PM Albanese and Foreign Minister sat through President Trump’s latest tirade at the General Assembly. Threatening to annihilate Iran after the Midterm election on 3 November 2026 was a long way from the values of the UN Charter.
For a desperate humanity, there might be a long wait ahead for the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius as proclaimed in the Hair Musical:
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
(James Rado and Gerome Ragni)
Back home in cost-of-living reality in our Middle Power Economy, Australia is performing better than most other developed countries. Headlines and editorials in The Australian (21-22 September 2026) make no acknowledgment of these achievements.
Using data for Annual Percentage GDP Growth, Australia was marginally ahead of Japan and Britain in comparative Trading Economics data. Our Treasury Finance Ministers are rowing hard in volatile times in the global economy to cope with US-imposed tariff barriers and security controls on our international investment profiles. Speaking up as attempted by PM Mark Carney of Canada only invites more restrictive practices.
Fearing the wrath of President Trump, PM Albanese greeted President Trump at the White House with commitments of rare earth mineral exports and more plans for joint military bases in Australia in a desperation to maintain the momentum of AUKUS commitments in 2025. The runs are on the scoreboards for the achievements of our Treasury Ministers in volatile times for the global economy.
Instead of supporting the best efforts of our Treasury Ministers, The Australian (21 September 2026) decided to highlight the appeal from the conservative parties for vastly reduced net immigration as the solution to our problems. The rise of immigration as a wedge issue in Australian politics is reflected in the latest Newspoll:
New stresses are added to Australian society by the current immigration debate which has been promoted by The Australian. News Corporation through the Australian makes no assessment of the financial burdens to the public sector by the costs of new joint US military bases here and the social costs of inherited tax concessions for investment in rental housing during the post-1996 era which were amended in the most recent federal budget.
The Guardian offered a timely summary of the new networks of Joint US-Australia defence facilities:
Our security minders on the National Security Committee (NSC), Expenditure Review Committee (ERC) and Overseas Investment Review Committee (OIRC) strive to minimize investment associations with BRICS countries like China. Healthy diversification of our investment base is essential.
Cabinet has veto powers over the recommendations of these strategic and security bodies and should use this veto in the national interest. Military and intel personnel on these economic and security bodies lack the electorate mandate of the Albanese Government.
The ABS Australian investment data has the details of our times for the revival of both US and British investment links here.
Since the retirement of President Obama in 2012, successive US administrations have extended interoperability in the strategic and defence policies of loyal Middle Powers to economic diplomacy with joint commitments to neoliberal economics as shown by the data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA):
In writing for The AIMN in 2017, I introduced three scenarios which seemed relevant at the time in preparing for the 150th Anniversary of the Commonwealth of Australia in 2051:
- Scenario 1: The Triumph of Shared Strategic Might: Closer strategic/and economic entanglement with the US Global Alliance
- Scenario 2: US shares regional influence with responsible Middle Powers like Australia, China, India, Japan, and Indonesia.
- Scenario 3: Reaching for Aquarius through more radicalized political activism within the US and Australia
Scenario 1 has strengthened as the mainstream strategic and defence option to the cheers of most commercial media outlets.
With full support from our security minders in the National Security Council (MSC) of the Australian Inner Cabinet and related economic agencies like the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), Australia opposes greater levels of Chinese investment to diversify our economy on security grounds. Why indeed is one free trade agreement with the US worth more than another with China?
Commitment to interoperability within the US Global Alliance has reached High Noon Proportions in the lead-up to this years Midterm Congressional elections on 3 November. This is such a long way from commitment to peace as a model for humanity as recommended in the Age of Aquarius lyrics.
Instead, drones are fired off from Russia and Ukraine to use warfare as an instrument of international public policy.
Acting as the Deputy Sheriff to the US Global Alliance in our immediate region should not be our strategic duty as mentioned in my coverage of our options for Australia in 2051.
Italy too had been seduced by secret protocols to join the Great War in 1915 with appalling consequences that continue today. I developed these parallels for local regional strategic policies in 2025 for The AIMN.
Italian Far-Right Government Supports Military Involvement in Saudi Arabia (Il Sole 24-18 September 2026)
Operation Inherent Resolve in Action
The cross-border raids between Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni Houthis have come to involve Italian military personnel and equipment deployed as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. ‘Last night, I personally monitored, with the utmost attention and in close contact with the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Luciano Portolano, developments in Saudi Arabia, and in particular at Ta’if airbase, which has been the target of several attacks and where Italian personnel are stationed as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. No Italian military personnel were involved. An Italian F-2000 aircraft, which was located within the base in a remote area, was hit.
