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      in Elections

      Biden speaks of ‘devastating’ effect of debt limit failure as he cuts short Asia tour – video

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      The US president has decided to cancel an upcoming visit to Australia and Papua New Guinea to focus on the debt limit standoff at home. Joe Biden had been due to address the Australian parliament and was also expected to meet with other leaders of the Quad. The US president said failure on debt negotiations would spark a recession and quoted Moody’s as saying 8 million Americans would lose their jobs More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden cancels Australian visit amid US domestic debt deadlock

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      President Joe Biden has cancelled a visit to Australia, the second leg of his upcoming Asia trip, due to the slow-motion crisis building in Washington over the US debt ceiling.Biden is to attend a three-day summit of G7 leaders that starts on Friday in Hiroshima, Japan, and will return to the US on Sunday.He had been scheduled to make a brief, historic stop in Papua New Guinea, then travel to Australia for a meeting of the Japan, Australia, India and US grouping known as the Quad countries.Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Biden had called him on Wednesday morning with the news.“The president apologised that he would now have to postpone this visit because of the unfolding difficulties he is facing in his negotiations with the US Congress over the US Government debt ceiling,” he said.“These negotiations are scheduled to enter their critical and concluding phase during the last week of May. Regrettably, this conflicts with the President’s visits to Sydney and Canberra – including the Quad Summit scheduled for 24 May.”They would reschedule his visit to Australia at the earliest opportunity, Albanese said. “I also look forward to visiting Washington later this year for a state visit to the United States.”Australia was talking to the leaders of Japan and India about their travel plans, he said. “In the meantime, I look forward to meeting with both prime ministers and the president at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima on 20-21 May.”John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, told reporters earlier on Tuesday that Australian stop was being re-evaluated.Biden had been due to address the Australian parliament, as the first US president in nearly 10 years to speak to a joint session of MPs and senators in Canberra.Officials had previously confirmed that Biden would make the speech on Tuesday 23 May, the day before he attended the Quad summit in Sydney.“These leaders, all leaders of democracies … they know that our ability to pay our debts is a key part of US credibility and leadership around the world,” Kirby said. “And so they understand that the president also has to focus on making sure that we don’t default.”The treasury department has estimated that the US will go into a crippling default as early as 1 June if Congress does not lift the debt ceiling. More

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      in US Politics

      TikTok must divest itself of Chinese ownership or face ban, FCC commissioner tells Australian inquiry

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      TikTok will either need to divest itself from Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States, according to the commissioner of the US federal communications commission, Brendan Carr, who accused the company of “gaslighting” the public on surveillance concerns.Appearing before the Australian Senate inquiry into foreign influence through social media, the Trump appointee said concern about TikTok in the US was “broad and deep”, and crossed party lines.Following the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries’ ban of the app from government devices, the US is considering a full ban nationally. Legislation enacting a statewide ban was recently passed in Montana.TikTok has attempted to head off any potential ban by moving US user data to third-party servers within the country. It is also allowing its source code to be scrutinised by US tech firm Oracle, which will screen TikTok app updates.Carr told the committee while that was ultimately an issue being handled by the US Treasury department, there was a common view among Democrats and Republicans that the data could not be prevented from being accessed by Chinese government officials under the 2017 national security law.Carr, the most senior Republican member on the FCC, said only an outright ban of the app in the United States or removing all corporate ties to China would be acceptable.“Ultimately, I think some sort of … legislation that imposes a ban or a genuine divestiture is the way forward right now,” he said.“The argument that somehow TikTok is going to stand up to the CCP is belied by their inability to do it at any point in time publicly. For instance, when asked in US media interviews, whether they acknowledge the existence of the Uyghur genocide, their official on TV refused to address it.”Carr said that a Project Texas plan might work for other Chinese companies, but TikTok’s actions to date meant there was no trust for the United States.“We’ve had this years-long approach that strikes me is nothing short of a gaslighting in terms of their misrepresentations,” he said.A spokesperson for TikTok said divestment wouldn’t solve the problem if national security is the objective.“A change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”The Australian government has announced no plans beyond the ban of TikTok from government devices, but the Coalition is likely to push the Labor government for more restrictions on the app.The chair of the inquiry and shadow home affairs minister, senator James Paterson, opened the hearing by saying that the inquiry would serve as a starting point on making Australians a harder target for foreign interference.“We cannot allow foreign authoritarian regimes to have unfettered access to the devices of millions of Australians and the powerful opportunity that offers them to influence our democracy,” he said. “The work starts today to make us a harder target against the threat of cyber enabled foreign interference.”TikTok this week issued a factcheck on claims made about the app, and denied that Australian user data could be accessed in China.The inquiry is holding initial hearings on Thursday and Friday, and is due to report back to parliament in August. More

