Australia is a global citizen with a selective conscience
Navi Pillay is a highly respected jurist from South Africa, was a judge on the High Court of South Africa, a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and, more recently, a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
And she’s been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her lifetime of work in the field of advancing human rights, including the conclusion that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, a finding that was very inconvenient to the Western alliances all around the world.
Zionists united and sprang into action to condemn both Pillay and the award, suggesting her report was “blood libel” – and does anyone really know what that means anymore – questioning why it’s never granted to a Jewish person (actually, yes, there have been nine recipients and, sorry, you can’t win it every year), and bellowing out that the Nobel Foundation has been tarnished forever because of this “outrageous” decision, overlooking the fact that their outrage should have started a long time ago when Henry Kissinger received the award in 1973, followed by Menachem Begin in 1978.
Once again, US President Donald Trump has been rightly snubbed, but his fury has resulted in the United States sanctioning the International Criminal Court itself, ramping up its campaign to target the individual officials who are investigating the crimes committed by the likes of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – and possibly Trump himself. As always, the pursuit of justice is unacceptable when it goes a little bit too close to the rich and powerful, and their many friends.
And what’s Australia saying at the moment? Not much at all. There were no words of congratulations to Navi Pillay from the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, or from Foreign Minister Penny Wong. There was no condemnation of the US sanction against the ICC, even though a joint statement from Britain, Canada, Japan and five European governments condemned this action.
But, sometimes these actions are too difficult to judge from afar – as Wong infamously said about Gaza – and Oslo and Washington are even further away than Palestine – so, it’s better to play it stupid, than say anything meaningful at all, remembering that Wong also said that Donald Trump had made “the biggest contribution to peace that we have seen in a very long time”.
All this brown-nosing behaviour just to get that seat on the UN Security Council is becoming unbearable.
Red lines, rubber spines
What is the red line for the federal government? It’s obvious that defending human rights is the line that it will not pass, despite all the rhetoric about being a benevolent global citizen.
The Red Lines Package was introduced to Parliament by Sophie Scamps, David Pocock and fellow crossbenchers, and it’s a comprehensive package that would restrict Australian weapons, investments and trade from that is contributing to genocide, war crimes and illegal occupation. These are not revolutionary principles – it’s very clear that Australia shouldn’t be assisting any country in the world to finance, equip or profit from atrocities. The package is not directly towards a specific country, and would apply internationally, although obviously it would be urgently applied on Israel with regards to the situation in Gaza and West Bank.
And it’s a very clear package: it targets defence supply chains, investment and trade in illegal settlements, and acts to prevent genocide, and it also seeks to implement a higher level of transparency, reporting requirements and enforceable legal obligations. This would mean that the notion of we take international law seriously would involve something far more substantial than a minister standing in front of a media conference and claiming it’s too difficult to judge from afar.
Labor and the Coalition voted together against referring this legislation to a Senate inquiry.
Let that sink in: Labor and the Coalition voted against a comprehensive package that would stop Australia trading with a country that is involved in genocide, war crimes and illegal occupation.
It’s obvious that for this Australia government – and the opposition – there is no red line, and it needs to be condemned for its actions of acquiescence and denial.
Coming up next: a public execution
The United States is continuing its descent into a fascist state and the Secretary of Defense – oh, sorry, the Secretary of War – Peter Hegseth, has just added to this decline by announcing a livestream of an execution by firing squad in December.
Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people in 2009, and there’s no denying the horror of his crimes, but does a state need to add to that brutality of inviting the entire world to watch a group of gunmen fire bullets into a man’s head and watch him die?
This is the politics of extreme cruelty, and seems to be a natural extension of the actions of ICE and other police officers in the US: this is a secretary of defence – sorry, war – who wants to demonstrate his strength, cultivate the outrage and package a livestream death as proof that this is an administration that means business, goddammit.
But this is a macabre event, and the only things are missing to take it to the next level would be to have the event presented a pay-per-view, or sponsored by Walmart and the National Rifle Association. And there are the exact events that the US has condemned Iran, Saudi Arabi and Afghanistan of doing, countries which frequently hold public executions, albeit without the streaming or broadcasting that the US has decided will take this experience to the next level.
