I Am Not Sure I Believe Eroding Trust In Our Hard Working, Caring Doctors Is A Good Thing At All!

This appeared last week and seems to me to rather lack an explicit evidence base for its claims. I nope he leaves OZ off his visitation list! We don’t need him or his views!

Eroding trust in healthcare a ‘good’ thing, Make America Healthy Again medical chief says

The divisive cardiologist who has the ear of Robert F. Kennedy argues the loss of trust in health systems in Australia, Britain and the US is good for patients.

Lydia Lynch and Penny Timms

Updated 12:46PMJuly 26, 2025

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It was during his time as a young medical student at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney that Dr Aseem Malhotra saw the power and pain of social advocacy in public health.

The divisive British cardiologist, who now has the ear of Robert F. Kennedy as the chief medical adviser to the Make America Healthy Again campaign, told The Australian how the war against Big Tobacco waged by Sydney University emeritus professor Simon Chapman became a major influence in his thinking.

In his lectures, Dr Malhotra often quotes Professor Chapman saying: “As soon as your work threatens an industry or an ideological cabal, you will be attacked, sometimes unrelentingly and viciously, so you have to grow a rhinoceros hide.”

And Dr Malhotra has now developed an incredibly thick hide.

With no sense of irony, the doctor who has been a leader in questioning the safety of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines and the ubiquitous use of statins for lowering cholesterol, as well as railing against Big Pharma and Big Food, tells The Australian there has been a huge loss of trust in health systems in Australia, Britain and the US.

That, he believes, is a good thing.

“For me, there’s a massive crisis of trust. I’m sure it may be the same in Australia. It’s the same in the UK, it’s same in America,” Dr Malhotra says.

“I think there has been a decline in trust, in a good way, that has opened up wider thinking about how one can improve one’s health.

“And I think the Australian public, I suspect, like the American public and the British public are becoming more concerned and asking questions, which they wouldn’t have been doing before.”

Dr Malhotra is calling for a major overhaul in medical education to better train doctors to communicate health statistics to their patients.

While he points to the public’s loss of trust in medicine, many of Dr Malhotra’s colleagues in the medical community have lost trust in his public messaging. Some argue his views are dangerous and his messages filled with misrepresentations rather than good science.

Dr Malhotra believes health has been over-medicalised and lacks transparency.

He also thinks lifestyle changes should be first-line treatments for low-risk people, rather than going straight to medications such as cholesterol-lowering statins.

“I have a deep conviction in protecting patients and the community and, you know, making sure that I and other doctors are adhering to the high standards of evidence-based medicine,” he says.

After spending years working for the NHS in Britain, Dr Malhotra now works as a private consultant at HUM2N; a longevity clinic that spruiks itself as a “biohacking” lab. It offers treatments such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which it says “may help relieve mild discomfort”; cryotherapy, which it says may “promote wellbeing”, and; vitamin IV infusions. According to the clinic’s website, membership requires a one-off payment of £499 ($1023) and a monthly fee of £349.

Dr Malhotra maintains he is not against medications, but describes as “psychopathic” the way the pharmaceutical industry makes money, and worries it has too much influence.

He now is an influential adviser to the US Health Secretary at a time when the Trump administration is looking at imposing high tariffs on imports of pharmaceuticals.

At the same time, aggressive lobbying by the powerful US pharmaceutical industry has explicitly targeted Australia’s prized Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Dr Malhotra told The Australian the PBS should “100 per cent, absolutely” be protected in trade negotiations.

“All medicines need to be affordable for the regular person,” he says.

“The evidence tells us that you can have a much more efficient, high-quality healthcare system and much lower cost income at the moment, because a lot of the costs are because of excessive prices of drugs and a lot of waste in the system for unnecessary investigations, unnecessary treatments.”

Dr Malhotra has been well known in the UK for years after he successfully campaigned while working for the NHS to get the sugar content reduced in popular foods. That was more than a decade ago and he has remained in the public eye since, talking mostly about health, nutrition and cardiology.