Our security minders claim this local region as Australian strategic turf in the old tradition of Queensland Premier McIlwraith who engineered the occupation of Papua in 1886 while Britain was consolidating the occupation of Sudan in Africa. Returning to the days of the old imperialism is a retrograde step which has now been a forte of the Trump administration in both strategic and economic diplomacy as demonstrated by the rhetoric generated at the opening of the Pratt Industries Factory in Ohio in 2019:
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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Australia’s status as a US vassal state has never been more evident.
If you’re scared to speak up because you can’t face the consequences, you have no independence, and no real standards.
Public opinion is helping to carry the Trump message into disadvantaged households
“…Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?” – United States President Donald Trump, September 22, 2026, United Nations, New York
*
That threat by Donald Trump can only be construed or explained as the threat of ordering nuclear weapons to be unleashed against/on the Iranian people.
The immediate removal of Donald Trump from office via 25th Amendment provision (The man is clearly clinically and criminally insane) has never been more urgent.
D Trump, that bowel load of bulging, leaching infecting stinking shit, an eternal monumental pile sponsored by USA cadaverous shittery stupidity, is about to immerse us all in floodtide choking agony, terminal and totally avoidable, if patriotic sensible active exterminators saw duty correctly.
I am ashamed that the Australian UN delegation didn’t walk out of the UNGA in protest to Trump’s ranting diatribe. As has been said before ; “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” Australia missed the opportunity to raise the standards of the UNGA by demonstrating Trump’s attitude towards the dignity of other nations is totally unacceptable.
Australia’s resistance to Trump must be perfectedly calebrated. The most important form of resistance is to open our economy to Belt and Road Investment with BRICS countries. US investment is causing problems like tax evasion and unaffordable services. News Corporation promotes the gospel of global capitalism but pays no company tax to the ATO.
Access to Australia’s premier trains is only for the rich and famous now as The Ghan and Indian Pacific are operated by Crestview Partners of New York. During the early days of the Ghan, an economy class car and modest dining facilities were available for less affluent passengers. This has all disappeared under the Crestview Partners regime. The US embassy is also an office for the US Trade Representative which demands an open road for US investment and keeps a watch on our reduced investment links with China. Fox News is also a protector of the open road for US investment. Albo must quietly disobey these controls which are hurting our economy and Labor’s modest social programme.
US economic diplomacy is not in Austrlia’s best interests.
Billions are also tranferred to US Military Industrial Companies to fulfill requests from our military and naval brass for more and more purchases of equipment for future wars over Taiwan which was detached from China by Japanese Imperial Explansion in the late 19th Century during the bloody imperial age.
Thanks for an insightful summary of the UN general assembly and a discussion on US-Australian relations.
A thoughtful and wide-ranging piece. I particularly appreciated the way it connects Australia’s current economic and strategic choices with the much bigger question of what kind of independent role we want to play in the region over the coming decades. Whether one agrees with every conclusion or not, it certainly gives plenty to think about.
Labor can refine a more populist social democratic agenda at all levels of government, including local government.
Commitment to transport oriented development in NSW requires a strident Labor voice at local government and state levels to revitalise main street commercial and residential precincts over those boring drive-in shopping complexes awash with surveillance cameras and security guards.
As soon as this rhetorical transition is accomplished, the One Nation and populist far-right LNP polling results will taper-off.
I like the idea of the Age of Aquirius as a contemporary utopian agenda.
Labor must sharpen its utopian future and extend it to the populist agendas of tough on crime and the illegal drug trade which are the prerogatives of Australian conservatives.
Communications have been too controlled lately by Labor’s opportunistic insiders whose pragmatism is part of a crissly promotional trail within Labor.
NSW has affordable regional train fares and interstate connections from Broken Hill and Countrylink bus services from Bourke to SW Queensland and from Casino Station to the Gold Coast and Brisbane need to be promoted.
Artistic impressionism inspired colonial Australia. It can be extended to affordable politics for change.
NSW Labor could raise the Fast train agenda to the Gold Coast from Sydney by lobbying for federal funding on this issue.
A Brisbane to Casino fast train should be able to complete this run in 6-7 hours from Sydney and have connecting bus passengers to the Gold Coast and Byron Bay in a short time.
