Having watched the address in reply from Opposition Leader, Angus Taylor, I am quite convinced that Federal Labor must continue to join the debate on commitment to national values with added vigour.
Regrettably, the LNP’s commitment has been a nostalgic restatement of commitment to aspirational neoliberal values spiced by shrill rhetoric on net migration from the far-right of Australian conservatism. More discussion can assist in fine-tuning these priorities.
Federal Labor’s alternatives can commence with issues such as investment and national security which have been trump cards for the LNP in past years. The latest national accounts for the December Quarter 2025 (ABS 4 March 2026) show that commitment to more balanced national investment can and should become a bipartisan commitment.
Policy improvements can come from both sides of the political aisle to resolve our investment shortfalls. Taking more investment from Asian countries should be our highest priority. The Japanese economy has been badly affected by a dependence on Persian Gulf oil supplies. As of May 2026, Japan has resumed limited imports of Russian crude oil from the Sakhalin-2 project from across the Soya Strait which is just forty kilometres away from Northern Japan.
Both India and China remain key sources of new investment for Australia. Ironically, India is the current chair of the BRICS group of countries which includes Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Geopolitics are rapidly changing. The LNP needs to be coached out of its nostalgia for the Cold War era.
Percentage Changes in National Investment Indicators
Since 2024, Australia has diversified its level of foreign investment but is still heavily reliant on investment from the US and EU at the expense of investment from Asian countries such as Japan, China and ASEAN economies.
Foreign Investment in Australia (ABS Data)
Angus Taylor chooses to overlook these shortcomings in his commitment to aspirational values with claims that these values are strengthened by return to the old negative gearing investment models for housing from the Howard years.
If Angus Taylor is serious about sustainable security in the ASEAN region, the defence pillar of AUKUS could be reviewed in the context of President Trump’s visit to China and the realities of the financial burden imposed on Australians which could generate a lot of social housing, new infrastructure and inclusive investment in public broadcasting.
The US is seeking a share of the action in opening trading and investment ties with China:
President Trump’s address to the state banquet in Beijing was carried by Sky News almost at the same time as Angus Taylor’s address in reply to Labor’s budget.
The benefit of Belt and Road Initiatives (BRIs) certainly surpass sabre-rattling with China’s railway links to Laos operational since 2021 with connections expected to Bangkok by 2032 and the Malacca Straits a decade from now. From Malacca, it is just over one hundred kilometers across the Malacca Strait to Indonesia. In Sumatra, China is assisting with The Trans Sumatra Toll Road and Rail Project with connections to Java and Jakarta served by ferries across the Sunda Strait (25-100 kms).
“Guests dined on Beijing roast duck, pork buns and beef ribs before the waiters, in traditional red clothing, served up dessert with a more American flavour: tiramisu, fruit and ice cream and a trumpet-shell shaped pastry.
But it was a performance from the People’s Libe ration Army band that may have stolen the show, breaking out a rendition of YMCA – the Village People hit that is a favourite of Mr Trump.” (ABC News).
Continued dialogue on the LNP’s key priorities can proceed here to translate the new Win-Win agendas to the fractured Australian political scene before One Nation demands a place in the election of a future LNP minority government:
- Tax Back Guarantee: ending Labor’s inflation tax by indexing income tax thresholds to inflation
- Migration and Housing Pledge: capping migration based on how many homes Australia builds
- Putting Australians First: reserving welfare payments and the NDIS for Australian citizens
- Future Generations Fund: banking resource windfalls to pay down debt and build national infrastructure
- Fuel Security Plan: delivering more fuel, more storage and more security for Australia
- Boosting Small Business Investment: allowing small businesses to immediately write-off assets costing up to $50,000
- Strengthening Australia’s Security: committing to a whole-of-nation National Security Strategy and at least 3% of GDP on defence.
Young LNP activists with cash to spare from parental windfalls from the property market can afford to brush up with the calls from the best of the Win-Win rave festivals.
Escapist Promo for the Solar United Natives Festival 13-19 July 2026 in Hungary
Progressive Australians should not be afraid to request more explanations from Australian conservatives about their romance with Churchillian and John Howard values. The current plague of national homelessness did not commence in 2022 when the Albanese Government was first elected. In Brisbane, senior police officers at HQ in Roma Street have a prime perspective on homeless squalor on Brisbane’s Southside to fir into the Crisafulli Government’s tough on crime strategies. The situation seems to be worse in the adjacent Moreton Bay Council precincts:
“Homeless people living in tents in a park were “not treated as humans” while being evicted by a Queensland council, with the supreme court ruling it an unlawful breach of human rights.
A group of residents who had been living in a park off Goodfellows Road, Kallangur, challenged eviction notices issued against them by the City of Moreton Bay last year.