During the pandemic he even appeared on morning television to caution against vaccine hesitancy, and spoke of the importance of older people getting their Covid immunisations.

But that changed after his father died from cardiac issues some months later. His father’s death was not attributed to vaccines but Dr Malhotra is convinced otherwise.

Since then, he has conducted his own research, cited questionable science, and advocated for the suspension of Covid mRNA vaccines.

He has been accused of spreading misinformation and of misrepresenting statistics, including during an interview with BBC News in 2023 when he made claims about excess deaths from Covid vaccines.

The broadcaster was forced to fact-check his statements, and corrected some statements and apologised for allowing Dr Malhotra to go unchallenged, saying it should have been better prepared.

Later that year, Dr Malhotra toured Australia as the drawcard for an event titled “Curing the corruption of medicine, a new beginning”.

He used the tour to again call for the suspension of Covid mRNA vaccines and was later condemned for suggesting cricket legend Shane Warne’s death in 2022 may have been linked to the Covid vaccine. He was not the sportsman’s doctor.

That tour helped build his supporter base and he met a range of politicians, including former senator Gerard Rennick and South Australian One Nation MP (now independent) Sarah Game.

He also met respected ophthalmologist and 2020 Australian of the Year Dr James Muecke, who attended one of Dr Malhotra’s talks in Adelaide.

When photographs of the pair emerged online, after being circulated and promoted by Dr Malhotra, it led to a public uproar and headlines questioning how the celebrated ophthalmologist could support an “anti-vaxxer”.

“I attended out of respect for his years of support to me, indeed it was the first time we had formally met,” Adelaide Now later quoted Dr Muecke as saying.

“I was unaware of the content of either presentation.

“It’s really just an example of supporting friends and colleagues when they present.”

Dr Malhotra has maintained Australian connections for decades. In 2000, he says, he completed a medical school placement at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital. He also has a large social media following in Australia.

Dr Malhotra’s influence through social media worries other health professionals and doctors such as Jason Kovacic, executive director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

“Speak to any health professional and they’ll likely say that one of the biggest issues they face today is patients who make decisions about their medications based on something they heard on a podcast, read on the internet or in a book, or saw in a social post,” Professor Kovacic writes in The Australian.

“Some of the people putting out these stories are wellness influencers without any medical background, but others have science and medical CVs stretching back decades. It’s these ‘experts’ that worry me the most because, why wouldn’t you believe a doctor? Especially one that has just been promoted to one of the highest-profile jobs in the world like Dr Aseem Malhotra.”

Dr Malhotra argues that his stance on Covid vaccines and the use of statins has been misrepresented as an “extreme version” of his views, and he rejected descriptions of him as anti-vaccine or a “statin denier”.

He says he is a “big supporter of traditional vaccines” but believes the benefits of the Covid vaccine were “grossly exaggerated and the harms were underplayed”.

He insists he is “not against statins (but) against the lack of transparency in their prescription”, claiming that raw data has not been independently evaluated. As a result, he says, statins have been overprescribed to low-risk patients who would have achieved better quality-of-life outcomes through lifestyle changes.

Fellow doctors have previously complained about some of Dr Malhotra’s Covid claims to the UK’s General Medical Council, which regulates doctors.

After initially deciding it would not take action, the GMC is now reviewing that decision.

Dr Malhotra has seen the “shift” in public opinion over healthcare play out in the UK and US, and wonders if the same thing is happening in Australia, adding that he would be up for another speaking tour of the country.

“I would obviously go to keep the campaign going for better transparency in healthcare,” he says. “For me, this is an international problem.”

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/eroding-trust-in-healthcare-a-good-thing-make-america-healthy-again-medical-chief-says/news-story/c1dc8f43a502c66ab8cc745ff04a5cc0

My view is that “visiting firemen” such as this evidence free spruiker should simply go back to where they came from and leave us to just get on with it! Reading what he says suggests to me he would be better simply to go back to the USA and leave our clinicians to get on with caring for our patients.

