Political Futures: Drumming Up a New Mainstream Agenda for Australians

By Denis Bright  

Drumming up support for Palestine in the spirit of the recent Free Palestine Rally in Brisbane and other locations should be bipartisan political agendas across Australia and other representative democracies. Claiming that Israel has the right to self-defence as a mainstream political narrative should be evaluated in the context of eminent opinion as communicated by Scottish historian William Dalrymple with a similar perspective to the Free Palestine Movement in Australia:

Such mainstream interpretations of just one theatre of global tensions are blocked out in the corporate media to contribute to the election of conservative and far-right governments in most representative democracies. The Albanese Governmentwith its current record majority is one of the few governmentsin representative democracies supported by the broader Labor Movement.

At world forums like the QUAD foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington, minister from the Albanese Government represent a minority opinion with a commitment to peace and global development:

QUAD Forum Joint Statement Extract

We, the Secretary of State of the United States, and the Foreign Ministers of Australia, India, and Japan met in Washington, D.C., on July 1, 2025, to reaffirm our steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. We underscore our commitment to defending the rule of law, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. As four leading maritime nations in the Indo-Pacific, we are united in our conviction that peace and stability in the maritime domain underpin the security and prosperity of the region. We are committed to a region where all countries are free from coercion and strongly oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.

Ironically, China is making extraordinary commitments to improve transport links from China to adjacent countries with high-speed rail services in the pipeline to Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. Taiwan’s Eva Air operates services on regular commercial routes to Mainland China. Future connections between Malaysia and Indonesia are being considered with possible new tunnel or bridge links between Malaysia to Sumatra or even just improved ferry services across the Malacca Straits by Malaysia’s non-aligned government as a shorter-term measure.

Current campaigns to contain China’s commitments to freedom of navigation had a darker history during the Cold War era.

Seventy years ago, between 18-24 April 1955, representatives of China and twenty-eight other countries met at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia to chart their ways out of colonial strategic and economic controls.

China’s Premier Zhou Enlai was to arrive in Indonesia on an Air India executive plane. The selected aircraft did not make it across the South China Sea as a bomb was smuggled on board in Hong Kong by Taiwanese agents during a refuelling stopover as reported by Steve Tsang in Cambridge University’s China Quarterly almost forty years later:

On 11 April 1955 an Air India Constellation passenger airliner, the “Kashmir Princess,” flight 300 from Hong Kong to Djakarta, was sabotaged. It was chartered by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to take its delegation headed by Premier Zhou Enlai to attend the Bandung Conference in Indonesia. On the way to Djakarta with a Chinese delegation aboard there was an explosion, which caused the aircraft to crash into the sea. All eleven passengers were killed and only three members of the crew survived; Zhou was not amongst the victims.

The goals of the Bandung Conferences have largely been achieved through the return of representative government to Indonesia after the Suharto era after a US inspired military coup in 1965, by the formation of ASEAN as an association of ten SE Asian countries, by the formation of BRICS as an association of countries from Latin America to Africa and Asia as well as China’s own Belt and Road initiatives to foster new trading and transport links.

Cold war agendas are still alive in the Defence Supplement in The Australian (16 June 2025) with graphic advertisements to excite local audiences. These advertisements were paid for by local and overseas military industrial corporations:

Mainstream press outlets have taken support for the NATO Summit is a manipulative but quite entertaining anecdote.

Media Diversion in Action (NY Post 26 June 2025)

Queen Máxima of the Netherlands turned heads in a striking lime-green jumpsuit as she and hubby King Willem-Alexander gave President Trump and fellow world leaders a royal welcome at the NATO summit.

The Dutch royal couple beamed as they greeted world leaders from thirty-two countries — including Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — at The Hague’s World Forum, marking the first time the Netherlands has played host to a NATO summit.

On Tuesday, the fashion-forward, Argentina-born queen, 54, upstaged some of the world’s most powerful figures, dazzling in the show-stopping, draped ensemble during the summit’s family photo.

The mother of three, celebrated for her vibrant fashion sense, is a former New York City investment banker who was once dubbed Europe’s “most interesting” royal.

The American Broadcasting’s ABC News Live (25 June 2025) rationalized the use of the F-word expletive by President Trump as a strategy for simplifying strategic policy issues for local US audiences:

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called President Donald Trump “Daddy” on Wednesday, reacting to the president’s recent use of expletives when he accused Iran and Israel of violating a ceasefire agreement.

Early Wednesday morning during a bilateral meeting between Trump and Rutte during the NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, Trump likened the countries of Israel and Iran to “two kids in a schoolyard” that had a “big fight.”

“You know, they fight like hell. You can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two-three minutes, then it’s easy to stop them,” he continued. Rutte raised eyebrows when he interjected, “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get them to stop.” “You have to use strong language,” Trump agreed. “Every so often you have to use a certain word.”

At a less frivolous level, the Murdoch press through The Australian called for an increase in defence spending. The Australian (26 June 2025) lamented the failure of the Albanese Government to follow the NATO countries in raising defence spending in both its banner headline and in editorial comments. The same editorial page also criticized the Albanese Government for allowing the states and territories to extend their public sector spending on cost-of-living relief and social housing initiatives (Extract from the Australian Editorial 16 June 2025):

The Albanese government has been the standard-bearer for an increasing the state footprint in the economy through measures such as publicly funded pay rises for workers in the care economy, including those employed outside the public service, wiping 20 percent of student HECS debt for three million people and energy handouts. Such largesse has created an expectation of governments paying for everyday expenses. That outlook will make repaying $1 trillion plus of public debt, transforming deficits into surpluses and funding the needs of the nation’s ageing population harder.

The Australian’s editorial applied the term state footprint to an increase in Australian Government public spending from26.2 percent of GDP to 27 percent in the current budget. These initiatives brought a projected budget deficit of $42.1billion in 2025-26. Private-public partnerships with military industrial complexes are contributing to these budget deficits and to a 10 percent growth in interest payments on government debts as reported in the 2025-26 Budget Papers:

The Australian Defence Magazine also provides an annual list of the top defence contractors (AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE Newsletter – 7 January 2025).

Overcommitment to the Trump administrations trillion-dollar-defence and intelligence network budget initiative has brought great financial costs in the USA (US Fox News 29 June 2025):

The Senate advanced President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill of tax breaks and Medicaid cuts overnight after hours of standstill and negotiations with holdout Republican senators. 

The key procedural vote passed 51-49, with two Republicans – Sens. Thom Tillis and Rand Paul – joining all 47 Democrats to vote against it. Vice President JD Vance was on standby in case he needed to break a 50-50 tie.

Media myths have been developed to talk up support from theAustralian electorate for increased defence spending. In the pre-election period, the War Studies Research Groups at UNSW in Canberra showed that the cause of increased defence spending had very lukewarm grassroots support.

It‘s time to join the real world by asserting national sovereignty without fear or favour to press barons, military lobbying agencies and appointees to military intelligence desks whose mindsets are incompatible with Australian and Labor values. The mobilization in Brisbane and other locations in support of Palestine should be bipartisan and mainstream agendas in one of the world’s few countries with a Labor Government with additional potential support from progressive crossbench members.

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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