AUKUS commits us to the US’ war with China, while the submarine deal drains our capacity to build a better society.
Well, the rousing songs have been sung, there was a stomping, exciting Welcome to Country, and we hear that someone from the NSW right left their Crumpler satchel behind the desk of the Grosvenor gentlemen’s club in the Valley…
The Brisbane national conference of the mighty Australian Labor Party has concluded. And we are now in a very different country from the one we were when the lanyards — rainbow? Dot painting? Both? — were being handed out.
With a few skirmishes and objections, easily batted away, in the city that hosted General Douglas MacArthur’s Pacific WWII Pacific leadership, Labor has put its full force behind the AUKUS alliance and the $368 billion program of submarine and requisites buying and building, intended to take place over decades. Delegates were greeted with a 1300-word “amendment” to be voted into the program — really a take-it-or-leave-it manifesto for the wholesale reorientation of the party, the labour movement and the country.
Read more from Guy Rundle on Labor’s ‘maximum AUKUS’ agenda.
Become a subscriber to get full access to the website, as well as our premium newsletters.
Already a subscriber? Log in to keep reading.