If he has real evidence let him put it out for assessment and we can all see just how sound what he is saying is!

I trust our professional internal checks and balances to keep us from harm and  this man would not be any where near the top of my preferred advisers!

Reading has Wikipedia entry really confirms my view!

See here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aseem_Malhotra

Knowing his views will add nothing to your life! I hope he stays in the USA,,,,

What a d...h..d! 

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 805 – Results – 03 August 2025.

Here are the results of the recent poll.

Do You Believe The Australian / UK Relationship Is Of High Strategic Importance To Australia?

Yes                                                                     21 (91%)

No                                                                        2 (9%)

I Have No Idea                                                    0 (%)

Total No. Of Votes: 23

A very clear vote – with high value placed on the UK alliance!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Poor voter turnout – question must have been useless. 

0 of 23 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

Just Why Does The Trumpet of Patriots Get To Hold On To And Display My Personal Information?

This goes for your data too

I can see no valid reason!

Cybercrime

Political parties hold vast amounts of data about Australians. Experts say it’s a growing risk

Ransomware attack puts focus on privacy risks for political parties, which are exempt from many data protection obligations

Josh Taylor Technology reporter

Sun 27 Jul 2025 06.00 AEST

More than two years before the data breach of Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and United Australia parties, the federal government was warned that there was a significant risk to political parties – which are exempt from many data protection obligations – holding sensitive information on voters.

The ransomware attack on Trumpet of Patriots earlier this month was the first time Australians became aware of a major data breach of any political party. It only became public information because the party decided to report it. The attack also affected the United Australia party.

Supporters were told that data obtained in the attack could include email addresses, phone numbers, identity records, banking records, employment history, and other documents, but that the party was unsure of the amount of information compromised.

It is unclear whether Palmer’s political parties were required to publicly report the breaches at all.

Under the Australian Privacy Act, political parties are exempt from reporting on data breaches and many of the obligations under the act that govern how personal information must be handled.

The United Australia party was deregistered at the time of the attack, meaning the exemption it previously held may no longer apply, but the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner could not comment on whether that was the case.

A 2022 attorney general’s department report on privacy law reform highlighted that the broad political party exemption was a growing risk, as political parties could hold vast amounts of sensitive data including profiling on people to target in the electorate.

The report found “almost all” of the submissions to its inquiry said the exemption was not justifiable and should be narrowed or removed, and the inquiry heard there was “no clear reason why parties should not be accountable for keeping personal information secure”.

The policy thinktank Reset Australia warned in its submission that malicious actors could exploit the weaknesses in party security to interfere in democratic processes.

The attorney general’s department recommended a narrowing of the exemption for political parties, including requiring parties to protect personal information, take reasonable steps to destroy personal information when no longer needed and comply with the notifiable data breach scheme to report a breach when it happens.

Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said the Trumpet of Patriots breach was a “clear demonstration that it is no longer acceptable for political parties to enjoy an exemption from Australia’s Privacy Act”.

“Political parties not only have privileged access to the electoral roll and thereby the personal information of all voters, but also, through their memberships and organising systems, data about our political beliefs and demographics,” he said.

The information obtained by parties was very valuable, he said, and could be dangerous for those who were profiled by the parties.

“Most political parties … do take seriously their responsibilities to look after our data: the federal government regularly distributes grants to parties to help them secure their systems,” he said.

“So the good news is that removing their exemption from the Privacy Act won’t actually cause them a huge amount of effort or trouble.”

Sulston said removing the exemption would ensure people were informed if their data was lost, and those people could then seek legal or financial remedies.

“That’s much more robust than relying on parties’ goodwill or desire to avoid bad publicity.”

When the Albanese government responded to the Privacy Act review report in 2023, it agreed with many of the other recommendations in the report, but the political exemption recommendations were merely “noted”, and the first tranche of privacy changes passed in the last parliament did not include a change to the political exemption.

The privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, said it was worth assessing whether political parties should keep the exemption. “As the Australian community reels from successive breaches of their personal information, it is worth querying whether it is appropriate that political parties enjoy an exemption from privacy law,” she said.

