Category Archives: Australian foreign policy

Scott Morrison tells US Australia risks going to sleep on China threat after diplomatic ‘charm and flattery’

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Former prime minister warns US House of Representatives committee Australia must do more to resist the security threat posed by China

The Chinese Communist party hopes Western democracies “go to sleep on the threat” it poses to the international order, former prime minister Scott Morrison has told a congressional committee in the US.

In a forthright appearance before the hawkish US House of Representatives select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, Morrison said China had changed diplomatic tack after he lost the 2022 election to Anthony Albanese.

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Pentagon wants to make Aukus work but some stakeholders have ‘serious concerns’, senior US defence official says

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Defence official says major increase in Australian defence spending is ‘quite warranted’

Some US military stakeholders have “very serious concerns” about the Aukus arrangement but the Pentagon wants “to make this thing work”, a senior American defence official says. While they say a review of the nuclear submarine pact is being undertaken in good faith, it will not be completed within 30 days, as initially anticipated.

Still, Washington is sticking to its request for Australia to give “a clear sense” of how it would respond militarily, including with the Aukus submarines, to future conflicts. While Anthony Albanese declares the Australian government wants to see “peace in and security in our region”, the senior official says the US wants Australia to step up more.

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Australia news live: PM says his government ‘support the status quo’ for Taiwan – as it happened

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‘A balanced region where no one is dominated and no one dominates’

China needs to be “more transparent” about military and nuclear buildups in the region, Conroy says, and this has been a message communicated “publicly and privately” with China.

That is our position. Sovereignty will always be prioritised and that will continue to be our position.

I’m not going to foreshadow everything that the prime minister will or won’t say but the conversation with his counterparts will cover economic security and human rights issues. We’ve been clear about that, but we are being very clear that we want a balanced region where no one is dominated and no one dominates.

In my portfolio of the Pacific, we’re seeing China seeking to secure a military base in the region and we’re working hard to be the primary security partner of choice for the region because we don’t think that’s a particularly optimal thing for Australia.

This is about Australia having good international relationships with everyone in the world. The Australian people expect us to invest strongly in our diplomatic capability as well as our military capability. China is our largest trading partner. Twenty-five per cent of our exports go to China.

We’ve worked hard to stabilise the relationship and unblock $20bn worth of trade. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that we’ve helped protect so Prime Minister Albanese’s trip is about promoting jobs, promoting trade but also managing differences.

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Australia rebuffs calls to commit to joining hypothetical US-China conflict

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Anthony Albanese says he doesn’t support unilateral action in Taiwan amid reports Washington seeking guarantees about how Canberra would respond in event of Indo-Pacific conflict

Australia will refuse any US request to join a “hypothetical” conflict with China over Taiwan and won’t make any advance commitment, the defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, has said, amid reports Washington is seeking such promises in discussions over the Aukus submarines.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, also pushed back on such a request, alluding to America’s own position of so-called “strategic ambiguity” on whether the US would militarily respond in a conflict over Taiwan. He said Australia wanted to see “peace and security” in the region.

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Anthony Albanese faces diplomatic tightrope in China as spectre of Trump and Aukus review looms large

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PM jets to Beijing to strengthen ties as multibillion-dollar US submarine deal spurred by China’s military buildup hangs in doubt

Anthony Albanese departs for his second trip to China with the spectre of Donald Trump looming large over meetings with Xi Jinping.

While the prime minister flies to Beijing to strengthen economic and diplomatic ties with Australia’s largest trading partner, a nervous eye must stay on the US’s promised Aukus nuclear submarines: military commitments of hundreds of billions of dollars, spending spurred by China’s own military buildup, now under review by the US defence department. According to some reports, they are a potential bargaining chip from a Trump administration seeking guarantees of support in any conflict over Taiwan.

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Australia news live: Bob Brown takes out ad praising woman injured in pro-Palestine protest; AMA welcomes new medicinal cannabis guidelines

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The political leader of the central Tibetan administration – Tibet’s government in exile – is visiting Australia this week.

It comes as Anthony Albanese heads to China this weekend.

