Category Archives: Australia news

Is China stepping up its ambition to supplant US as top superpower?

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Analysis: Joe Biden has cleared the decks to focus on China. But how imminent is the danger?

It may have been an inelegantly, even ineptly, executed pivot, gratuitously alienating key allies, but by leaving Afghanistan and forming the Australian, US and UK security pact in the Indo-Pacific, Joe Biden has at least cleared the decks to focus on his great foreign policy challenge – the systemic rivalry with China.

Yet the concern now is how quickly this rivalry could escalate, especially in Taiwan. The linchpin of the US alliance system in south-east Asia, Taiwan is the biggest island in the “first island chain”, the group of islands that keeps China blocked in. It is China’s next target, and as the former British prime minister Theresa May pointed out, no one quite knows if the west is prepared to fight to save Taiwan or whether the new tripartite pact in some way places a new obligation on the UK to come to the country’s defence.

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Melbourne police break up anti-lockdown protest with non-lethal rounds and teargas

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Third day of demonstrations ends in a standoff between officers and protesters at the city’s war memorial

Police in Melbourne have again fired non-lethal rounds and teargas at anti-Covid lockdown protesters to end an almost three-hour standoff at the city’s war memorial during a third straight day of demonstrations.

More than 200 people were arrested. Two officers were injured by bottles thrown at them and one was hospitalised with chest pains, Victoria police said.

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Retirement village owner uses squatters’ rights in court bid to claim Sydney property

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Australian Retirement Holdings launched legal action in a bid to stop a woman taking possession of her deceased grandparents’ land

The operator of a private retirement village attempted to stop a woman taking possession of her deceased grandparents’ land on the fringes of Sydney, claiming it as their own using squatters’ rights.

Australian Retirement Holdings were using the block of land, owned by Monica Pritchard and her husband, Arthur Pritchard, until their deaths in 1990, as part of construction of a multimillion-dollar development past Campbelltown in south-western Sydney.

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Dan Tehan says EU free-trade negotiations are ‘business as usual’ despite tensions with France

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Trade minister says Australia has a strong relationship with Europe and it is sometimes necessary to have ‘difficult conversations’

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The federal trade minister, Dan Tehan, insists Australia’s free-trade agreement negotiations with the European Union are “business as usual”, despite growing unease over Australia’s treatment of France during the finalisation of the Aukus deal.

Tehan’s trip to Europe early next month will now be partly spent trying to smooth over tensions with the European Commission which has asked for a “please explain” over Australia’s dealings with its key member state France, in both cancelling a $90bn submarine contract, and entering into a strategic Indo-Pacific agreement which excludes Europe.

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Melbourne descends into chaos as police arrest 62 and fire rubber pellets at anti-lockdown protesters

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It started with construction workers opposing compulsory vaccinations but grew into a broader ‘freedom’ rally which shut down freeways and bridges

Police have fired pepper balls and stinger grenades at violent anti-Covid lockdown protesters on the streets of Melbourne as Australia’s second-largest city – under stay-at-home orders for the 233rd day in total – descended into chaos.

Protesters dressed as construction workers clashed with police for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, assaulting officers, smashing police car windows, throwing bottles and stones, and damaging property.

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France tries to delay EU-Australia trade deal amid Aukus fallout

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France seeks EU support to delay deal as punishment after Australia cancelled £48bn submarine contract

France is seeking to enlist European Union support to delay a planned EU-Australia trade deal, as part of a plan to punish Australia for what it regards as serial deceit and subterfuge by Canberra before it cancelled the contract for 12 attack-class French submarines.

The A$90bn (£48bn) submarine contract was the centrepiece of French-Australian cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, but the Australians have instead opted to form a US-UK-Australia pact dubbed Aukus, and build eight nuclear-powered submarines likely to be delivered between 2030 and 2040.

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Examining Aukus alliance through the lens of history | Letters

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Readers respond to the new pact between the UK, Australia and the US, and its implications

The Aukus pact is not a “new global order” (17 September) but very much an old order; it is colonial gunboats. I do not expect politicians to have read history such as the first Anglo-Afghan war of 1839, but I do expect them to be aware of history in their own lifetimes. Eton may not teach the failures of empire, but China has been very clear about Taiwan since 1950.

When Biden said, “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries”, he was committing to another battle in the Pacific. The global dominance of China has been clear for more than 20 years, and yet we are unwillingly signed up to face this new empire?
Simon Allen
St Albans, Hertfordshire

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Victoria set to shut down construction for two weeks after anti-vaccine mandate protest

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State government held crisis talks Monday night after Victoria police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to move crowd outside CFMEU office

The Victorian government is set to announce a two-week shutdown of the construction industry after a protest against mandatory vaccines for workers in the sector became violent.

The closure across metropolitan Melbourne, Geelong, the Surf Coast, Ballarat and Mitchell Shire was decided on Monday night after the CFMEU building was damaged and riot police deployed in chaotic scenes in the CBD.

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Koala joey back in wild after attack on mother by randy male

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A koala joey who fell from a tree while his mother was being harassed during the breeding season has recovered, and is back in the wild with her

A koala joey injured after falling from a tree as an amorous male koala aggressively pursued its mother has made a full recovery and is back in the wild.

The seven-month-old joey was found on the ground at a property in northern New South Wales.

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‘We felt fooled’: France still furious after Australia scraps $90bn submarine deal

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‘Maybe we’re not friends,’ recalled ambassador says, claiming Scott Morrison ‘kept us in the dark intentionally’

French anger at the Morrison government’s decision to scrap its $90bn submarine program with France continues to boil over, with the country’s recalled ambassador saying it felt “fooled” by the announcement.