“The exemption is not only out of step with community expectations, it is not reflective of the nature and scope of risks to Australians’ privacy in the digital era.”

Kind said people wanted more, not less, privacy protection.

“With each new data breach we are reminded of the need for Australian organisations and agencies to continue to uplift their privacy and cybersecurity practices.”

Sulston said the government’s response to the attorney general’s deparment’s recommendations was “profoundly inadequate”.

“Reporting of breaches is a bare minimum that we should expect of organisations that hold our data,” he said. “The government should make good use of their majority to push through the second tranche of privacy reforms, and include removing the parties’ exemptions.”

The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, told Sky News on Sunday that a second tranche would focus on privacy in relation to online platforms like Google, Facebook and Instagram, stating Australians are “sick and tired of their personal information not only being exploited for benefit by third parties, but also the way in which that information is not being protected”.

A spokesperson for Rowland would not confirm whether changes to the political party exemption would feature in the second tranche of legislation.

“The government will continue work on a further tranche of reforms, to ensure Australia’s privacy laws are fit for purpose in the digital age,” they said.

Trumpet of Patriots was contacted for comment.

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/27/trumpet-of-patriots-hack-calls-for-political-parties-report-data-breaches-ntwnfb

Any sensible suggestions to stop them welcome. Sadly political parties seem to be a law unto themselves,

Anyone have any ideas how to opr out of their – and all political party – data collections?

David

I Have To Say I Find The Dropping Divorce Rate Hard to Explain!

This appeared last week:

Australia news

Australia’s divorce rate is lowest in 50 years and marriages are lasting longer, according to ABS data

Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2024 figures show median marriage age was 32.8 years for men and 31.2 for women

Daisy Dumas

Wed 23 Jul 2025 19.29 AEST

Divorce rates are their lowest in 50 years and marriages are lasting longer, according to new data that reflects an increasingly selective approach to marriage and the ongoing effects of the Covid pandemic.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2024 marriages and divorces figures, released on Wednesday, reflect a downward trajectory of both marriage and divorce rates over the past two decades.

But within the data lies a case for the institution of marriage: while fewer people were getting married, marriages were both lasting longer and less likely to end in divorce.

In 2004, the marriage rate – measured per 1,000 residents over the age of 16 – was 7.1. Twenty years later, in 2024, the rate was 5.5, the same as the year before.

Last year, Australia’s divorce rate was 2.1, down from 2.3 in 2023. The number of divorces fell 3% from 2023 to 2024.

Meanwhile, marriages lasted for a median of 13.2 years – up from 12.1 in 2020 and 13 last year.

The statistics align with an Australian Institute of Family Studies report that in February found the divorce rate had in 2023 fallen to its lowest level since the implementation of the 1975 Family Law Act.

At the same time, we’re marrying and getting divorced later in life. In 2024, the median marriage age was 32.8 years for men and 31.2 for women, according to the ABS. The median age for men to divorce was 47.1 years, while for women it was 44.1.

And, while younger couples were divorcing less, divorces in the above 60 age category were rising.

There were 2% more marriages in 2024 compared to the year before – a figure that doubled to 4.1% for couples of the same or non-binary gender.

More same-sex female couples were married and divorced than male couples, while same-sex and non-binary divorces were slightly up from 1.4% of all divorces in 2023 to 1.6% in 2024.

Steep declines then a spike in marriage rates from 2020 to 2022 were a direct impact of Covid restrictions, while the pandemic saw a spike in divorce rates in 2021.

Lauren Moran, the head of health and vital statistics at the ABS, said the changing divorce rate was “a complex picture” but “2024 saw the lowest divorce rate recorded”.

She said divorce rates were heavily impacted by court administrative processes and that while the number of divorces granted was between 47,000 and 50,000 a year in recent years, fewer marriages meant there were fewer divorces.

“We are seeing declining divorce rates in younger couples, but increasing divorce rates in older couples. When marriages decreased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, the largest decreases were in marriages of younger people,” she said.