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      in Elections

      Lachlan Murdoch knew Fox News claim of stolen US election was false, Crikey will argue in defamation trial

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      Lachlan Murdoch allowed Fox News hosts to peddle the claim that the US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump despite knowing it was false, Crikey will argue in a defence of contextual truth in its upcoming defamation trial.The 36-page defence, which has been filed by the Crikey publisher, Private Media, in the federal court ahead of an October trial, substantially relies upon events in the US, where Dominion brought a $1.6bn defamation suit against the media company for spreading election lies.Crikey’s defence alleges Murdoch “closely monitored how Fox News Network handled reporting on the election”, according to his Dominion deposition, and that he was “generally aware of the allegations made by Sidney Powell on the Fox News Network at the time they were being made, which were to the effect that the 2020 US presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Mr Trump”.The US jury trial, set to begin on 17 April, centres on whether Fox News knowingly broadcast false claims about Dominion equipment as Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 election.Justice Michael Wigney granted Crikey additional time to add the contextual truth defence on top of its already pleaded defences of public interest and qualified privilege.The defamation proceedings against the independent Australian news site were launched last year over an article published in June that referred to the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack.
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      The expanded defence includes the recent admission by Rupert Murdoch that Fox News hosts endorsed Trump’s false claims.“Lachlan Murdoch is morally and ethically culpable for the illegal January 6 attack because Fox News, under his control and management, promoted and peddled Trump’s lie of the stolen election despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false,” the Crikey defence says.“Lachlan Murdoch’s unethical and reprehensible conduct in allowing Fox News to promote and peddle Trump’s lie of the stolen election, despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false, makes him morally and ethically culpable for the illegal January 6 attack.”Murdoch’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, indicated in an earlier hearing she would apply to strike out the contextual truth defence, which she described as vague.“This defence is not rational, it is not arguable, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and it serves no legitimate end in the litigation,” the barrister said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe accused Crikey of including masses of material from the Dominion case in the Australian defamation lawsuit purely as part of its “Lachlan Murdoch campaign”, which she alleges is an attempt to raise funds and increase subscriptions on the back of the lawsuit.Murdoch’s attempt to split the trial and have the imputations determined first was dismissed.Murdoch has argued that he has been “gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment” as a result of the Crikey article.At the hearing earlier this month, Wigney described the litigant and the respondent as having “a scorched earth policy” in their conduct of the matter.“And I say this with the greatest respect … there does seem to be a hint that this case is being driven more by … ego and hubris and ideology than anything else,” he said. More

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      Aukus deal 'the biggest single investment in Australia's defence capability in history' – video

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      Anthony Albanese joined US president Joe Biden and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak to announce an Aukus agreement in San Diego that ‘represents the biggest single investment in Australia’s defence capability in all of our history,’ Albanese said. The first Australian-built nuclear-powered submarines, fitted with vertical launch systems to fire cruise missiles, are due to enter into service in the early 2040s

      Aukus: nuclear submarines deal will cost Australia up to $368bn
      Aukus nuclear submarine deal loophole prompts proliferation fears
      Size of UK’s nuclear submarine fleet could double under Aukus plans More