And what’s Australia’s position on this? Officially, it opposes capital punishment in all circumstances, for all people. But they’ve been very quiet on this public execution. Amnesty International has urged Albanese to seek a commutation of Hasan’s sentence and to urge the US to abandon this broadcast.
This is yet another test of the principles of this Australian government, after failing in most the previous exams. It should condemn this action, and if it’s not going to do this, it should block access to the footage which at least would limit its distribution within Australia.
Australia should be condemning abuses whether it sees them, and watching this macabre event debases all of humanity. The test always has to be: would this be condemned if it was the Taliban or Al-Qaeda holding this degrading event? If the answer is yes, then the United States should be condemned too. Otherwise, human rights rhetoric is just a façade that Australia always fails to speak out on, just because the actions are perpetrated by an ally.
The latest Newspoll
Newspoll has released its latest opinion poll and in the primary vote, Labor is on 29 per cent, One Nation on 28 per cent, the Coalition is on 20 per cent and the Australian Greens on 14 per cent. Oh for the glory days when experts would say that to win an election, a party needed to have a “4” in front of its primary vote, but those days are long gone: in modern politics, a political party would be very satisfied, if not smug, if their primary vote has a “3” in front of it.
Labor has improved slightly and One Nation has slipped since the previous poll, but it’s not really great news for anyone. The government’s support still remains weak; the official opposition still trails One Nation, and Anthony Anthony is still as unpopular as a leech stuck in a boot during a camping trip.
For Labor, there will always to that temptation to treat the fragmentation that’s happening on the right as a form of political insurance from losing office. But just treading water because your opponents are deeply divided is hardly a sign of inspirational politics. The voters who are struggling with their rents, their mortgages and grocery bills need material improvements, rather than another explanation of why reform need to wait for… whatever.
For Angus Taylor, the only policy that he seems to talk about incessantly is migration, and his cuts to the numbers have failed to make an impact, at least in the opinion polls. One Nation’s support needs to be analysed, rather than dismissed outright, as the anger at established politics is very real; whether Hanson offers workable answers is another matter entirely, because her style of politics is to complain about everything with a loudspeaker amplified with a megaphone, but then deflect the solutions into a lead balloon and hide it, so no one realises that her ideas can’t fly.
The Greens have gone up slightly and this should give the new leader David Shoebridge some encouragement, but it’s not yet the sign of a leadership breakthrough. His challenge is to turn discontent into a credible program for housing, services and economic security.
We can examine the entrails of this opinion poll for a long time, but the trend has already been established. Australia is no longer the country where the electorate considers which party is the best equipped to lead the country, but now looks at who is the least worst. And that’s a significant change.
Thank you so much for this survey of an utterly shameless and cowardly government , hoping that by merely being the
“least worst” they will manage to cling on to power and continue their cowardice , their doing NOTHING of any significance for those whom they were elected to serve , while grovelling to every order and whim of America , Israel , and their corporate donors .
There are words for this obscenity , which is shared by the Coalition lot , and which would keep them awake at night if they even had a shred of a soul . No wonder Pauline and Gina have stepped into the vacuum . 😳
I would like to rub the faces of Albanese and “it’s too far away to judge “Wong in multitudes of videos of the barbaric evil of the genocide , and have them forced to defend their moral bankruptcy to the Australian public . ( I include the NSW Premier in this group ).
It seems there is serious work to be done in the area of public education , now embarrassingly underfunded , that many
Australians might begin to learn more of the facts of our history , and the ugly history of colonialism in general . Including
Courses in critical thinking . That Albanese , Wong , Marles and Minns treat the public with such utter contempt ( as morons who don’t deserve any respect ) is unforgivable . As I type this, I’m wearing my Gough Whitlam T shirt . He must be spinning in his grave .
I am so ashamed! I write to Penny Wong virtually weekly about our cowardice and acceptance of any vile acts by the powerful. Her minions don’t even acknowledge any more. We have no right to criticise Americans for their apathy in the face of great wrongs as we are just as bad.