Older couples were more likely to have a longer marriage, which impacted the median length of marriage, she said.

She said there was “no clear pattern in same-gender divorce rates yet” and that the increases were “small numbers”.

Dr Jan Kabatek, a senior research fellow the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, said the declining divorce rate reflected a more selective approach to marriage.

“Fewer people are getting married and the people who are getting married are usually the ones who are more committed, either through religion or because they are older and more experienced,” he said.

He said the pandemic continued to contribute to a lower divorce rate.

“The people who might have got divorced in 2023/2024 already got divorced during Covid,” he said. “If a lot of people call it quits in 2021, the couples who survived later also have longer marriage durations. Fundamentally, the pool of people who remain married has changed.”

He also commented on the most popular day to marry, according to the ABS: 1,773 marriages took place on 24/02/2024. His own research on marriages on “specifically pleasing dates” found those unions were 25% more likely to end in divorce.

This article was amended on 23 July 2025 to clarify that the divorce rate is the lowest since the Family Law Act was enacted in 1975 rather than the lowest on record.

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/23/australia-divorce-rate-lowest-on-record-marriages-last-longer-abs-data

There are some really interesting figures and trends here and the  article is well worth a read! I have no idea of the underlying causes!

David.

Frankly I Would Not Trust Trump At All When It Comes To American Greed To Try And Profit From Our PBS

This appeared last week:

Australia’s PBS must ‘absolutely’ be protected in trade talks, says Make America Healthy Again medical adviser Aseem Malhotra

The chief medical adviser to Make America Healthy Again campaign has defended Australia’s PBS, as the Trump administration comes under pressure to drag the pharmaceuticals program into tariff negotiations.

Lydia Lynch

5:00 AM July 26, 2025.

Updated 7:26 AM July 26, 2025

The new chief medical adviser to the Make America Healthy Again campaign group has leapt to the defence of Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, insisting medicines must remain affordable, as the Trump administration comes under pressure to drag the program into tariff negotiations.

Australia’s PBS caps the price of medicines on the scheme at $31.60 for consumers and must “100 per cent, absolutely” be protected in trade negotiations, MAHA Action medical chief and British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra said.

“All medicines need to be affordable for the regular person,” he told The Australian.

Dr Malhotra, who describes the pharmaceutical industry as “psychopathic”, has direct communication with both Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya, and could be influential in convincing US policymakers to keep the PBS out of trade talks.

In a bid to pressure big pharma to shift manufacturing and investment to the US, President Donald Trump has threatened to impose import tariffs as high as 200 per cent on the industry.

In turn, the pharmaceutical lobby in the US for months has been pushing Mr Trump to use trade negotiations as a tool to make changes to the PBS, which would drive up the price of medicines in Australia.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America – which represents the US’s biggest drug manufacturers – argues US products face a system that “undervalues new, innovative medicines”, and Mr Trump should “leverage ongoing trade negotiations” to change the scheme.

During the election campaign Anthony Albanese declared the $18bn PBS, providing 930 different medicines, was “not for sale”, and vowed to lower the cap to $25 in his second term.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers this month insisted the PBS would be safeguarded in tariff negotiations, saying it was “not something that we’re willing to trade away or do deals on”.

“We see the PBS as a fundamental part of healthcare in Australia. We’re not willing to compromise the PBS. We’re not willing to negotiate or trade away what is a really important feature of the health system,” Dr Chalmers said.

Dr Malhotra, 47, is a leading critic of big pharma and represents a growing contingent inside Mr Trump’s base that believes more needs to be done to crackdown on the industry’s influence over health policy.

He believes pharmaceutical companies are “pathologically self-interested to make money” through a business model that aims to “get as many people taking as many pills for as long as possible”.

“The evidence tells us that you can have a much more efficient, high-quality healthcare system and much lower cost income at the moment, because a lot of the costs are because of excessive prices of drugs and a lot of waste in the system for unnecessary investigations, unnecessary treatments,” he said.