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      in US Politics

      Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with China

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      Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with ChinaFormer Labor prime minister says incident has created ‘diplomatic clouds’ that may overshadow efforts to stabilise relationship The incoming Australian ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, has warned the Chinese balloon saga has created new “diplomatic clouds” that put at risk recent efforts to ease tensions between Beijing and Washington.In a speech in Brisbane on Wednesday, Rudd also warned against expecting any “softening in China’s ideological cleavage with the west”.Rudd, a former Labor prime minister who remains as president of the Asia Society until late next month, emphasised that he was offering “personal reflections” which “do not represent the views of the Australian government”.But given he is due to take up his diplomatic posting within weeks, Rudd’s views are likely to attract attention in Washington and Beijing.UK rehearsing economic fallout scenarios if China invades TaiwanRead moreDelivering the inaugural China Matters Oration at the University of Queensland, Rudd reiterated his view that “we are now indeed living in what I have called the decade of living dangerously”.He said the Chinese Communist party appeared to have abruptly changed course on Covid-19 policy because it “feared that not doing so would threaten its unofficial social contract with the Chinese people”.It also worried that a structural slowdown in growth could undermine China’s long-term strategic competition against the US, Rudd said. Those factors made it essential to “return to economic growth at all costs”.“While there has been much internal criticism for how the abrupt change to Chinese Covid policy was made, we should not conclude as a result that Xi Jinping is in real and immediate political danger,” Rudd said.“We should never forget that Xi’s control of the hard levers of power across the party’s security, intelligence and organisational apparatus continues to be near-complete.”Spurred by the “new urgency of its economic growth imperative”, China had attempted to make changes to its international relations in the wake of Xi’s meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November.Rudd said those efforts included Xi’s renewed contact with heads of government around the world, particularly European leaders, to promote Chinese trade and investment opportunities.Xi had also reined in “the polarising practice of ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy seen over the last five years toward US partners and allies around the world, as Beijing embarks on a new approach in the short-to-medium term to accommodate its immediate economic growth agenda”.But Rudd predicted none of those shifts were likely to result in China changing its current military posture regarding the US, Japan and Taiwan.He said China retained its long-term strategic objective of increasing its power relative to the US “to make it possible to secure Taiwan by force at a time of Beijing’s choosing”.He said these structural tensions would “likely manifest in continued and increasing Chinese air force crossings of the median line in the Taiwan Strait; so too with Chinese intercepts of US and allied reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea”.“But nonetheless, prior to recent developments over the interception of the Chinese balloon over the United States, Beijing had begun to moderate its political relationship with Washington.”This was meant to pave the way for a visit to China by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to continue talks on putting in place “protections” or “guardrails” to manage growing strategic competition.But Blinken postponed this month’s trip after the detection over US territory – and later shooting down – of a high-altitude balloon that American officials said was a Chinese surveillance device.What do we know about the four flying objects shot down by the US?Read more“While Beijing’s objectives may have been limited in scope, both sides appeared to have agreed not to allow their relationship to continue to freefall for the near term,” Rudd said.“At least that was the case until the extraordinary events of February. As of today, it remains unclear if and when the diplomatic clouds may clear to the extent they would enable the return of Secretary Blinken to Beijing – and the extent to which bilateral political resolve remains to find new mechanisms to stabilise the relationship as envisaged last November.”Rudd is due to take up his posting as ambassador to the US at a time when Australia is planning the most substantial overhaul of its defence capabilities in decades, even as it tries to “stabilise” its previously frosty relationship with China.On Tuesday the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, received the report of a defence strategic review, which is widely expected to see Australia acquire longer range missiles and attempt to project power further from its shores.Australia is also finalising the details of its plans to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with help from the US and the UK under the Aukus deal.The head of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine taskforce, V-Adm Jonathan Mead, revealed on Wednesday that he had handed his recommendations to the government “earlier this year”. A joint announcement by Albanese, Biden and the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is expected next month.Australia’s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, told the ABC the government’s response to the wide-ranging defence review would be released “weeks” after the initial Aukus announcement.Marles also said he planned to introduce legislation to “remove any doubt” that former Australian defence personnel must maintain their country’s secrets. It follows a review into concerns about China’s attempted recruitment of former fighter pilots.TopicsKevin RuddChinaAsia PacificAustralian politicsUS politicsAustralian militaryTaiwannewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Lachlan Murdoch alleges Crikey hired marketing firm to turn legal threat into subscription drive

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      Lachlan Murdoch alleges Crikey hired marketing firm to turn legal threat into subscription driveNews Corp co-chair’s lawyer tells federal court she intends to show Crikey did not republish article for public interest reasons

