There are few sure bets in life, but one is that, where there’s a chance to trash Australia internationally, you can bet your life that left-wing journalists (which is to say, nearly all of them) will be lining up to sink the boots in. Witness the current hissy-fit by French president Emmanuel Macron, targeting Australian PM Scott Morrison. The mainstream media are nearly beside themselves with glee.
As George Orwell once noted, there is, among the fashionable, left-wing elite a pervasive attitude of, not “my country, right or wrong”, but “my country, never”. They may not have wanted the Germans to actually win WWII, Orwell said, but many left-wingers “were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news”.
All it takes is some UN trougher or foreign leader to impugn Australia publicly, and journalists from the ABC (especially) to the Age or the Saturday Paper start up their idiot chorus of, “Ooh, isn’t Australia just awful?” If the target is a conservative PM, the left-media erupt in an orgy of strident condemnation.
You know many in the media have jumped the shark when journalists seriously argue it’s OK for Emmanuel Macron to call Scott Morrison a liar publicly, but it’s a diplomatic outrage for the Australian leader to leak a text message that proves his French counterpart was the one bending the truth.
When a second leak showed that Joe Biden was either lying through his teeth or having yet another senior moment (or both), the left-media’s outrage ratcheted up to 11. There being no show without Punch and his squalling baby, naturally ex-PMs Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd threw their two cents in.
The way ABC journalists have reported Turnbull’s dewy-eyed professions of loyalty to France you could be forgiven for thinking the French bilateral relationship is one of Australia’s most important. Not so. France is our number 17 trading partner.
More important than trade, when push comes to geopolitical shove, France is an irrelevance to Australia. Australia’s region is the Pacific — and the Pacific is shaping up to be the global crucible of the 21st century. France may have Pacific territories, but it has had little interest in the region. At least, since it stopped testing atomic bombs and blowing up ships in New Zealand harbours.
And while tens of thousands of Australians have died in two world wars on French soil, there has been little military engagement with France in the Pacific since colonial times. The UK and US have fought beside Australians in the Pacific, as well as in Europe.
The Australian
Does anyone seriously argue that Morrison should have continued to pursue an expensive — and getting more so every day — deal with a lukewarm ally with little interest in our region, and forego the opportunity to sign up to a new alliance with our strongest strategic partners, specifically aimed at containing the strategic threat of this century? What could the French sub deal possibly offer Australia — apart from submarines with pre-installed white flags?
Not that the left-media, or the left-Opposition care for such footling stuff as long-term national security. There are cheap political points to score, their own country be damned.
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