The pandemic continues to serve up illuminating examples of the mindset of worried neoliberals, who fear they are watching the gains of the last 30 years crumbling before their eyes.
Not merely have governments of all stripes been forced to embrace truly historic deficit spending to prop up their economies and hand-hold entire industries, but borders have been shut the world over, temporarily closing down the immigration that is fundamental to neoliberal economics and raising the possibility that the temporary migrants on whom so many industries rely to keep wage costs down will vanish.
Now Australia’s increasingly testy relationship with China is alarming neoliberals and big business figures who worry that national security might be elevated above corporate profits in the minds of policymakers.
A reliable guide to the rising panic among neoliberals and business interests is the editorial page of The Australian Financial Review, where Michael Stutchbury has issued increasingly hysterical demands that the pandemic be used to implement a hardline, more purified form of neoliberalism.
This involves not merely a return to WorkChoices and a deregulatory program that would restore the era of corporate gouging that characterised the last decade, but cuts to company tax for large corporations.
Hilariously, Stutchbury dresses this divisive program up as a “the Team Australia tax, workplace and red tape reform agenda”, rather than a Team Big Business agenda for higher shareholder returns, lower wages and more bitter community resentment of business of the kind that the Business Council has been whingeing about for several years.
Earlier this week, Labor’s Kristina Keneally was judged guilty of not playing properly with Team Australia when she questioned the future of temporary migration.
(The fact that Keneally was also criticised from the left in today’s Nine papers illustrates how temporary migration unites some odd bedfellows in big business and “let them all come” open borders sentimentalists).
Today, however, it’s the national security establishment, and its fears about China, that have alarmed the AFR, with Stutchbury railing against “security hawks” who have gotten “tangled up in the culture war against the market”.
This again shows the overlooked — because inconvenient for both the left and the right — point about just how hostile neoliberalism is to national sovereignty.
Sovereignty is a pointless impediment to the smooth flow of money, goods and services, and workers to wherever they can maximise their economic value, a product of the nationalist delusions of communities who foolishly link their identities not to their economic interests but to where they live, the colour of their skin or the people they live with.
From the neoliberal’s point of view, not merely should Australia fully open its borders to unfettered movement, but it should subordinate its national security interests, even its sovereignty, to the market place and the cause of maximising economic value.
This is despite the pandemic revealing that supply chains for essentials are far more fragile than assumed, and that offshoring of manufacturing — which has delivered enormous benefits in terms of lower costs for Australian consumers over the last three decades — has also left us vulnerable to shortages during a global crisis.
The pandemic has also exposed the problem of industries that over-rely on China, particularly higher education, where thousands of jobs have been lost.
And China itself has made clear that it will punish Australia economically for failing to behave in accordance with Beijing’s diktats. Academic, diplomatic and business representatives of Australia’s China lobby here have all rushed to reinforce Beijing’s message — usually in the pages of the AFR, where op-eds from China appeasers and apologists are routine fare.
In three different ways, the pandemic has thus served to illustrate exactly the risks of over-reliance on China.
It has also demonstrated how Australia’s economic interests are bound up with taking a more critical approach to the Beijing regime.
The Chinese government significantly exacerbated the pandemic by initially engaging in a cover-up of it and influencing the World Health Organisation to downplay it.
It has thus played a significant role in inflicting the unfolding economic catastrophe on Australia and the rest of the world.
It is in Australia’s economic and security interests to avoid such a fate when the next pandemic inevitably occurs — which can only be addressed through an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus, something that leaves the China lobby aghast.
Despite the AFR pretending to be a kind Team Australia Gazette, in fact it’s in a small minority of economic hardliners who want to subordinate everything else — national security, workers’ pay and conditions, consumers’ rights, sovereignty — to unfettered markets.
As it turns out, that would also have damaging economic consequences for Australia.
Are businesses and the media putting national security behind economic growth? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s new Your Say section.
The question is did the Chinese Government engage in a significant cover-up, and to what extent it influenced the WHO to provide an inaccurate picture. This seems to be the accepted wisdom on all sides, but as one who was watching closely from Hong Kong I don’t believe the WHO downplayed the risk.
As for the Australian call for an inquiry China’s reaction should come as no surprise. The anti-China commentary from all media had been load and clear for months, even prior to Covid-19.
This article and comments is a fine example of why commercial media large and small is in decline. It’s not about Google, FB, the AFP or tight arse advertisers. I keep seeing on so many mainstream sites commenters with far better actual knowledge of the story. And the better info they’re getting isn’t from commercial media.
On the current China hoopla, it looks to this reader like Crikey has some sort of roster system for anti China waffle-de-jour piece. Does the boss decide or do you spin the bottle ?