“What I work on, and what we need to do, is basically improve quality care at lower cost.”

Dr Malhotra has been panned by leading Australian specialists for his views on Covid-19 vaccines and belief that statin medication to lower cholesterol is being overprescribed.

He said doctors, mainly in the US, should be stripped of any financial incentive to prescribe medications.

“To me, that is unethical,” he said.

In 2015 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ordered Medicines Australia to implement a new code of conduct requiring drug companies to publicly disclose doctors to whom they provided payments and the amount paid.

Trade Minister Don Farrell on Friday defended the PBS, saying Australia would “not compromise our fundamental values and interests”, despite the decision to allow US beef imports.

“Australia is the land of the ‘fair go’, we value social justice, fairness, inclusion and equality,” Senator Farrell said.

“Programs like the PBS, which are at the heart of the health and wellbeing of our country, will never be up for negotiation under an Albanese Labor government.”

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/medical/australias-pbs-must-absolutely-be-protected-in-trade-talks-says-make-america-healthy-again-medical-adviser-aseem-malhotra/news-story/c58dde4fa8931a618043fdeef6edd8e9

There is little doubt big US Pharma just hate the PBS and would do anything to get rid of it. For Australians it provides government buying power to even up the power of big American Pharma and, as it reduces their profits, they hate it with a passion!

We all need to make sure it remains in place for the benefit of all Australians and to prevent US big pharma costing us all squillions!

Those bureaucrats who designed it deserve a very big medal and a pension increase!

You can see how good it is for us by seeing how much US big pharma hates it!

David.

Our Strategic Environs Are Not As Settled As They Were, Even Quite Recently!

 This appeared last week:

Opinion

Australia employs ‘straddle’ diplomacy with China and the US

The approach is not doctrinal, but is about speaking frankly to both Washington and Beijing.

James Curran International affairs expert

Jul 27, 2025 – 2.17pm

Here is a foreign minister speaking about Australia’s China debate: “We Australians tend to have a habit, a cast of mind, which seeks for simplicity, and is uneasy with complexity, in foreign policy. We tend to see issues in terms of simple dichotomies – black or white, either-or, all or nothing.

“It is apparent in the ways we have traditionally debated foreign policy: imperialism or isolationism; alliance or independence; regionalism or internationalism; forward defence or fortress Australia, as if these were clear, unambiguous and exhaustive choices.

“It springs from a compulsion to simplify and exaggerate, to ignore questions of degree and qualifications, to sloganise.”

The result? Policy rendered in “schoolboy terms”.

That minister was Andrew Peacock, speaking almost 50 years ago. He was referring to reactions to then-prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s trip to Beijing in June 1976, where some believed the leader got too close to the Chinese leadership. Indeed, heads were still being scratched then about how a conservative prime minister could possibly visit China and Japan before Britain and the US. Fraser’s retort to that barb was curt: “The world changes.”

In his talks with then-Chinese premier Hua Guofeng, Fraser had proposed the formation of a quadrilateral pact – comprising China, the US, Japan and Australia – to hedge against Soviet ambitions in the Pacific and Indian oceans. It never eventuated. But the point was that an Australian leader had proposed an independent initiative without checking with Washington first.

The Sydney Sun newspaper thought Fraser had gone “all the way with Hua” and frowned on the prime minister for calling into question “our dealings with traditional connections in Washington, London and Europe”.

Half a century later and precious little has changed in terms of how these visits are discussed.

“Canberra does not need to seek permission to run its own foreign policy.”

But to fall into the trap Peacock identified in August 1976 is to miss the new Australian diplomacy that is evolving with a re-elected Labor government. It is not doctrinal, nor is it a sharp discontinuity from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first term, but it is about speaking frankly to both the US and China.

It might be called the “Australian straddle”: an approach we may see emerge from Japan, too.

To Washington, the prime minister has sent a reminder of that tradition in Australian foreign policy where Canberra, knowing that great powers often play fast and loose with this country’s interests, can express its independence both within and without the alliance. So Albanese stands firm on American demands for greater defence spending, just as Trade Minister Don Farrell is emphatic on Australia wanting to do “more, not less” business with China.

