Australian Political Futures: Contemporary Statecraft in Self-Promotion Mode?

After noting the entourage for NZ’s Prime Minister Chris Luxon as it whisked through Fortitude Valley on 5 June 2026, I feel compelled to offer this critical essay on contemporary statecraft in the Trump era.

As the escorting motorcade approached Central Brisbane, two heavy black security vans were detached from the entourage so that curious members of the public were not overwhelmed by the intensity of security at the ANZAC War Memorial in Ann Street.

The entourage avoided St. Paul’s Terrace in Fortitude Valley with its depressed storefronts and homeless people who are victims of the current cost-of-living crisis.

Prime Minister Luxon had arrived on a goodwill visit for a Trans-Tasman Leaders’ Meeting with Prime Minister Albanese. The joint discussions continued at Noosa on 6 June. A Joint Leaders’ Statement was issued on matters of mutual accord. Mutual Accord covered:

• Greater economic and regulatory integration from both sides of the Tasman
• Economic and security outreach to Indo-Pacific countries for higher mutual prosperity
• More emphasis on the ANZUS Treaty through mutual engagement with Indo-Pacific countries with joint exercises like Exercise Balikatan even though NZ is not a formal member of ANZUS and does participate in AUSMIN
• More shared vision with the implementation of AI technology for both economic development and mutual security
• Commitment to the Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI) with its training facility near the Port of Brisbane with particular emphasis on the stability of Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and the Solomon Island
• Joint commitment against organized crime, particularly against drug trafficking
• Continued dialogue with China to make the Pacific Basin a haven for peace and ecological stability and recommitments to the UN’s Law of the Sea of the Sea Protocols which our US partners have not ratified
• Freedom of Navigation in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz within a peace solution to the conflict in Gaza within the two-state-solution protocols
• More Trans-Tasman travel and work exchanges including commitment to a sharing of indigenous cultures
• Broader commitment to social cohesion in both Trans-Tasman countries

The Mutual Accord was sanitized to avoid mentioning the costs imposed our joint exports to the US a Tariff of 12.5 per cent. Meanwhile US rural products to China were tariff-free as announced in President Trump’s recent visit to Beijing. Taxpayers on both sides of the Tasman pay for heightened naval and air surveillance of China from bases in Butterworth, Palau, transits through the Taiwan Strait and patrols near Okinawa.

Media coverage replaces this vital coverage with an emphasis on the democratic and patriotic values of leaders. Such is life in the New Command Economy and Society (NCE). Mainstream statecraft has moved in very authoritarian directions with the contamination of our Trans-Tasman involvement in ongoing military conflicts in the post-1945 era.

The trendlines in contemporary statecraft should not be attributed just to the emergence of Donald Trump in the past decade, even if his political style has accentuated transition away from democratic republican values. There are antecedents in ancient times in the transition of Rome from an inglorious republic to a far-flung and brutal empire.

As a contemporary creative giant and iconoclast, Gore Vidal (1925-2012) helped a wider humanity and Americans back home to understand the emergence of the United States of Amnesia particularly during the Cold War era (Quote from Gemini AI):

The transformation of the United States from an isolationist, constitutional republic into a sprawling global empire is the foundational thesis of Gore Vidal’s late-stage political essays. Central to Vidal’s critique is the concept of the “National Security State,” an apparatus he argues was codified in 1947 under President Harry S. Truman. For Vidal, this structural realignment permanently subordinated the domestic welfare of the citizenry to the financial and geopolitical demands of an unceasing war economy.

Vidal contends that this shift required the creation of what he famously termed “The United States of Amnesia.” To maintain the illusion of a democratic republic while practicing aggressive global statecraft, the political establishment relied heavily on historical erasure. By engineering a state of perpetual external threat – first through the Cold War containment policy and later via the amorphous “War on Terror” – the state justified a massive redistribution of wealth from public infrastructure to the military-industrial complex, alongside a steady erosion of core civil liberties under the Bill of Rights.

The extension of this new imperialism to Middle Powers proceeded with haste during the Cold War in the post-1945 era. The Left in Western Europe may have contributed bravely to the defeat of the Nazis but they were locked out of government by conditions within the Marshall Plan for the receipt of reconstruction assistance. In Australia, nuclear weapons were tested by Britain and by the US in the Marshall Islands and the environmental hazards of this testing overlooked. Labor and social democratic leaders soon toned down their support for democratic socialist values during the Cold War as enthusiasm for class politics faded.

Both conservatives and social democrats finally identified with neoliberalism as the mainstream system for improving living standards under revisionist leaders like Bill Clinton in the US and Tony Blair in Britain.

The NSCs became the mainstream administrative framework with some tinkering at the edges to deliver affordable housing, infrastructures and essential services when social democrats take control. Rather than leaving the market to self-regulate, Middle Powers within the US Global Alliance followed ultra-conservative US leaders from Truman to George W Bush to assist the world’s largest economy kept extending its global outreach through multinational investment to achieve combined commercial and strategic goals. The Trump administrations pushed MAGA in more outrageous directions but did not invent the contemporary statecraft game. It was professionally steered by the NSC from the 1940s and Clinton’s National Economic Council (NEC) after 1993.

The Trump administration has dredged up Section 301 of Nixon’s Trade Act of 1974 to punish countries with tariffs if they do not toe the preferred line of the US NSC and the NEC and the US Trade Representative (USTR) on commercial exchanges with perceived unfriendly countries in the BRICS network.

Awareness of the antics of the US NSC and the NEC comes with the imprimatur of ivy league academic institutes. These are not hallucinations from the extremes of the political divide. Available citations can be searched from Lawfare Media, the Harvard Law School Faculty and the Corporate Governance Review from Taylor & Francis with free access to a range of journal articles for curious readers from this web site.