I’ve never read anyone connect the dots with Chinese informed warnings and the actions of its nearest neighbours. Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, HK, South Korea and Japan all took early and successful measures – though some struck out a little later. How did they glean taking early strong action amidst this wall of Chinese secrecy ?
Mark, I often learn more from the Crikey commenters than any other source. Great stuff above. Actual forensic journalism, by amateurs. Thanks to all.
Agreed DB. Much appreciated.
For me, without the comments Crikey wouldn’t be worth the price of subscription.
Coupla quotes for ya, chaps, from the late, great I. F. Stone (the bloke who ‘broke’ Sen Joe McCarthy, and was relentless about how the ‘Bay of Tonkin false flag’ was used by the Yanks to ‘exercise their right to genocide’);
“Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.”
(This ‘revolution’? A multipolar world, rather than a Yank led, vassal attended, unipolar world. Twas first ‘announced’ in 2007, by V.V. Putin, at the annual Munich Security Conference. Front row, metres from V.V.P., the late, never ever great war crim Sen J. McCain. The look on McCain’s face, as V.V.P. made the ‘announcement’? ‘Priceless’). Where was I………..ah, yeah, Izzy Stone;
“I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called “the significant trifle” — the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.”
“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”
“There’s a lot of things those journalists know, that I don’t know, but a lot of it is wrong.”
And, one that continues to endure, up to and including, right here, right now, in the vast majority of the Orstrayan political and media cabal;
“A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.”
More lately, Izzy has been described as the epitome of the “forensic reader”.
Thanks again, David…I shall definitely read some of the articles you have supplied in your comments today.
Just wish this government would get off China’s back until more evidence becomes available.
Leave the ‘blame game’ to the US…they are good at that!
Some other articles I’ve read suggest that the virus…and others of the corona type…may have come from disturbing the ‘wilderness’ areas, where they have lain dormant forever. Perhaps our ever present penchant for digging up stuff, and conquering any and all corners of the earth may not be the best idea going around.
Also…we may be in for worse infestations once global warming has melted the icy areas which have not been touched forever. I don’t know much about science, but it seems a reasonable argument to me.
Who knows? But why would we want to take that chance?
Past time to listen to the scientists!!
All that’s firmly in the realm of ‘highly likely’, both ‘causal’, and ‘looking forward’, CML.
And, should the Sinophobic propagandists find ‘highly likely’ not to their discerning tastes, it’s worth reminding that was how the Treeza May led Tories in Limeyland ‘sold’ the shabby, evidence free ‘conclusion twas the Russians who tried to do over Sergei Skripal and daughter, using the ‘novichuckles party trick’ (ya want ‘labs’, try Porton Down).
Course, Treeza’s ‘highly likely’ schtik became a familiar refrain in the ‘land of the home and the free, when Russiagate got rolling – fed as it was by the same connections who brought us the ‘Tales of the Skripals’ in Limeyland.
The only way to treat Treeza’s ‘highly likely’ schtik is and was as the Russian FM, the peerless Sergey Lavrov did – ya ‘take the p*** out of it, relentlessly (along with quoting International Law, a lot).
Wouldn’t know where the Skripals are, would ya? ‘Lockdown’ methinks, and from well before thuh VIRUS!!, too.
Neglected to mention how this week saw the last remaining strands of Russiagate in the US collapse.
‘Jack Hill, the Blind Miner’ could have seen that was inevitable, ages ago, once the m.o. used to entrap Flynn came into some light. Mueller can now get set for a care facility for the ‘cognitively declined’.
All things being fair and just, Biden should be in the next bed to Mueller.
I do need to be clear, here – I’m coitanly no Trump fan, I despise all of ’em, equally and justly.
Skripals more likely in lockup than lockdown – they have been “in protection” since the skandale began to unravel.
It was clear from even straight reportage in the Graun that Sergei had become somewhat restive and about to engage in a lucrative tell-all about his post KGB rehabilitation in the UK.
His handlers were not best pleased and Yulia had been too often abroad lining up meeja contacts for those in the Lubyanka look-alike on the Thames at Vauxhall.
By golly, Blodeuwedd, seems you might be another who doesn’t guzzle down the common bathwater passed around in these parts, by those who reckon no-one in their ‘jurisdiction’ can actually read, and make not unreasonable connections ‘tween a dot, or 27.
Might I recommend a spot where you might come across some reading that can appeal to those who fancy doing so, but mostly forensically?
Know of Mr John Helmer? The widower of one Claudia Wright. After Claudia met an unfortunate early demise, Mr Helmer looked to fields beyond these.