It is not enough to have freedom only in a few countries in this world. Freedom is necessary for every human being in this world.

When prime minister Albanese’s visiting there, I would urge him to also say that he would like to visit Tibet.

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Nick Adams: Trump picks former Sydney councillor and self-described ‘alpha male’ as Malaysia ambassador

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In 2023 posts on X, Adams listed interests including restaurant chain Hooters, rare steaks, ‘extremely’ heavy weights and the Bible

A former Sydney councillor and self-described “alpha male” has been picked by Donald Trump to be the new US ambassador to Malaysia, with the US president describing the Hooters fan as an “incredible patriot”.

In a post to X after his nomination, Nick Adams thanked the US president for the “honor of a lifetime”, saying that “In your America, all dreams come true”.

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Segal says stripping universities of funding a ‘last resort’ – as it happened

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Australia’s biggest peanut supplier set to shut down

The corporate owners of Australia’s biggest peanut processor will scale down the century-old business in the coming 18 months before shutting it down for good.

There isn’t detail, and it’s unclear whether those tariffs will ever actually be applied.

We do know that the contributions from the pharmaceutical industry in the US to that investigation has been to urge the US government to focus their levers on non-friendly countries and not apply tariffs or punitive levers to allies such as Australia.

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Australia news live: Chalmers ‘urgently seeking more detail’ after Trump flags 200% pharmaceutical tariffs; head-on collision on Sydney Harbour Bridge

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Treasurer says Trump’s tariff threats on foreign pharmaceuticals and copper ‘very concerning developments’. Follow the latest news live

Chalmers says millions of people were hoping for interest rate relief yesterday

Jim Chalmers says “there were millions of people who were hoping for more rate relief yesterday and didn’t get it”.

As per letters sent to various countries yesterday, in addition to letters that will be sent today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time, TARIFFS WILL START BEING PAID ON AUGUST 1, 2025. There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 - No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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Australia news live: man shot dead by police in siege in Victorian town; boy dies after e-bike crash in Sydney

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Victoria police say they attempted to engage with armed man before ‘siege of several hours’. Follow the latest updates live

Smoke coming from Sydney tram causes to be suspended on Randwick line

Light rail services on the Randwick line have stopped due to smoke coming from the roof of a tram.

The man managed to get back into his car and drive a short distance before being overcome by his injuries.

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News live: Wong says Trump ‘keen’ for meeting with Albanese; Creative Australia apologises to Venice Biennale artists

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Power continues to be restored in NSW

About 5,800 customers remained without power at 7am Thursday, according to network operators Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy.

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Man in critical condition with lyssavirus after bat bite – as it happened

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NSW wild weather: ‘Conditions can become dangerous quickly’

Wild weather has brought down trees, damaged properties and flooded roads on the NSW coast, NSW SES says.

These incidents are a timely reminder that roads are slippery, and conditions can become dangerous quickly.

Please, never drive, walk or play in flood waters. If you do come across a flooded road, turn around and find an alternative route.

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Australia news live: some Central Coast residents told ‘evacuate now’ amid coastal erosion threat; children’s commissioner says child safety ‘not a priority in this country’

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NSW braces for damaging winds and heavy rain from coastal low. Follow the latest updates live

Gas market review will ‘drive efficiencies in the system’, King says

The resources minister, Madeleine King, says a review into gas market regulations will drive efficiencies into the system.

Our existing policy has made sure that that gas is available. So that’s that combination of existing policies brings in that extra 600 petajoules. So indeed, that work is already happening.

What we’re trying to do and will endeavour to do, and the industry is very supportive of, is to make that more coherent, and how we can make sure we learn from the whole system, reduce duplication in some of the regulation, some of the reporting factors, simply how we can make it work better for consumers, for industrial users, and for the Gas industry itself. And that drives efficiencies in the system, which we expect will help with pricing.

We were honest with the public from day one: the toll situation would get worse before it got better. That’s the reality of the infrastructure pipeline locked in by our predecessors.

