Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a Gold Walkley award winner, a former foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington, and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His latest book is The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made its Own Luck and Could Now Throw it All Away. His 2005 book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars, foresaw the collapse of the US housing market and the economic slump that followed.
In a scene in the ABC TV political satire Utopia, the prime minister's press secretary is explaining to the head of the fictitious Nation Building Authority why he has to ignore feasibility studies.
A parallel universe exists just 200 kilometres from Australia's shores. It's otherwise known as Indonesia. A remarkable event that you haven't heard about has just taken place there.
Pauline Hanson said two remarkable things this week. No, not the customary Muslim-hating. That's entirely routine. It's written into the One Nation policy platform.
Australia's record in preventing terrorist attacks is one of the best in the world, so why would you want to restructure the system responsible for it? This is the threshold question for the push to create a new mega-department along the lines of the US Department of Homeland Security.
It seems to be heyday for the hatemongers. Pauline Hanson's One Nation calls for a ban on Muslim immigrants. Katter's Australia Party wants the same thing by a different name. Jacqui Lambie is antagonistic to Muslims. Cory Bernardi and the Nationals' George Christensen blow the dog-whistle of anti-Islam.
The leader of the Jewish state was in Australia last week. So was the leader of the world's biggest Muslim-majority state.
The governor of the Reserve Bank, Phil Lowe, has sometimes found himself sitting next to Scott Morrison at lunch and dinner functions over the past couple of years. Â The head of the central bank has used the opportunity to try to persuade Australia's treasurer of the need to take big, bold action.Â
The lesson of the fall of Singapore must surely be that Australia can not trust its survival wholly to a foreign power. Even a close ally. Yesterday Britain, today America.
It would give the barbarians of Daesh the greatest satisfaction if Australia were to become so degraded that it couldn't maintain a stable power supply to keep its airconditioners running.
So what on earth was the point of all that? Over the past four days, Donald Trump has meekly abandoned two of his grandest and most earth-shattering threats to reshape the world order.
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