You’ll find him plying his trade at firstnamesurnamedotnet, and he does a fine line in forensically perusing documents.
Don’t be put off by his site branding -nudge, nudge, ‘Dancing With Bears.
Twas ol’ John who read Mal Trumble’s recent literary outing, and relayed the tale of ‘When Mal met Vlad’.
Back in a mo’……………The April 21st ‘book review’ was headed;
“MALCOLM TURNBULL’S RUSSIA STORY – EX-PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA TRIES NEW COMEBACK WITH OLD BRAIN”
Particularly interesting reference;
“…President Putin has visited Australia twice – in September 2007 and in November 2014. Turnbull is on record for having met Putin four times – in 2007; in Antalya, Turkey, in November 2015; in Manila, Philippines, a few days later; and at Hangzhou, China, in September 2016.
The Australian media were told that at their November 2015 meetings the two of them discussed Syria. Turnbull now says he was asking himself “what are we fighting for?” His first answer was Washington’s one – “to end the murderous tyranny of Bashar al-Assad and provide support and encouragement to his opponents.”
Putin, according to Turnbull, “had a simple point to make: ‘Why are you and your friends in the West making the same mistake you made in Iraq? Saddam was a monster, sure. But what has come after is much worse. You pushed him over without any idea of what you would replace him with, and then you did the same in Libya – another disaster. And if it had not been for Russia, you would have done the same in Syria.’” Putin was explicitly treating Australia and Turnbull as a proxy of the US.
“Uneasily”, Turnbull now admits, “I felt he was making too much sense, so I asked Putin how he saw a final settlement in Syria. Would a partition work, as many were suggesting at the time? ‘Assad will prevail. It’s just a question of time. And then there will need to be some kind of federal solution – power sharing similar to Lebanon perhaps.’ He trailed off; perhaps he was unclear as everyone else.”
Turnbull was unclear; General Lewis was unclear. They soldiered on against Assad; the Australian Air Force and special forces still do. But Putin wasn’t unclear – and the situation Turnbull reports Putin forecasting five years ago has come to pass today. Turnbull cannot admit this. Instead, he asks a rhetorical question Putin had already answered. “So why was he there? Was it just to prove that Russia was a global player, as [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel had told me in Berlin?”
Turnbull is playing Smart Alec. His attempts at explaining himself run for 698 pages. According to the index, he has met 20 heads of government or state. For almost all of them he expresses himself satisfied with his reciprocal personal equality; and over some, especially President Donald Trump, Turnbull thinks he’s the intellectual superior. But Putin has proved to be exceptional. Just how that was, Turnbull recorded from their first meeting in 2007, when Turnbull was a junior minister. The Australia prime minister introduced Turnbull to Putin, saying “in his business career Mr Turnbull spent some time working in Siberia.” Turnbull reports what happened next: “A thin smile crossed Putin’s lips, and he leant forward to me, asking in a soft voice;
‘Really? What crimes did you commit?’
Thus, for the first time – also for the last time the way Turnbull thinks in retrospect — did Turnbull meet his match. “
Ta, Helmer’s site looks interesting.
In the spirit of sharing, may I suggest RadioWarNed with Mark Aymes & Gary Brecher.
Their discussion downloads provide much cerebral nutrition without a prescription.
BTW where is the Too Infrequently Appearing Reply option?
Screamin’ Lord Stutch has become shriller as his awareness of his own irrelevancy looms.
So could somebody actually tell us what China has done to harm Australia ( and please dont talk COVID – God they are sneaky killng 4k of their own people, demolishing their own economy in the process). Australia has been colonised by the US through hard and soft power over the last 70 years, thus sending troops to fight in meaningless wars started by the US. The day that China asks us to send troops, let me know.
Exactly. The clown from the Lowy Institute on QandA on Monday night waxed lyrical about what a ‘stabilising force’ the US has been in world affairs since 1945, and this dominant discourse was allowed to pass uncorrected, of course. Is it 3 – 5 million deaths in Indo-China and 2 – 4 million in Iraq – to name just two theatres of ‘stabilisation’?
You’re a brave man, Peter. I can’t remember the last time I could stomach the drivel dished up on Q & A.
I’m sometimes put off a the promo/preview stage, sometimes when I see the ‘expert guest list’, and most of the rest if I happen to be within ear shot when it kicks off.
What put me off last Monday’s was the noos that Elaine Pearson was to be ‘on’. What Elaine’s otherwise ‘on’ is the fully booted and spurred Yank funded arch neoliberal hooman rights bandwagon. Elaine might be ever so ‘woke’ to hooman rights, but many people woke up to the m.o. of her and her ilk, years ago.