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      Crikey hired a marketing company to capitalise on a legal threat from Lachlan Murdoch in order to drive subscriptions, the co-chair of News Corporation has alleged in the federal court.Murdoch launched defamation proceedings in August against the independent news site over an article published in June that named the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack. The trial has been set down for March 2023 but the parties are in dispute over pretrial matters.One of the matters heard by justice Michael Wigney in a brief hearing was an allegation by the Murdoch team that a marketing campaign, run by brand strategists Populares, undermines the public interest defence on which Crikey publisher Private Media was relying.Lachlan Murdoch’s legal team loses bid to have parts of Crikey’s defamation defence dismissedRead moreIn response to a concerns letter from Murdoch in June, Crikey initially agreed to take down the article but after failing to reach agreement it was reinstated on 15 August.Sue Chrysanthou SC, for Murdoch, said she intends to show that republication of the article was not for public interest reasons but for a marketing campaign.She said Populares produced a “significant report” titled “Lachlan Murdoch Campaign” about how “a dispute with my client could be marketed for the purposes of attracting new readers and gaining subscriptions”.“The purpose of the re-posting was not for the public interest, it was for the media campaign,” she said.
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      In his statement of claim in August Murdoch alleged that the placement of a New York Times advertisement inviting him to sue Crikey over the alleged defamation was “seeking to humiliate” the executive chair and chief executive of Fox Corporation.Chrysanthou said social media was “the modern-day grapevine” and alleged Crikey had paid for some posts about her client “to be promoted and advertised”.She sought orders for Crikey to provide further information in response to questions because the submitted outlines of information did not address anything after the 29 June publication of the article by Crikey’s politics editor, Bernard Keane. Wigney said the request for written answers to about 180 questions, including sub-questions, could delay proceedings and he repeatedly asked Chrysanthou: “Do you want this to go to trial in March?”“I would withdraw those interrogatories you can cross-examine them,” he said.‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsRead morePrivate Media’s lawyer, Clarissa Amato, said Chrysanthou’s request would result in a “a catastrophic waste of time and money”.“Some of those may be things simply left out of the discovery list by accident … there are other requests that are effectively new categories of documents,” Amato said.Chrysanthou said the social media posts about her client had spread “like a virus”, and she would call a social media expert to give evidence explaining the reach.“We want the expert to address that issue, and the effect of promoting particular posts and how that then causes those posts to appear in different people’s feeds,” Chrysanthou said.She said the expert would be asked to explain a few essential posts, relevant to claims of serious harm from the publication.Murdoch is seeking damages because through the publication and republication of the article he alleges he “has been gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment”.The parties will return to court on Thursday.TopicsLachlan MurdochAustralian mediaLaw (Australia)Defamation lawMedia businessNews CorporationMedia lawnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Documents reveal Australia’s efforts to stay neutral as Donald Trump claimed electoral fraud

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      Documents reveal Australia’s efforts to stay neutral as Donald Trump claimed electoral fraudUS political insider admits there are ‘reasons to worry’ for its democracy as allies wonder at damage done to the west’s credibility