Jean-Pierre Thebault was ordered back to Paris in the wake of the Aukus announcement, which will see Australia enter into a strategic “forever partnership” with the US and the UK.

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UK-France defence summit cancelled in Aukus row

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Paris furious at scrapping of Australian submarine contract and new three-way technology pact

A Franco-British defence ministers’ summit due to take place this week has been cancelled as Paris steps up its protests over the loss of a £48bn submarine contract with Australia and its secret replacement with nuclear technology from the UK and US.

Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, and his opposite number, Florence Parly, had been due to hold a bilateral meeting in London and address the two-day Franco-British Council, now the latest casualties of the diplomatic row.

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Australia Covid live news update: Victoria records 507 new cases and one death ahead of reopening roadmap release; pools to open across Sydney

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Premier Dan Andrews is to release Victoria’s roadmap out of lockdown a day after protests in Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay and Brisbane. Follow updates live

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, is holding a press conference in Brisbane. The state has recorded no new cases of Covid-19 in the community or in hotel quarantine.

Palaszczuk is urging people to get vaccinated after the state controversially made the Pfizer vaccine available to over 60s. She’s urging people to attend walk-in Pfizer clinics.

This is an interesting piece on the people for whom the end of Covid restrictions sparks fear rather than joy.

Racquel Sherry, 49 and based in Sydney, is immunocompromised and afraid.

In the roadmap to freedom, I hear nothing about people like me, other than as a qualifying postscript to the Covid deaths: ‘But they had an underlying health condition’.

Freedom day doesn’t include me.

Related: ‘Freedom day doesn’t include me’: for some, the end of lockdown will be a time of fear

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‘We thought we were mates’: French ambassador laments subterfuge en route to Sydney airport

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Jean-Pierre Thebault was angry about Aukus as he left Australia on Saturday night, saying: ‘It’s like in a couple, you know, when you commit … you don’t run away’

The French ambassador to Australia was in a car heading to Sydney airport for an urgent flight back home when he revealed he was “sad like any decent person would be”.

Jean-Pierre Thebault left Australia on Saturday night after Australia’s $90bn submarine deal with France was scrapped late last week, causing an unexpected rupture in the relationship between two friendly countries.

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Baptism of fire as Liz Truss heads to US amid submarine row

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As France accuses the US and Australia of ‘lies and duplicity’, new UK foreign secretary faces major diplomatic incident on her first official overseas trip

Liz Truss is heading for a furious diplomatic confrontation with France on her first trip abroad as foreign secretary, as anger mounts in Paris over the cancellation of a £48bn nuclear submarine contract.

Truss, whose appointment was one of the biggest surprises of Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle last Wednesday, will arrive in the US on Sunday before a four-day visit to New York and Washington during which she is aiming to promote the prime minister’s vision of “global Britain” to international leaders.

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‘Freedom day doesn’t include me’: for some, the end of lockdown will be a time of fear

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Those most at risk from Covid say the easing of restrictions when vaccination targets are met will bring anxiety and danger

“In the roadmap to freedom, I hear nothing about people like me, other than as a qualifying postscript to the Covid deaths: ‘But they had an underlying health condition’,” says Racquel Sherry.

“Freedom day doesn’t include me.”

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‘Like nothing in my lifetime’: researchers race to unravel the mystery of Australia’s dying frogs

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After asking for public help with their investigations, scientists have received thousands of reports and specimens of dead, shrivelled frogs

In the middle of Sydney’s lockdown, scientist Jodi Rowley has been retrieving frozen dead frogs from her doorstep.

Occasionally one will arrive dried and shrivelled up in the post.

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French recall of ambassadors shows extent of anger over Aukus rift

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Analysis: ties between Paris and Washington in worse state than at time of Iraq war after Australia’s cancellation of submarine deal

The recall of the French ambassadors to Australia and the US – without precedent in two centuries of diplomacy between Paris and Washington – has plunged relations to depths unknown for decades.

Rifts over the Iraq war or Nato pale into insignificance. True, the French recalled their ambassador to Rome a couple of years ago, irked by the insults sent their way by the upstart Five Star leader Luigi di Maio, but that was a little warning to populists to stop encouraging the disruption of the yellow vest protests.

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We found out from the press, says French ambassador on scrapped submarine contract – video

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Jean-Pierre Thebault, the French ambassador to Australia, said France was kept in the dark over the surprise cancellation of a submarine contract in favour of a US deal. France recalled its ambassadors to Australia and the US on Friday in an unprecedented show of anger over a deal between the US, Australia and the UK to provide Australia with a fleet of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines

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Melbourne and Sydney anti-lockdown protests: violent clashes as police arrest demonstrators

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Police deploy pepper spray and dodge projectiles as protests held in Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay and Brisbane

Victoria police arrested 235 protesters and three officers remained in hospital on Saturday evening following violent anti-lockdown demonstrations in Melbourne’s inner city.

As the state recorded 535 new cases and one death, around 1,000 protesters gathered in the north-eastern suburbs of Richmond and Hawthorn, forced to make a last-minute change of location after 2,000 police officers formed a “ring of steel” around the Melbourne CBD.

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France recalls ambassadors to US and Australia after Aukus pact

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First time France has recalled a US ambassador in alliance dating back to American revolution

France has recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations sparked by the “exceptional seriousness” of Canberra’s surprise decision to cancel an order for French-built submarines and its security pact with Washington and London.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said the order to bring the ambassadors back to Paris “immediately” was made at the request of the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

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