long chain the United States has laid out to contain China”.
No mealy-mouthed talk of ‘stabilisation’ in our China relationship or resort to softer or polite language will disguise from the Chinese the extent and intent of our commitment to United States’ strategic hegemony in East Asia with all its deadly portents.
Among his targets, Keating also attacked Andrew Shearer, the head of the Office of National Intelligence, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He said, “remarkably, a Labor government has picked up Shearer’s neo-con proclivities and those of ASPI”, describing the latter as “a pro-US cell” headed by a former chief of staff to ex-Foreign Minister Marise Payne.
He also attacked journalists, including those asking questions, telling one he should hang his “head in shame” for the articles he had co-authored.
Keating said the majority of the Labor party in the branches would share his views, saying when the average branch member “gets onto this […] there will be a big reaction”.
Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.