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      Scott Morrison suggests Donald Trump’s comments before US Capitol riot were ‘incredibly disappointing’

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      The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has suggested comments by Donald Trump that encouraged an insurrectionist mob to storm the US Capitol were “incredibly disappointing” and led to a “terrible” outcome.
      In his first media outing since returning from a week’s holiday, Morrison distanced himself from the outgoing US president, noting the two weren’t friends before he became prime minister.
      Morrison on Monday also downplayed suggestions that deaths among some “very aged” people who took the Pfizer vaccine in Norway could impact Australia’s rollout.
      Earlier in January, Morrison said he hoped for a peaceful transfer of power in the US as he condemned rioters for “terribly distressing” acts of violence in storming the Capitol building.
      But the Liberal leader stopped short of criticising Trump for encouraging the crowd to travel to Washington DC, and for later describing them as “very nice people”. His reluctance to admonish Trump earned Morrison a rebuke from his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, who said his response was “tepid”.

      Scott Morrison
      (@ScottMorrisonMP)
      Very distressing scenes at the US Congress. We condemn these acts of violence and look forward to a peaceful transfer of Government to the newly elected administration in the great American democratic tradition.

      January 6, 2021

      The acting prime minister, Michael McCormack, managed firmer criticism of Trump, last week describing the president’s refusal to concede defeat and his inflammatory tweets as “unfortunate”.
      On Monday, Morrison told 2GB he had spoken to president-elect Joe Biden “not long after” the election and Australia had done work “behind the scenes” to engage with like-minded countries about the transition in the US.
      “America is going through a very terrible time at the moment – but [we’re] looking forward to the country uniting and moving on from these terrible last few months and particularly these last few weeks,” Morrison said.
      He distanced himself from Trump, saying he had “worked closely” with him as prime minister but countered suggestions they were friends, observing he didn’t know Trump before he became prime minister.
      Morrison described events in the US as “deeply distressing” and recent “actions” as “very disappointing”.
      Pressed if he thought Trump’s actions were disappointing, he said: “I’ve echoed the comments of other leaders about those things. I think it was very disappointing that things were allowed to get to that stage.
      “The things that were said, that it encouraged others to come to the Capitol and engage in that way, were incredibly disappointing, very disappointing, and the outcomes were terrible.”
      Morrison said it was not for him to “provide lectures to anybody” but it was important for the American people to come together behind their “elected president” and continue as a close friend and strong ally of Australia. “We look forward to working with president Biden and his whole team.”
      During a trip to the US in 2019, Morrison attended a Trump rally in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and praised Trump’s political priorities, expressing a view that the pair “share a lot of the same views”.
      In December, Trump awarded Morrison, and the prime minister accepted, a legion of merit, America’s highest military honour.
      Morrison on Monday also addressed reports of potential adverse reactions to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Norway, where authorities said they could not rule out the vaccine had contributed to the deaths of patients with severe underlying disease.
      Morrison said the cases were “distressing” but downplayed the incidence of adverse reactions among “the total volume of vaccinations that have been provided”.
      He said the people “who have sadly passed away – they’re very aged people, they were in the last phases of life and very frail”.
      “This can happen with vaccinations. We know that,” Morrison said.
      “That’s why it’s important we’re very careful – people know my view on the vaccines has always been safety first, health first. Let’s make sure they’re right, all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed, then we can give the tick and then people can safely get the jab.”
      Morrison said Australia’s rollout would proceed “patiently but as expeditiously as we responsibly can”. More

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      Trump 'penned political suicide note' at every Covid press conference, former Australian PM says