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      A longtime US foreign policy official is frank when asked whether Australia should worry about risks to American democracy.“I can’t, with a straight face, say there’s nothing to worry about,” says Richard Fontaine, head of the Center for a New American Security, an influential Washington thinktank.Visiting Canberra this week, he says: “I spent seven years of my life working in the US Senate, and I never in a million years thought that I would see a mob trying to overturn the certification of a presidential election by storming the US Capitol. It’s unthinkable, but this is where we are. So there are certainly some reasons for concern.”New documents obtained by Guardian Australia show how Australia tried to avoid wading into controversy during that turbulent period by stressing its confidence in American institutions to ensure a peaceful transition of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.Australian officials were closely following news reports and monitoring statements by senior members of Trump’s cabinet in the weeks after the then-president’s refusal to concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election and in the period around the attempted insurrection at the Capitol building on 6 January 2021.Capitol attack panel votes to subpoena Trump – ‘the central cause of January 6’Read more‘Will there be a peaceful transition of power?’One briefing provided to Australia’s then foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, in early January noted that Trump “has not conceded and continues to pursue legal challenges to electoral processes”.The briefing drew attention to a report in the Washington Post based on “an hour-long recording of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, the official responsible for administering the state’s elections”.“During the call, President Trump pressured fellow Republican Raffensperger to ‘find 11,780 votes’ and recalculate the results of the election in Trump’s favour,” said the briefing material obtained under freedom of information laws.The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised Payne not to “add” to commentary about Trump’s attempt to pressure Raffensperger.A key line for public consumption was that American leadership was “indispensable” to meeting global challenges and that the alliance between Australia and the US was “enduring and built on shared democratic values”.But there was apparently enough concern about the situation for officials to outline a response if any journalist asked the direct question: “Will there be a peaceful transition of power?”The official response was: “The United States is a great democracy that has handled peaceful transitions of power for many years and we have every confidence that will continue.”The situation then escalated sharply with the deadly violence at the US Capitol building, prompting Dfat to prepare a detailed rundown of the events, including temporary suspension of the congressional certification of electoral college votes.“After the Capitol building was secured, certification of electoral college votes continued on the night of 6 January, with Biden being confirmed as president-elect,” the updated briefing explained.“Some Republican lawmakers challenged Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania, but the objections were rejected by most Republicans and all Democrats, and failed.”This Dfat briefing noted that the protesters “had arrived from a rally held earlier outside the White House addressed by President Trump” who had “claimed to be the legitimate winner of an election that had been rigged and stolen”.“Trump encouraged the crowd to walk to the Capitol building and ‘give our Republicans … the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country,’” the document said.The briefing detailed the subsequent resignations of a number of senior Trump administration officials, the US House of Representatives’ vote to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection”, and moves by social-media companies to suspend Trump’s accounts.Updated “talking points” for Payne included condemnation of “any use or threat of violence to interfere with democratic processes” – but argued that US institutions were “robust” and welcomed Trump’s publicly stated “commitment to an orderly transition of power”.Too close for comfortThe events of January 2021 and their continuing fallout have caused discomfort for policymakers in Australia and other US allies, which count on the US for security and whose leaders often proclaim “shared values”.Polls show about seven in 10 Republicans do not accept Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election – and the party’s base is increasingly punishing any Republican politicians who try to hold Trump to account for the lies. Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the committee investigating 6 January, will lose her seat in Congress after a primary challenge.Ahead of next month’s midterm elections, a number of Republican candidates who doubt the 2020 election results, or in some cases actively worked to overturn them, are running for positions in which they would have tremendous influence over how votes are cast and counted.Trump privately admitted he lost 2020 election, top aides testifyRead moreFontaine admits he cannot say all is well. The former adviser to the late Republican senator John McCain says there are “reasons to worry” – but he takes heart from the fact “the institutions of democracy have prevailed every time thus far”.“Trump himself claims that he didn’t lose the election, but who’s in the White House? Joe Biden, and Trump’s at Mar-a-Lago,” says Fontaine, who has also worked at the state department, the national security council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.“I mean, his own vice-president certified the election for the actual winner. The courts, including judges appointed by Donald Trump himself, dismissed frivolous claims.”But some US allies worry the events have seriously damaged the west’s credibility. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, revealed foreign leaders had told him of their disenchantment. “Many are saying to us: ‘Is this model so great? You seem so unhappy. We watched what happened at the Capitol last year, we can see you at home, extremism is on the rise everywhere. You can’t solve extreme poverty. You’re arguing over the climate.’”Credibility gapThe former Labor prime minister Paul Keating argues the US has lost the credibility to champion democracy.“This idea that the US is an exceptional power, that they have God’s ear, proselytising democracy, was fine in the 20th century,” Keating said in a speech this week.“The 20th century was owned by the US [but] the 21st century belongs to someone else.”Keating renewed his longstanding criticism of Australia’s decision to draw even closer to the US through the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal, arguing it would increase the chances of being drawn in to an ill-advised war with China. He said the US was “not interested in thinking allies” but wanted “dummies”.But Keating’s view of the strategic circumstances is not shared by senior members of the current generation of political leaders, who are alarmed by China and Russia’s newly inked “no limits” partnership and continue to see the US as critical to Australia’s national security and the stability of the Indo-Pacific.‘Do you believe this?’: New video shows how Nancy Pelosi took charge in Capitol riotRead moreThe opposition leader and former defence minister, Peter Dutton, said this week that it was “a very uncertain world” and Australia needed “strong and powerful friends like the United States”.On a visit to Washington, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, predicted the relationship would remain strong “no matter who is in the leadership positions of either country”.Chalmers would not reveal whether the Australian government was concerned about the possibility Trump could run again in 2024: “We play the cards that we’re dealt and we don’t involve ourselves in the domestic politics of other countries.”Fontaine believes it is too soon to know whether Trump will run again or the likelihood of a victory – but argues “checks and balances” remain intact.“And it turns out that even when they’re tested in some pretty significant ways they have held, so I think they are likely to hold into the future,” Fontaine says. “The best scenario will be: let’s not test them.”TopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenPaul KeatingPeter DuttonAustralian politicsMarise PaynefeaturesReuse this content More