Brazil and Spain have combined economic growth with social justice, cut tax breaks favouring the wealthy & corporations lowered unemployment to a record low, allowing household incomes to rise, bringing millions of people out of poverty.
Neoliberalism has failed and been abandoned for responsible fiscal policy, transparency, economic growth and social development programmes.
From P&I 280926
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/09/progressive-economics-is-delivering/
@ Labor for Change: You are an optimist!! The NSW Labor party never crosses the Hawkesbury River bridge because they fear being eaten by Bunyips lurking in the polluted waters or being attacked by Drop bears swinging from the mangroves.
NSW Labor has been deathly silent, indeed positively obstructionalist, in efforts to renovate & re-open the Great Northern Railway (GNR) between Armidale & Jennings Wallangarra to link 216 km of NSW voters to the outside world.
Meanwhile the M1 Bankstown passenger railway line COSTINGS BLEW OUT SOME FIVE BILLION DOLLARS ($5,000,000,000.00) IN A MONTH BEFORE opening for the foreign built driverless train service that did not fit the established railway infrastructure. Was anybody sacked from Transport NSW for this glaring expensive oversight??
NSW has a totally inadequate regional passenger train network with irregular services from Broken Hill, a two hour bus connection between Tenterfield and Toowoomba to connect with a three times a week train through to Brisbane. A ”service” that would not be tolerated on the Sydney suburban passenger rail network.
The Fast Train initiative has been a red herring for so long that nobody in regional NSW believes that such a major project is possible unless it only operates between Moss Vale and Hornsby.
Before spruiking a ”fast train” Brisbane to Casino think about renovating & reopening the GNR with a new line between Tenterfield or Warwick into Brisbane via the Beaudesert railway easement.
Then there is the missing about 25km section between Moree and Narrabri of the ill-fated Northern Inland Railway (NIR) promoted by Beetrooter, but incomplete thus costing primary producers about an additional $4,000 per B-Double load to transport produce to the export Newcastle port.
NSW Labor must radically change the NSW Transport corporate four silo structure because these siloes impede and obstruct each other, thus stifling economic progress and wasting financial resources.
Cocky, thanks for the link to that very useful article.
But I have a problem with the authors, despite their great work and commitment.
They, like many on the Left, persist in referring to modern economic orthodoxy as “neo-liberalism”.
That label is misleading.
What we are dealing with is plain and simple liberal economic theory, but with the gloves off.
With the smiley mask removed.
Many might think that this is a difference of no great consequence, but that view is wrong.
People need to know, and many in the ALP need to know, that their economic policies are liberal economic policies.
That point needs to be hammered home relentlessly until the ALP realises that the con is over and they need to change.
That they need to return to the progressive economics that puts people ahead of profits, as Brazil and Spain have done.
Labels have great power.
When the Left refers to economic orthodoxy as neo-liberalism, they take the heat off the liberal world order.
Because liberals can say “we did not create these problems, that’s all down to neo-liberals, another mob altogether.”
It’s another battle that liberals do not have to fight.
It allows them to continue the lies about the wonders of liberalism.
It allows them to point the finger at any convenient scapegoat — today it’s China, tomorrow it’s Russia, then Iran.
They even slyly slip in occasionally, through proxies, a Jewish cabal.
They are so desperate now that I would not rule out aliens sometime in the near future.
Anything at all to keep the people divided.
To keep people from talking about liberalism.
Because the perpetual warfare in which the world is now engaged is a creation of the liberal world order.
It was created to perpetuate the liberal order.
Global balance will not be restored until the world is aware of the issues.
An important element in understanding issues is to understand the labels.
Labels are the foundation of propaganda.
Thanks for that Steve, it made me wonder when Chalmers got the JIM’S ACCOUNTING franchise for Canberra.
Harry, I luv a good pun, and that’s a cracker.
Chalmers is in the wrong party.
At heart, he’s a liberal.
Not so long back he came dangerously close to giving total independence to the Reserve Bank.
That’s liberalism on steroids.
Labor insiders are too tame and must crank up a populist social democratic agenda to compete with the far-right. The far-right agenda will strive to turn Australia into the Israel of the Pacific with militaristic values and deadly links to far-right regimes in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines: Non-alignment would be a better option for Australia as a Middle Power.
Treasurer Jim is no liberal. He represents a working class electorate which is largely in Logan City Brisbane. Jim inherited a neoliberal economy and is stuck with that reality. He is attacked every day by the Murdoch press because of his outstanding ability to chart a way through the capitalist maze of tax evasion and rent seeking.