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      The former Australian prime minister John Howard has said Donald Trump penned a lengthy “political suicide note” with his “terrible” handling of the coronavirus pandemic, without which the Republican would have prevailed against Joe Biden.Howard, who led a conservative Coalition government for nearly 12 years, made the remarks on Wednesday night during a question and answer session at the Menzies Research Centre at the conclusion of a lecture delivered by the former National party leader John Anderson.“If Donald Trump had handled the pandemic half-decently he would have won the election,” Howard said.“He was headed towards a victory until the pandemic hit. It was his mishandling of that because, in the end, the public, when threatened, want their leaders to defend them against the threat.”Howard said competent public health responses had increased the popularity of political leaders across Australia.“That’s why Scott Morrison has very high approvals, Gladys Berejiklian has, our friend [Mark McGowan] in Western Australia has, and even our friend in Victoria [Daniel Andrews] is surviving – he’s more than surviving, politically, he is quite perpendicular at the present time,” the former Liberal leader said. “Now part of that is a perception that difficult as it all was, and so forth, he got the show through.”Howard noted that Andrews, the Labor premier in Victoria, had been “open to a lot of political attack”.“I know this is not a political occasion so I shouldn’t join in that attack,” he said.“But I think there’s something to be said for the proposition – and this is an optimistic thing in a way – that the side of politics in America that embraced identity politics far more, namely the Democratic party side, sure Biden won, but given how appallingly Trump handled the pandemic how could he not win?“Every time [Trump] had a news conference he was penning a political suicide note.”Howard, Australia’s prime minister from 1996 to 2007, said Trump’s handling of the pandemic was “terrible” but still the Republicans did “far better than many people expected” in Congress.Anderson’s lecture to the Liberal-aligned thinktank on Wednesday night railed against “wokeness” and identity politics.Despite Biden’s resounding victory both in the electoral college and the popular vote, Howard said he detected a backlash in “middle America” which prevented the Democrats from gaining control of the legislature.“I draw a little bit of encouragement from that, not in a partisan sense – I am more sympathetic to the Republicans than I am to the Democrats – but I think probably there was a middle America rejection to be found in that election outcome, notwithstanding the fact that [Biden] won and I think you are starting to see it reflected in Biden’s choice of people who will serve in his administration – they are not as leftwing and embracing of political correctness as you might expect.”Anderson agreed with Howard’s thesis and declared the media in Australia and the US were preoccupied with characterising Trump as a “terrible person” rather than analysing his policies.The former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister did not reflect on Trump’s habitual lying while in office or the scandals that ultimately defined his presidency.Anderson noted that an “astonishing” number of Americans voted for Trump despite the mismanagement of Covid-19. Howard said in response to that observation: “He did have a number of flaws.”And Anderson said the looming runoff election in the state of Georgia was “a very important runoff for the globe – I mean what happens in American politics at this point in history is probably as important to us as what happens here”.“I’m so motivated by what I see as the real potential for us to lose our freedoms,” Anderson said. “I’m so despairing at our lack of, am I allowed to say, manning up.”After deciding he should instead say “humanising up” – “there’s a touch of wokeism in everyone” – Anderson concluded by stating that when it came to the defence of freedom “it’s all hands to the wheel”. More

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      UK and US lock in behind Australia in China row

