“The jungle is growing back. As leaders of some of the world’s largest liberal democracies and advanced economies, we must tend to the gardening with renewed clarity, unity and purpose.”
It’s an odd analogy, one used by Prime Minister Scott Morrison ahead of the Cornwall G7 “Plus” summit tomorrow.
Despite a well-documented aversion to holding hoses, Morrison has made it clear he’d like to head up that gardening team. Tension over territorial claims, heightened economic stress, undermining laws of the sea, and foreign interference, are all issues to be pruned, and all point squarely in Beijing’s direction.
“The Indo-Pacific region, our region, is the epicentre of a new strategic competition,” Morrison said.
“The risk of miscalculation and conflict are very present and growing. We are living in a time of great uncertainty not seen, I believe, since the 1930s, outside of wartime.”
The comments were made at the Perth USAsia Centre on Wednesday discussing climate policy, diplomacy debt — and hinting at war with a nation of 1.4 billion people.
It’s the trade spat he cares about
Reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO) is high on Australia’s agenda for the G7 — it’s been on Morrison’s agenda since 2018 when Beijing first initiated an anti-dumping investigation into Australian barley exports. When that inquiry led to a 73.6% tariff being slapped on our barley, Canberra wasted little time in hauling our case before the WTO. After tariffs further spread to the wine and crayfish industries in March 2021, we moved to do the same once again.
“The most practical way to address economic coercion is the restoration of the global trading body’s binding dispute settlement system [DSS],” Morrison said.
He’s right in thinking the DSS isn’t just faulty; in fact, it’s completely broken. The highest tier of the DSS, the Appellate Body, hasn’t been able to hear a case since December 2019. In the meantime, we’ve had to move our case against China to an intermediate body set up by the EU.
A properly functioning WTO, Morrison said, “penalises bad behaviour when it occurs”. He didn’t mention the US were the ones to veto the Appellate Body out of existence in the first place.
Still, reform’s on the table for the G7: with any luck, we’ll manage to “modernise the [WTO’s] rulebook”, as Morrison said.
ANU international trade law expert associate professor Imogen Saunders tells Crikey there are a few ways this could take place. “One possible reform would be to remove the consensus requirement requiring instead [a] majority voting system among members,” she said.
That’d fix the current crisis overnight and give Canberra the high ground in regards to Chinese tariffs, but it’d also make for a “major shift in the culture of the WTO”, Sanders said — which might be a good thing. She added that it’d reflect the fact there are no longer 23 member states to the treaty, but 164.
“Another option would be diplomatic efforts to [convince] the US to allow new appointments: but the US has made clear that it will only do so if other reforms are instituted that would mostly limit the Appellate Body’s jurisdiction,” she said.
Survival ‘doesn’t just come down to climate change’
Another hot topic is cross-border carbon tariffs — an idea gaining traction in climate policy conversations in Europe, and disparaged by Trade Minister Dan Tehan as “protectionist”. The idea, from an Aussie perspective, would see domestic businesses have to purchase European carbon permits to trade in the bloc.
The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism isn’t off the ground yet, but if designed in accordance with WTO rules, Saunders said tariffs “will not be protectionist but rather a legitimate means of incentivising decreased carbon emissions in the production of goods”.
For European business, it’d avoid the sort of “carbon leakage” — an increase in emissions as businesses respond, or try to dodge carbon policies — their Australian counterparts used to warn about in the lead-up to Gillard’s carbon pricing scheme.
On Wednesday, Morrisons toed the party line, describing carbon tariffs as “combative”. Surviving in this brave new world isn’t just “about climate change”, Morrison said. “It’s how Australia best advances our interests as part of a world that is dealing with climate change.”
Also on the G7 agenda are debt diplomacy, the role of the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank.
Pissing off premiers
Morrison’s address fell foul of WA State Premier Mark McGowan. “I don’t understand why he would say the system isn’t working for us when we are in that position,” McGowan told 6PR radio Wednesday afternoon.
“Other countries – the US, China, etc — they put tariffs on at various points in time and that’s obviously an issue of concern […] If I was the prime minister I wouldn’t be attacking one country in respect to that.”