To Beijing, while going in measured terms beyond the policy of stabilisation into the realm of wholehearted but selective engagement, the prime minister stood firm on foreign investment rules, ownership of Darwin Port and raising the live-firing exercises conducted by the Chinese navy earlier in the year. Albanese was clear: Australia has differences with China, but these should not define the relationship.

The prime minister knows that today’s world is not some kind of cartoonish game. He knows that most, if not all countries in the region are still balancing in some kind of way: wary of China, leery of US President Donald Trump. Though Australian officials would no doubt have briefed their Five Eyes counterparts and Japan prior to the China visit, Canberra does not need to seek permission to run its own foreign policy either, nor apologise for growing its biggest market.

But it appears that the alternative being demanded by some critics, such as John Lee, Greg Sheridan and Peter Jennings, is a return to the “drums of war” rhetoric characteristic of the Morrison years. The catastrophising over Albanese’s lack of a meeting with Trump and the fretting over his private lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping betrays the very mindset Peacock critiqued.

The Australian straddle is by nature a delicate balancing act – especially when the Albanese government is trying to calculate the next moves of Trump – but it is designed to have a more distant but still close relationship with the US and a warmer relationship with China. It has been imposed by the Trump administration’s new and callous approach to allies, bringing the realisation that Trump may drag Australia into actions against China that are self-harming in trade, economic and strategic terms.

One hopes it continues to be carried out with guile, the ultimate objective being to prevent war in East Asia. War between the US and China is demonstrably being calculated in Washington, and China’s military build-up indicates the risks are being contemplated in Beijing.

This straddle will also be expensive. To maintain the US relationship Australia has already posted $US1 billion to Washington and now flourishes a 50-year treaty with the UK to help support the illusion that Australia will acquire nuclear submarines by the early 2030s. It is to be hoped that the treaty has a get out clause, as the UK and the US have in the existing AUKUS agreement.

The Albanese government will have to handle the inevitable risks of this new diplomacy, including managing tensions that will arise with the US. The prime minister’s increased political confidence has brought him to this course, one that is also dictated by domestic politics. But he has the backing of the Australian people and is under no serious pressure from the opposition, some of whom appear to forget the clear electoral fallout from the “China threat” hot talk of the Morrison years.

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/australia-employs-straddle-diplomacy-with-china-and-the-us-20250727-p5mi28

The old curse saying “May you live in interesting time” really seems to have caught up with OZ with a vengeance and frankly I sense a degree of strategic uncertainty of a level not seen since the Vietnam War. The continents are moving and we need to stay pretty alert I reckon.

I suspect we are going to need to spend more and plan more on our defense and we are going to need to work hard to foster allies from all over.

I wonder why we are not making more of our advantages in critical minerals as we are really well placed in that domain.

How are people assessing our prospects over the next 20-30 years?

David.

I Am Pretty Sure We Need To Make Sure Our Alliances(s) With The UK Are Rock Solid Given How Uncertain I Am On Trump / Vance Reliability!

This appeared last week:

• Commentary
• Editorials

Defence study is a wake-up call

12:00 AM July 26, 2025

Anthony Albanese’s insistence that his government “will invest in the (defence) capability that Australia needs” should be viewed in light of the compelling case for strengthening northern Australia as an Indo-Pacific allied stronghold.

That need is set out convincingly in a new study for Washington’s Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment by former US deputy assistant secretary of defence Thomas Mahnken, who served under president George. W. Bush from 2006 to 2009 and as an officer in the US Navy Reserve including tours of Iraq and Kosovo. The study, reported by Cameron Stewart, is a serious wake-up call. Lifting defence spending is not about placating Donald Trump. It is about serving the nation’s interests.

By implication the study raises questions about leadership, political will and the need for the government to make sure the public is well aware of the importance of the issue. Addressing the concerns raised would require a significant realignment of budget priorities, underlining the importance of productivity fuelling growth and the likely need to divert resources from other parts of the economy, such as subsidising high-risk green projects. That vital conversation needs to happen sooner rather than later.