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      The British government has vowed to stand with Australia to “protect our key interests and values” and push back at “disinformation” amid a deepening rift in Canberra’s relationship with Beijing.The American ambassador to Australia also accused a Chinese foreign ministry official of spreading “disinformation through fabricated images and disingenuous statements” about Australia.The United Kingdom and the United States are the latest countries to speak out in support of Australia, after France and New Zealand criticised China over an official tweeting a digitally-created image depicting an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a child in Afghanistan.China has accused Australia of overreacting to the tweet and hyping the issue for domestic political purposes.When asked about the tweeted image, a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told the Guardian the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, “has made clear we will always stand shoulder to shoulder with Australia to make sure that we protect our key interests and values”.“Disinformation is an issue we take extremely seriously and we will continue to coordinate closely with Australia and other international partners to ensure our citizens are protected,” the spokesperson said.The Guardian understands the British government believes that China, as a leading member of the international community, should live up to the obligations that come with that. It views the tweeted image as clearly fake and deeply concerning.When asked in the House of Commons last month about China’s escalating trade actions against Australia, Raab indicated he had regular exchanges with the Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, and expressed “solidarity”.Raab said the UK was also working alongside Australia and the other Five Eyes partners – the US, Canada and New Zealand – on issues such as the crackdown on pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong.The US ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse, responded to questions from the Guardian by saying the Australian government had “responsibly investigated and disclosed allegations that its soldiers committed crimes in Afghanistan”.“The world can only wish that the Chinese Communist party were to bring the same degree of transparency and accountability to credible reports of atrocities against the Uighurs in Xinjiang,” Culvahouse, who was appointed by Donald Trump, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.Those sentiments were backed by the US State Department’s deputy spokesperson, Cale Brown, who described the Afghanistan tweet as “a new low, even for the Chinese Communist party”.The CCP’s latest attack on Australia is another example of its unchecked use of disinformation and coercive diplomacy. Its hypocrisy is obvious to all. While it doctors images on @Twitter to attack other nations, the CCP prevents its own citizens from reading their posts.— Cale Brown (@StateDeputySPOX) December 2, 2020
      The Florida senator Marco Rubio wrote to the chief executive of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, to ask why the tweet had not been taken down. A Twitter spokesperson has previously said the image contained within the tweet had been “marked as sensitive media”, meaning it is hidden behind a warning message by default.On Tuesday, Scott Morrison turned to the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat to reach out to the Chinese Australian community.The prime minister sought to make clear that the escalating tensions between the two governments – which led last week to the imposition of hefty tariffs on Australian wine – were not a reflection on Chinese Australians.Morrison wrote that “the post of a false image of an Australian soldier does not diminish our respect for and appreciation of our Chinese Australian community or indeed our friendship with the people of China”.The prime minister said the “difficult issues” that had arisen in the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force’s report into alleged war crimes by special forces soldiers in Afghanistan were being dealt with in a “transparent and honest way”.Earlier this week, when he demanded an apology from the Chinese government over the tweet by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, Morrison said the dispute was broader than just the two countries, and that other nations were watching.Zhao’s tweet seized on the findings of a recent report from a four-year official investigation into the conduct of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan, known as the Brereton report.Another Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, held up the front page of the Brereton report at Tuesday’s regular press briefing in Beijing as she declared that the “computer-generated graphic” was not a case of disinformation.“The Australian side … is under immense criticism and condemnation from the international community for the ruthless killing of Afghan innocents by some of its soldiers, but the Australian side wants to turn that into a tough-on-China position,” Hua said.The Chinese embassy in Canberra urged the Australian government to “face up to the crux of the current setback of bilateral relationship and take constructive practical steps to help bring it back to the right track”.“The rage and roar of some Australian politicians and media is nothing but misreading of and overreaction to Mr Zhao’s tweet,” an embassy spokesperson said.The former senior Australian foreign affairs official Richard Maude told the Guardian on Tuesday there was no end in sight to the rift in the relationship with Beijing, and it was a “pretty lonely and tough battle for a middle power to be in on its own”.“What we really need is enough countries to be willing to publicly take a stand,” Maude said.Australia and China have been at odds over a number of issues over the past few years, including the Turnbull government’s decision to exclude Chinese telcos Huawei and ZTE from Australia’s 5G network and its introduction of foreign interference laws that were seen as targeting China’s activities.But the relationship deteriorated sharply in April when the Morrison government issued an early call for an independent international inquiry into the origin and handling of Covid-19 and floated the idea of international weapons inspector-style powers for pandemic investigations.It triggered a furious reaction from Beijing, which has subsequently taken trade actions against a range of Australian exports including barley, red meat and wine, citing technical grounds. More

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      Scott Morrison's climate language has shifted – but actions speak louder than words