And now, the most recent NSW Budget reflects that – with toll revenue projected to rise from $180m to $283m in the 2028–29 financial year.

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‘It’s not Chinese assistance’: Australia accuses China of taking undue credit for aid projects in the Pacific

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Minister Pat Conroy says Chinese ‘branding’ of multilateral development projects to bolster its influence in the region is a consistent frustration

China is bolstering its geopolitical influence in the Pacific by “branding” Asian Development Bank projects – funded in significant part by Australian taxpayer dollars – as Chinese projects, the Australian government says.

On the island of Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea to Australia’s north, the state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation has begun work to strengthen the runway at Kieta-Aropa, on the outskirts of the largest city.

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Australia news live: Minns’ team asked why premier focused on possibility of ‘terrorism’ in NSW caravan plot announcement

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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, is expected to join a meeting of her Quad counterparts in Washington DC next week.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Friday he would host foreign ministers from Australia, India and Japan on 1 July, with the meeting set to discuss geopolitical issues and China’s treatment of Indo-Pacific nations.

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Aukus vital to ‘deter Chinese aggression’, say US lawmakers, as Trump urged to recommit to submarine deal

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Alliance in best interests of Australia, UK and US, say lawmakers, after Trump administration announced 30-day review of pact

The Aukus pact is vital to “deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region”, Republican and Democrat lawmakers in the US have told the Pentagon, urging the US to recommit to the nuclear submarine deal with Australia and the UK.

The Trump administration announced this month it would undertake a 30-day review of the Aukus agreement – the deal struck in 2021 that would see US nuclear submarines sold to Australia, and new-design nuclear-powered Aukus submarines built in the UK and Australia.

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Greens demand Labor reveal whether Pine Gap used in Iran strikes – as it happened

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‘We’re not just a vassal state’

Hastie says he would be reluctant to commit Australian troops to any conflict with Iran that the US elects to join, but said any decision about logistical support would be “a decision for the government”.

We need greater transparency. Secretary Hegseth appeared before the arms committee this week, last week, he talked about the Indo-Pacific and named communist China as the Pacific threat – his words and he talked about the US building up its forward posture in the Indo-Pacific. He spoke specifically of Australia, Japan and the Philippines. We’re very much part of the integrated deterrence that the US is building in the region.

We need greater transparency, to talk about operationalising the alliance, building guardrails for combat operations and defining our sovereignty. This will make things clearer for us, so we can better preserve our national interests. We’re not just a vassal state, we’re an ally, partner and it’s time we had a discussion about what that looks like.

One thing is clear. If you are Iran and you survive this conflict with your regime intact and a nuclear program intact, I think you will move at best speed to build a bomb, to put yourself in the strongest position the, in time this happens.

They will use it.

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Toll of Trump’s USAID cuts on Australian aid revealed, with projects to help children among hardest hit

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International development council describes consequences as ‘dire’ as 120 Australian projects affected by loss of more than $400m

The Trump administration’s gutting of foreign aid has seen a $400m hit to Australian projects, with 120 projects affected, at least 20 offices closed and people left without crucial support for health, education, humanitarian and climate change issues, the Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) has found.

Acfid has surveyed its members and their partners, who deliver projects on the ground, on the impact of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) cuts, which took effect when the president, Donald Trump, froze funding for 90 days from 20 January.

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Australian deported from US says he was ‘targeted’ due to writing on pro-Palestine student protests

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Alistair Kitchen says he was detained and questioned about views on Israel and Palestine before being deported from LA to Melbourne

An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.

Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.

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News live: PM secures meeting with Trump; Australian man killed in Bali

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Albanese says he will meet with US president Donald Trump to discuss tariffs. Follow today’s news live

Good morning, and welcome to today’s blog. And if you were hoping to ease into it, apologies – there’s quite a bit going on.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese has managed to shore up a meeting with US president Donald Trump. They’ll catch up on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday. Tariffs are top of the agenda, but the Aukus deal is now looking shaky so that will likely feature as well. Albanese said:

Obviously, there are issues that the US president is dealing with at the moment, but I expect that we will be able to have a constructive engagement.

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