Best of 2025 - Albo, Trump and China: No one likes a loser |
The first obvious takeaway is that our prime minister has been wise not to heed the Austral Americans urging him to get to Washington as soon as possible.
A repost from 24 October 2025
He decided not to join the conga line of heads of state and governments prostrating themselves before Trump, only to be humiliated.
The media had some superficial fun at the expense of Kevin Rudd about some correct but unwise words he said earlier about Trump. Embassies must do a great deal of work in preparation for such meetings. The success of the meeting would be due in large part to the behind-the-scenes work that Rudd and his team did in preparation.
On AUKUS, our media have fallen for the line that it is full steam ahead on submarines. But is it? The first submarines are not due to be delivered to Australia until 2032. Trump and Albanese will be well gone by then.
As the US Navy Secretary John Phelan put it, “Navy’s boat building programs are performing at unacceptable levels with infrastructure either in decay or insufficient to meet capacity and demand needs. Nearly every ship class is behind in construction with large cost overruns”.
The problems in US submarine construction shows no sign of being fixed. And the British shipbuilding yards have even greater problems.
In the _Australian Financial review_ on 21 October, Professor James Curran described........