The Rockingham local, who boasts an 88% approval rating in WA, also pointed out that Australia’s ability to bounce back from a pandemic trough was largely tied to iron ore, 80% of which went to China in 2019-2020. “Last year, we sold over $100 billion worth of products to China. We bought $4 billion back, so we have a $96 billion trade surplus,” McGowan said.
“We just need to be very careful in relation to our language and the way we approach these things because we could be the big losers.”
One thing’s clear — Morrison will have his work cut out in Cornwall.
Sandy Milne is a freelance writer and journalist based in Perth. His work has appeared in the SBS, Wired and The Guardian. He holds a bachelor of law from Curtin University.
“The risk of miscalculation and conflict are very present and growing. We are living in a time of great uncertainty not seen, I believe, since the 1930s, outside of wartime.”
I posit that Mr. Morrison is one of those seeking personal aggrandisement and satisfaction of the ego by fanning the fires of miscalculation, uncertainty and conflict. Not content with setting Australia on the road to ruin he now fancies strutting the international stage, our own little Kim Jong-un. He is becoming dangerous and wayward.
Up voted Nigel, but with one quibble – Morrison isn’t “becoming dangerous”, he’s always been dangerous – it’s in the ‘teachings’ that entered his bloodstream many a year ago.
Well, okay, more dangerous then. I concede that. The thing is, I suspect the ripening of a ‘folie de grandeur,’ here.
That was my take on this posturing, he thinks all Australians are dumber than him, I got news in the dumb stakes he wins hands down.
Being a schemer who thinks being at war would lift his ratings, make him look tough, now shows why Dutton was moved to defence,
he’s another posturer, actually I think the who damn party is filled with wannabes.
“the whole damn party is filled with wannabes”
Epitomised by Georgie with his whip.
He, of course, is soon to be a useterbe, without achieving anything during his period in office. Soon after becoming a parliamentary has-been, he will doubtless be given a lifetime appointment to whichever commission the prime minister chooses.
But would you go further and suggest (a) that the external threat environment has deteriorated in recent years; and – if yes – (b) that deterioration is primarily due to mishandling of the China relationship by recent LNP governments?
Yes and yes.
His ego could start a war
Don’t forget he thinks God is working through him – the most dangerous kind.
Rapture time…
is the Prime Minimal helping to bring it on?
apologies to MC Hammer
Yes JC, he Is absolutely trying to do his bit to fulfil his 2nd coming fantasy.
What really irks (apart from the fact that he is breathing) is that by being a cat’s paw for the Benighted States he risks our being left in the lurch when the Hegemon decides discretion is the better part of valour and departs the field.
Is the Prime Minister directly borrowing from the play book of Donald Trump by firstly, effectively condemning China yet again and, secondly, stepping away from the G7 by refusing to support their efforts to reduce global emissions. In respect of the first he is continuing to use a ‘straw man’ to create an enemy that will both sustain the fiction of the US-Australia alliance and impress upon parts of the gullible public that Australia faces a real threat from China. For the second, like Trump he seeks to withdraw Australia from international cooperation, yet he continues to want to see China punished by the WTO for its apparent response to the Australian governments belligerent attitude towards it.
Clearly, Morrison has determined that many Australians are scared of the possibility of Chinese expansionism–even if this is nothing like the proven American expansionism since 1951–and that he can use this to his own electoral advantage. Such cynicism is very worrying as it could well enable a prime minister with extremely strong centralizing tendencies to retain power at a time when Australia so desperately needs real leadership which will educate the Australian electorate, not terrify it.
One large difference between Mr. Morrison and Mr. Trump is that when Mr. Trump was posturing he had huge military muscle at his disposal. With all due respect to the ADF’s capabilities, it is not very big and is somewhat lacking in personnel numbers and fire power when compared to, let’s say, China or Russia. Mr Morrison does not seem to take cognizance of this. He is taking leave of reality, it would appear.
Trump’s “huge military muscle”? Not according to Stormy Daniels.
Lol!
Recalculating threats, PM, it’s not the 1.4 billion people who live in China. No, it’s mainly you who pours money into fossil fuels. If God did make the earth then perhaps we should take care of it? Living in the anthropocene carries a duty of care. Or am I boring everyone?
