WHY NOT JOIN ONE OF THEM
Working on policy for the party today.
I did consider joining one of the existing parties — Liberal, Labor, One Nation. They all have their faults, but the big one is shared: every one of them supports AUKUS and the America-first doctrine, and not one of them will question where that alignment is taking this country.
Think about it. Australia has followed the United States and Britain for a very long time — the First World War, the Second, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — largely without question. Now is the time to ask the question.
The America-first posture is driving a confrontation with China over dominance, and this land and its people would be affected in a serious way. Do we really want to help instigate something that could become a world war?
Australia has the opportunity to bring peace to this region rather than war. We must not let the warmongers and the defence lobbies push us into confrontation under the banner of deterrence. The rhetoric between nations in this region is already being stirred, and it has to stop before it reaches boiling point. Australia is well placed to mediate and cool it down.
And there is a simple reason it should work: the nations of the Asia-Pacific are far too dependent on each other — for energy, for trade, in both directions — for war to make sense any more.
That is a real differentiator from the other parties, and my hope is that the policies we run on draw sitting members our way. That is how the numbers get built.
For anyone not across the effort to carve up the Pacific, or the defence agreements this country has already signed, here is the plain-English register of the lot — alliances, Pacific security treaties, access pacts and multilateral frameworks, from ANZUS and AUKUS through to the recent Pacific treaties.