The study canvasses defence infrastructure in northern Australia, going beyond the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, which was right in recommending major upgrades of the northern network of bases, ports and barracks, including RAAF bases Learmonth, Curtin, Darwin, Tindal, Scherger and Townsville. Dr Mahnken also covers the importance of a long-range strike capability and an integrated air, drone and missile defence system to protect key facilities and improve “survivability”.

Geography, which has been central to Australia’s defence strategy for the better part of a century, still works in the nation’s favour. But the possibility that Australia will be attacked can no longer be ignored, the study finds. Existing defence efforts would probably be inadequate in the event of a major conflict, which is why the Australian Defence Force needs to act with greater urgency, including investing in basic logistic support, such as additional fuel and munitions storage and the expansion of maintenance facilities.

The report also emphasises the importance of close intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the region to warn of threats to Australia and its neighbours. That capability is becoming more important given the increasing level of Chinese activity near Australia’s periphery.

In contrast to the government’s relatively muted response to the PLA navy’s live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea in February, Dr Mahnken notes that during a Senate estimates hearing in February Andrew Shearer, the head of Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, confirmed Chinese naval ships had never been spotted that far south before. “He suggested this troubling incident created a new paradigm because it is setting the stage for Beijing to regularise these activities near Australia,’’ the report says.

Beijing has steadily increased its ability to project naval power into Australia’s neighbourhood. In May 2022, for example, a Chinese spy ship operated off the coast of Australia for nearly a week, spending days near the Harold E. Holt Communications Station in Exmouth, Western Australia, which provides very-low-frequency communication transmission services to Australian and US submarines.

As Australia and Britain strengthen their AUKUS ties, co-signing a new 50-year treaty, Dr Mahnken’s study notes that the Virginia-class submarines to be acquired under AUKUS have the speed, range and endurance suited to the Pacific region. By 2035, however, the ADF will have at most two Virginia-class subs in its inventory, constraining operations in the meantime.

On Thursday, Defence Minister Richard Marles told the ABC that the current era of strategic contest was being shaped by the biggest increase in conventional defence spending seen since the end of the Second World War – from China: “without strategic reassurance, in a sense that there’s not a clear articulation of why that defence spending is occurring”. Australia needed “to be making sure that we are facing the complex strategic circumstances”. The process, Mr Marles said, included updating the National Defence Strategy every two years. It was due in the first or second quarter of next year.

Judging by the issues raised by the CSBA report, the next NDS will demand hard decisions because the time available to create an expanded, resilient defence infrastructure suited to 21st-century warfare is limited. The report’s insights and the opportunities our alliances afford must not be wasted. Business as usual, with defence on the backburner, no longer is good enough.

Here Is The link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/editorials/defence-study-is-a-wakeup-call/news-story/bf8d0f94dd8dfc6cbdab9314be2e60c9

Frankly I reckon if push comes to shove I am more confident of the UK than the US!

While I would like to keep both on side, with Trump as president my confidence levels are not as high with the US as I would like.

We can forget that the UK is a very well armed nuclear power in its own right (to counter Russia), and a pretty good long term friend! Maybe they have a nuclear sub or two to spare - they do have at least 5-6 already? (Note some of the UK subs, like the US, are both nuclear powered and armed - which is a pretty dramatic step up in force projection and deterrence, but unlikely to be available to us, except in pretty dire circumstances!. However, it sure can't hurt to have the Brits on our side!)

What do others think?

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 804 – Results – Sunday 27 July 2025.

Here are the results of the recent poll.

Was Mr Albanese's Recent Visit To China A Success For Australia's Interests?

Yes                                                                     20 (67%)

No                                                                      10 (33%)

I Have No Idea                                                    0 (%)

Total No. Of Votes: 30

A pretty clear vote – with hope that Mr Albanese did good for us all!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Not bad voter turnout – question must have been decent. 

0 of 30 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.