@Drastic – be reassured, you are spot on target. You might find useful the phrase, “we are custodians of God’s creation”. Although the language might seem a little old-fashioned, there are plenty of Australians and many Crikey readers who place value on protecting the world that we must bequeath our children. We will continue to see solar panels on people’s roofs deep into the future, because people value being seen to make reductions. Fortunately many of them also understand that a non-carbon power grid is a heavy industrial problem requiring heavy industrial solutions.
Certain sections of the Australian electorate are unaccountably bored by contemplation of the anthropocene, drastic, but I am too appalled by what humankind has done to the only hospitable planet known to them to be bored. Terrified, yes; bored, no.
Boredom causes people to yawn; so does anxiety, oddly enough.
You bet a carbon tariff should be “combative”. It should punish every exporting country for the amount of fossil carbon it actually used, without giving any credit for pretentious “reductions”. We must expect to continue to cop a walloping while we continue to emit any fossil carbon whatsoever. We would have no excuse for using gas turbines in the still of the night even though they are purportedly backing up wind or solar farms. If we want to continue exporting, we had better study power generators that do not resort to fossil fuel at all.
In a country where the availability of cheap power is plentiful, metals are smelted, the availability of deposits of just about every rare earth, Lithium is just waiting to be mined and the research scientific community, what is left of it after the deep thinker Tony Abbott and his leaning buddy Joe Hockey slashed the CSIRO and other research facilities into scorched earth, why are we thinking about and deciding to use Methane gas as a transition fuel?
Our remaining scientists can turn their minds and ingenuity into developing and manufacturing giant batteries to balance the baseload thus putting us in the box seat for producing just about anything we could possibly need or want.
The Morribabble for the G7 is being honed so that scottie from marketing can avoid responsibility (how unique is this situation) for the fact that he is lying when describing our emissions and begging to be allowed to act like a poor developing nation rather than a wealthy developed one.
Even BoJo won’t be able to give ScoMo a free pass on our fudged figures because Morrison has been in government and in the Ministry for well over a decade, counting his years in the Howard government.
@Ratty – you say we could turn our R&D skills towards making batteries big enough to store up intermittent energy and release power on demand. Current batteries are not big enough to even store power overnight, let alone through bad weather, bad seasons and natural disasters. They have been under development for 200 years but still suffer from the basic limitation of the number of valence electrons in an atom. The concept of storage itself is inappropriate to provide grid power, because the day eventually comes when the storage runs empty. That day would be after a series of terrible weather or terrible events, when we are least able to cope.
Instead we should be requiring the world’s R&D to be focusing on mass-producing power generators that run dispatchably, on fuel. That fuel would have to be deuterium, lithium, uranium, thorium or some other mineral that we have yet to discover. Minerals are limitless, but we have run out of places to put our gaseous waste.
Hiding the Big U in DLUT or some other!
Is there no end to your bad faith in pushing your, long dead, one trick pony Nuke?
Nice distraction to say “…we have run out of places to put our gaseous waste…” – the atmosphere, presumably?
Yet we have not yet FOUND anywhere to put the radioactive waste for the 10-100,000+yrs half life.
BTW, although true that batteries are a dead end you again, deliberately?, confuse/conflate storage of electricity with storage of ENERGY which is a different beast entirely.
Energy can be stored in any number of ways, the most obvious being pumped hydro.
But you know that.
Scummo was first elected in 2007 when the Rodent was defenestrated.
“The jungle is growing back . . . . we must tend to the gardening with renewed clarity, unity and purpose.” “Morrison has made it clear he’d like to head up that gardening team.”
Be afraid Australia . . . be truly afraid!
When ‘talk’ turns to war. Let us all be aware. War has never been a game. The mere thought of war and a Morrison leadership must be expunged. To even dream, of our PM in a leadership role denies simple reality. A fatal aspirational absurdity.
Our PM’s basic instinct is to never take responsibility . . . for anything?
He seems happy to be responsible for starting Armageddon. Maybe he has had a directive from On High.
Yes and yes Nigel. PM see’s himself as a player in the End Times and 2nd coming fantasy.
You can bet his prayer breakfast buddies are praying him in as we speak.
With apologies to John of Patmos – “And Behold, he saw Four Horsemen come to devastate the World and their Names were Donors, Greed, Maaates & Complacency and the Horses they rode upon were Venality, Pollution, Cruelty & Profit“
The Jungle Is growing back says the dog whistler in the white cowboy hat which he now wears to replace the red baseball cap he was so very fond of.