Her chosen bandwagon, “Human Rights Watch”, is the vicious plaything of one Kenneth Roth.
Early April, yet another expose of how HRW devotes itself to ‘universal human rights’ (from the REAL news site founded by the triffic Max Blumenthal);
thegrayzonedotcom/2020/04/08/billionaire-human-rights-watch-sanctions-nicaragua-venezuela/
“Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch lobbies for lethal US sanctions on leftist governments as Covid crisis rages
Regime change-hungry HRW is proudly taking credit for crushing new US sanctions on Nicaragua while pushing to escalate Washington’s economic war on Venezuela. The Grayzone presents a deep dive into the “human rights” arm of US empire.”
Now, Elaine doesn’t get a mention, but an Orzie colleague at HRW does;
“Stephanie McLennan
@StephMcLennan
This is great news! US sanctions on #Nicaragua officials open door for accountability. In 2019, we recommended sanctions against two of the three named officials—Luis Alberto Pérez Olivas and Justo Pastor Urbina—after finding evidence of grave abuses.”
I invite you to track down ‘Steph’s’ CV. I also invite you to enjoy the absolute trashing she received, on her ‘twit’ account, by people who reckon ‘sanctioning poor nations to death’ ain’t really “great news!”, at all, nor all that ‘woke’ for a ‘human rights lawyer’.
These people are filth, and forever ‘presented’ by the likes of our ABC as ‘righteous’.
Personally, I could give a flyin’ you know what, if Schlo & Co ‘sanctioned the poor ABC to death’. Waaaaay too much mis and dis information launched by Ita’s new plaything.
Thanks for the info, David. Knowledgeable, as usual. You should write for Crikey!
I tape QandA and replay it on fast forward as I do my morning exercises – it helps raise the blood pressure to a more functional (although sometimes dangerous) level – and the fast forward improves the cost-benefit ratio. The other reason for watching it is that the right-wingers hate it with a passion, and I find it instructive to see what agitates their little minds so much (anything less than an alt-Right echo chamber, it seems).
Reading that, Peter, I suddenly started hearing the words of the late, great Chrissy Amphlett……………..
‘It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain……………………..’
An enquiry into the origins of Covid-19 and China and the WHO’s handling of it is good as long as it is 100% objective and that means 100% INDEPENDENT. Which means any players must not have any bias against China and that includes America (which has made wild accusations) and its allies including Australia, who have already made wild assumptions bordering on accusations. You yourself has said; “The Chinese government significantly exacerbated the pandemic by initially engaging in a cover-up of it and influencing the World Health Organisation to downplay it.” That’s for the enquiry to conclude not a journalist with limited facts. The WHO were introduced to the situation when advised of 41 workers coming down with a virus with pneumonia like symptoms at the end of December. It wasn’t until January 7th that authorities identified the virus as a new form of Coronavirus. As far as we know, January 11th saw the first death in China and on January 21 the WHO said it can’t rule out human to human transmission. 9 days later the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern. It took Australia another 49 days to close its borders to all foreign travellers and it had all the information needed to make the hard decision.
“That’s for the enquiry to conclude not a journalist with limited facts.”
Well said.
There is a huge amount of scholarly information about the early days of COVID-19 in China. Any journalist making comment should read at least some of them…
This article from the Lancet cites a report in “Nature” that at least 54 academic papers about COVID-19 were published in English-language journals by 30 January 2020.
“Timely research papers about COVID-19 in China”
Here is an article from The Lancet conducted by Chinese Researchers and published on 30 January 2020. The Lancet is stringently edited and peer-reviewed to ensure the scientific merit and clinical relevance of its diverse content (according to The Lancet).
“Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study”
Here is an article published in “Science”- the Journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science”. It was authored by international researchers, was first was published on 24 January 2020 and was funded by a mix of Chinese Institutions, Oxford University and the Rand Corporation of America:
“An investigation of transmission control measures during the first 50 days of the COVID-19 epidemic in China”
Yes Richard, there couldn’t be a clearer evidence trail should anyone care to look. As to the virus itself, virologists across the world are busy establishing all its twists and turns. In 2001 I attended a seminar at Glasgow University on the Foot and Mouth epidemic that was then decimating UK livestock and the virologist advising the Govt. had already established from studying the virus infecting UK livestock its journey from an initial outbreak how it arrived in the UK. He referred to it as reading the postage stamps attached to the virus. The one country I remember it as having travelled through was Taiwan. There already are global maps that have been compiled as to where Countries A,B & C covid infections came from. I believe the Australian variant relates to the US west coast variant and New York is connected to Italy. France being France has its very own version unconnected to others in Europe. ScoMo is playing capital P Politics to his own perceived purpose.