Cracks Within ALP Ranks Widen Over AUKUS

Written by: Ned K. on 16 August 2024

First there was former Treasurer and PM Paul Keating despairing over the ALP leadership's AUKUS "marriage". Now he is joined by former ALP Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans.

An article in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) on Friday 16 August is headed, "Evans torpedoes Marles, Albanese over AUKUS".

 Evans is quoted by the AFR from a talk he gave at a conference on AUKUS held recently in Canberra at the Australian National University.

Evans characterized Richard Marles' "love for the US" as "so dewy-eyed as to defy parody."

As for Albanese, Evans is quoted as saying he "is still preoccupied with avoiding being wedged as weak on security and has never given great attention to the complexities of foreign and defence policy and that seems unlikely to change." 

As for Penny Wong, the current Foreign Minister, Evans generously said that she was "far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of overcommitment to America's view of itself". However, according to the AFR article, Evans also said that she had been "unwilling to rock the boat".

It is possible that there are contradictions between Albanese and Marles on the one hand and Penny Wong on the other hand on how they try and "sell" AUKUS to the Australian people. However, they are united in their support for AUKUS and Australia-US Alliance and the growing military presence of the US in Australia, not to mention their siding with the US and Zionist regime in Israel.

Evans clearly distanced himself from all three ALP leaders when he said at the conference, AUKUS would "likely prove one of the worst foreign and defence policy decisions our country has made, not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect."

Evans and Keating express the views and concerns of many people in Australia, including rank and file members of the ALP in sub-branches and members of a growing number of Unions affiliated to the ALP.

Albanese's family were migrants from Italy. He talks a lot about acting in "the national interest".

How different is his subservience to the modern-day colonial/imperialist powers of the USA and UK compared with another Italian migrant and scholar, Rafaello Carboni, who shouted to the diggers at the Eureka Stockade, Ballarat in reference to British colonialism,

"I hate the oppressor, let him wear a red, blue, white or black coat!" 

Carboni called on the miners at the Eureka Stockade in 1854, irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross flag, the symbol of independence from the then colonial power.

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