While the joint statement from the two Trans-Tasmin leaders might be a near perfect public relations exercise, mainstream media commentators seldom drift into the disciplined media strategies which accompany such visits with the professional expertise of National Security Committee (NSCs) on both sides of the Tasman. Equivalent NSCs exist in all countries across the US Global Alliance from Taiwan to Turkey.

Progressive politics is fractured by interest in minor political parties across the countries within the US Global Alliance and particularly in Western Europe where it can take weeks to assemble a new coalition government after national elections because results are so inconclusive from the multitude of political parties and the factitious divides between rival movements.

Since the introduction of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) by the NZ Nationals in the 1990s with the support of a referendum mandate, a majority government in NZ is a rare event. Only at the height of her popularity at the 2020 elections, could Labour’s Jacinta Ardern achieve a parliamentary majority during her second term after the 2020 NZ elections. This ended before Jacinta Ardern passed NZ’s baton to Labour’s Chris Hipkins in 2023. Jacinta Ardern told everyone that she was burnt out from trying to lead a progressive majority government in a weakening domestic and global economy when all the shortcomings of political life fell heavily on her shoulders.

Even after Jacina Ardern’s first victory in 2017, Labour was still short of a parliamentary majority and brought Winston Peters into a governing coalition with guarantees of support from the Greens if problems occurred with budgetary supply in NZ’s unicameral parliament. The magic worked well and Jacinta Ardern had a clear but temporary majority after 2020.

Chris Luxon (48 seats from 2023) faces a similar challenge this year in continuing minority government with the support of Winston Peters of Family First (8 seats) and NZ’s far-right ACT Party led by David Seymour (11 seats). The current majority threshold is 62 seats. This can change slightly as overhang seats are available from party list results to assist in the formation of a stable government under the MMP system. MMP imposed a very challenging political system on NZ and significant empowerment of smaller parties.

The Political Contenders to Control the Beehive in Wellington (Image: Gemini AI)

Opinion polling might initially suggest that Labour under the leadership of Chris Hipkins has a chance of achieving government on 7 November 2026. As usual under MMP, Labour would also need a coalition with the Greens and the Māori Party (Te Pau Maori) on these polling numbers:

NZ Polling Trendlines (Image: Wikipedia)

However, the slight dip in opinion polls for the Nationals over the past year does not mean that Chris Luxon’s government faces defeat. Family First is a current coalition partner along with ACT NZ.  Chris Luxon has a more than even chance of gaining a second term in office and will move NZ in a more centre-right direction if this occurs.

Understandably, Chris Luxon was keen to talk up the positives of defence and economic ties with Australia on his recent Leaders’ Visit to promote a statesmanship image back home. NZ economic growth levels are challenging (Image: Trading Economics NZ). The transition from Labour to the Nationals brought two quarters of negative economic growth in 2024 because of cost-cutting measures by the incoming government and worsening conditions in the global economy.

Percentage Economic Growth Trendlines for NZ

Media coverage gives the impression that foreign and domestic policies are an existential art acted out by powerful leaders with varying degrees of competence. There is a degree of mythmaking in this interpretation as shown by the political acting in these videos:

PM Luxon finally meets Donald Trump – so what did they talk about?

Even Anthony Albanese greeted President Trump in the same month with offers of mineral earths and other investment opportunities for US firms:

FULL MEETING: Donald Trump & Anthony Albanese at the White House

Truth is often a casualty of election campaigning under contemporary statecraft regimes. In Opposition, Chris Luxon criticized the Ardern Government for being over-sympathetic towards China (Sky News, 4 May 2024):

‘Foreign policy reset’: NZ PM Christopher Luxon vows to call out China where he sees ‘differences’ as he dismantles Ardern-era policies

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has left the door open to the country’s increasing participation in anti-China drills as part of a strategic reset under the new Coalition government.

During the Ardern days, NZ’s NSC would have kept a close watch on trendlines in NZ’s trading and especially its inward investment ties from China. The governments on both sides of the Tasman acted with similar caution on the extent of Chinese investment which follow a similar trajectory:

The table below illustrates the downward trajectory of annual Chinese net investment into Australia and New Zealand, synthesizing data compiled by tracking databases from KPMG, the University of Sydney, and central banking records (Hu, 2022; Katkova, 2025).

Advisory control from NSCs across the US Global Alliance were in place long before the arrival of President Trump who acted promptly in 2017 to accelerate the decline.

Both President Trump and PM Luxon then appealed to President Xi for more open commercial ties on their respective visits to China. Here is the feedback from China expert Professor Anne-Marie Brady of Canterbury University who understates the security controls on contemporary statecraft:

Luxon’s catch up with China: What it means for New Zealand politics

These are dangerous challenges ahead for national sovereignty in Middle Powers like Australia and NZ as they operate within the US Global Alliance. Ironically, NZ is not even a fully functioning member of ANZUS as it was dropped as a member in the mid-1980s over NZ Labour’s opposition to visits from nuclear powered vessels and submarines potentially carrying nuclear weapons when President Reagan ruled the White House.

Mainstream journalists must be brave enough to cover the antics of contemporary statecraft.

Delegates at Labor’s National Conference (23-25 July 2026) must insist on open debate over negotiated spin in the context of challenging national opinion polls which suggest that One Nation could become a player in the election of the most conservative of the post-1945 era in 2028. A LNP government that is steered by a bloc of One Nation MPs from the regions and disadvantaged outer metro electorates is always possible from this polling when politics returns to normal after the shock result in Farrer.

Stage-managed National Labor Conferences are a hazard to our national sovereignty. Let’s hear more dissent voices from all sections of the trade union movement regardless of factional alignment and more input from progressive delegates before the national political house of cards is eroded by One Nation on current polling figures.

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building on the critical issues raised in each article.

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