Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong shamelessly tried to take credit for the Middle East peace deal this week. They claimed that their recognition of Palestine played a role.
It was a bit strange, then, that the president of FIFA got an invite to the Egypt peace summit, but they didn’t.
The Peace 2025 summit was the greatest news for the world in some time.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago, there has been a foreboding sense that we may be catastrophically drifting into a Third World War.
This week’s return of hostages to their families provides the clearest sign yet that we may just avoid such a calamity.
The person that deserves the real credit for peace is US President Donald Trump, and in fairness, Albanese and Wong did praise him.
Trump showed relentless energy in bringing warring parties together through the judicious use of carrots (increased business and trade) and sticks (the full force of the US military if peace was not chosen).
His approach, no doubt honed in the mean streets of the New York construction world, proved far more effective than the flowery statements and UN debates favoured by most of our diplomatic elite.
I said last year that Trump was the best choice for president because he offered the best hope for peace.
In hindsight, it is clear his predecessor Joe Biden was too weak to stand up to the powerful interests in the US that profit from war and show little interest in ending it.
The US has been at war for the whole of this century, and Trump is the only president in this time not to start a new war.
There are things that I disagree with Trump about.
His indiscriminate use of higher tariffs on friends and foes alike distorts his otherwise successful foreign policy goals.
But in the big scheme of things, avoiding a world war is much more important than lower trade barriers.
Trump’s approach is a lesson to our low-energy federal government.
Ever since the election (which was a thumping victory for them), the Albanese government seems to have been on autopilot: ticking off the laundry list of left-wing agendas, on Palestine and on climate, without really tackling the things they can control.
In contrast, Trump is a ball of energy.
His trip to the Middle East to deliver peace was a day trip and he returned to the White House at 3am.
The President focuses relentlessly on what he can influence and drives hard to deliver results.
Our Prime Minister instead focuses on things that he has no control over, and then does so in a low-energy, give-a-speech-here-and-there way.
The two main priorities of our Labor government seem to be to free Palestine and change the temperature of the globe.
Neither of these things can the Prime Minister have a strong influence over.
Peace in the Middle East has not removed the threat of war, it has just lessened its chances. The greater threat of conflict now returns to our region and, in particular, the aggressive actions of the Chinese Communist Party.
This week China issued a remarkable new regulation that would require all consumers of their rare earth products to seek approval from China before they on-sell the commodities.
If this regulation comes into effect from December as planned, it would cover 90 per cent of the world’s rare earth supplies. China would have, in-effect, a veto over almost all supply chains for modern industrial goods such as electric cars, wind turbines, smartphones, AI hardware and military equipment.
In addition, there are reports in the Chinese media that China is bullying BHP to price a third of the iron ore it sells to China in yuan.
This would increase financial risk for Australia and separate us from the US.
The Albanese government has been silent on these two major developments.
Why is it that our Government has more to say about the Gaza Strip than the Taiwan Strait?
On top of these developments, our own economy looks shaky with the Reserve Bank pouring cold water on the prospects of an interest-rate cut because of persistently high inflation and high government spending.
Our Prime Minister is on holidays this week.
He should return to focus on our country and drop his obsession with pandering to the global, left-wing activist class.