The council changed its local laws to ban homelessness in February. In April, it started evicting residents of two tent cities with the aid of police, council rangers, a bulldozer and an excavator.”
In true LNP traditions, aspirational values have a highly selective application and may not extend too far from the local rave nightclub in Australia where conservative activists can spend their spare assets.
Aspirational Electronic Dreams (Crown Melbourne)
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. Your comments on this and related articles can be recorded on theaimn.net site.
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Let’s promote some policy u- turns .
Will President Trump’s visit to the state banquet in Beijing save humanity from more military conflicts?
havent read is so should not comment, but bipatisanship has de natured labor
Think values are a nebulous concept imported from US Cbrostian conservatives for the RW MSM to hammer the centre and left…..
The Labor Movement is fighting for its survival at an industrial and political level but stays ahead in polling. The LNP has its united front with One Nation and UAP on preference deals. Labor needs to forge a stronger association with the Greens and progressive independents but continues to overstate its loyalty to the US Military Alliance while Trump is compromising on these articles of faith on his China visit.
Why does the Murdoch Press crave for a state of hostility between the two superpowers? Greg Sheridan today in the Australian: “Of course while in office he’s powerful. But Trump now perversely sits outside the strategic framework he himself helped create. Secretary of State Marco Rubio constantly reaffirms the continuity of US strategic policy.”
Never be afraid to quote LNP policies which are a relic from the past
I look forward to the results of the 2031 feral elections when a centre right Labor government continues the development of public infrastructure too long neglected by conservatives. This fresh government will naturally include an Opposition composed of Community Independent (Teal?), Greens and Independents, all working for the best interests of their respective electorates, rather than kow-towing to foreign owned multinational corporations.
Naturally the residue COALition and PHONeys will have been swept out due to total irrelevance, to join the Australian Democrats in the wpb of Australian political history.
Thanks for an interesting discussion on Australian foreign policy and strategic ties with Asia.
Well written and insightful; thank you Denis!
Well written and interesting; thank you Denis!
“If Angus Taylor is serious about sustainable security in the ASEAN region” ….. the only time that I am aware Taylor was ”serious about sustainable security” was in getting the $80 MILLION profits from selling the Commonwealth an ”empty glass of MDB water” out of Australian jurisdiction.
Another well written tour through the possibilities for making Australia a better place for voters ….. that the FRWNjs want to avoid at all costs.
Today (160526) some minor mastheads report that Tony RAbbott is planning a return to Parliament via the LIARBRAL$ NSW Presidency ( to establish his voting base) where he will be required to prop up the insipid Anus Taylor before organising a gifted resignation into a cushy ”safe” seat, necessarily outside Sydney where I am advised there is only one remaining LIARBRAL$ electorate.
Victoria is touted as a possible because his good mates Credlin and Loughnane have wangled party control there, while Lachlan Murdoch and Auntie Gina lurk in the background to advise on suppression of voter’s rights.
Old ‘Cold War’ policies, preached as a nostalgia by the LNP and One Notion are long dead, as are the neo-liberal / neo-conservative policies imported from the USA in the 1970-80s following the ‘Cold War’. They have created a wreckage across the ‘west’ and parts of the globe suckered by them.
The problem with them is they create gross inequities, lining the pockets of the already wealthy top 5%, and eroding and extracting from the middle and lower classes to achieve ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. America introduced this dire ‘trickle-down’ myth in the 80s, whilst at the same time enfranchising the outlier Christian Evangelists who have gone on to become an all-powerful supremacist political force in America.
The policies became a US global con job where they convinced governments to sell public assets to them so that the American / multinational investment funds / pirate profiteers could run them more efficiently. So those public assets were sold-off (cheaply) then run down and extracted from by the pirate privateers.
It took decades for these policies and the anti-immigration christian-evangelist bigotry to immiserate America itself, Britain, Western Europe, Australia and everywhere else they ventured, and to create hellish wars in the Middle East and with Russia / Ukraine. And all it leaves is a mass of tax-avoiding, dumb-arsed hereditary oligarchs who do nothing to benefit humankind.
The wreckage is now manifest, and bringing with it rolling geopolitical crisis.
Hallmarks of the mess:
Creating 2-speed inequitous economy for ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’
Treating housing as a financial asset as opposed to a home
Tax most from labour exertion, giving breaks to income from assets
Ignoring dire shortage of skilled workers in Oz & world-wide
Blaming immigrants whilst extracting from them through property
Forcing immigrants into dysfunctional enclaves
Not accepting skilled immigrants’ qualifications
A rapidly crumbling tertiary education system
Failure to modernize infrastructure via shared-equity borrowing
These are the things the LNP and One Notion have and continue to ignore, preferring pumping of nostalgia, bigotry and ignorance.