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      Scott Morrison’s language about Australia adopting an emissions reduction target of net zero by 2050, and about climate action more generally, is starting to warm up. The recent shift in the prime minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way, and is the shift real?The story so farWe know the Coalition’s history on climate policy. The Abbott government repealed Labor’s climate price, attempted to gut the Renewable Energy Target and abolish agencies driving a transition to low emissions energy. Morrison while treasurer brandished a lump of coal in the parliament, telling his opponents not to be “scared”. For much of this year, the Coalition has ignored persistent entreaties from environmentalists and major business groups to adopt a target of net zero emissions by 2050 (at the latest), and to use the economic recovery from Covid-19 to lock in the transition to low emissions. Morrison has never ruled out adopting a net zero target but has created the impression the government wasn’t interested – an impression reinforced by the government’s declaration that it would pursue a “gas-led recovery” after the pandemic.When and why did the language change?In the couple of weeks before the US presidential election on 3 November, Japan, China and South Korea adopted pledges taking them closer to net zero. Morrison also had a private conversation with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, in which net zero was raised. Leaders were anticipating the likely election of Joe Biden. The Democrat had promised to end the backsliding of the Trump era and revitalise international climate negotiations, starting with bringing the US back into the Paris deal. Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as his climate envoy after winning the election is a further signal of seriousness. From the moment Biden was projected as the likely winner, Morrison’s language began to change. It became noticeably warmer. Morrison now says Australia wants to “reach net zero emissions as quickly as possible”.What about 2030?Before we get to 2050, Australia has an emissions reduction target for 2030, and the government will be under pressure to update that commitment with a higher level of ambition in the next round of international climate talks.Australia’s current target is a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, and the government has been planning to meet that (not very ambitious) target using carryover credits from the Kyoto period. Official government emissions projections released in December last year found Australia was not on track to meet the 2030 target unless it used the credits. Australia’s use of the Kyoto-era concessions has been strongly opposed by a large number of nations in international climate discussions, and experts say there is no legal basis for their use under the Paris agreement.After Biden’s victory, Morrison used a speech to business leaders to signal, hey presto, magic happens: Australia might not deploy the accounting trick to help meet the 2030 target after all. The prime minister said: “My ambition is that we will not need them and we are working to this as our goal, consistent with our record of over-delivering.” The hint from Morrison was that new projections, expected to be released in December, will show Australia is on track to meet the promised cut without carryovers.How can that happen?In part, because the Australian government has not been great at forecasting future emissions and tends to substantially change its estimates each year.Estimating future emissions is difficult. Each year, officials make assumptions about what will happen in 50 areas of the economy and come up with projections of how much will be emitted. For more than a decade, they have significantly over-estimated how much CO2 the country will emit in the years ahead before revising down the projections, sometimes significantly.The biggest miscalculation has been in electricity generation. Renewable energy has come into the grid much faster than the government expected – the national 2020 renewable energy target was met ahead of time, state targets in Victoria and Queensland have started to have an impact and the cost of solar and wind energy continues to drop, making investment more attractive. Officials also overestimated how much grid electricity the country would use – demand has fallen, in part due to nearly a third of homes now having solar panels.For reasons that are not clear, the official projections have assumed there would be less renewable energy in the system than the models used by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which runs the power grid. Addressing this will bring future projections down.There are other anomalies. The projections do not factor in drought, which in recent years has reduced emissions from agriculture as farmers have had to substantially reduce cattle and sheep numbers.Officials last year revised down the emissions forecast for the next decade by 344m tonnes. If a similar readjustment were to happen this year, it could lead to the government saying it was now on track to meet its modest 2030 target without the carryover credits.Has anything else changed that could affect the projections?The only new policy of note from the Morrison government this year has been its low-emissions technology roadmap. Released in September, it claimed developing five new technologies could “avoid” 250m tonnes of emissions a year by 2040.There was been no explanation of how that number was reached, and with the arguable exception of “clean” hydrogen, the government has not yet committed significant new funding to develop the technologies. It is unclear how this policy could reasonably change the projections in a meaningful way.More noteworthy is that, while the federal government has tried to slow the influx of solar and wind by neither continuing nor replacing the renewable energy target, the states keep stepping in to fill the gap.The big one is the NSW plan to underwrite 12 gigawatts of new wind and solar over the next decade – a development that will be banked by Canberra as “progress” in terms of projected national emissions reductions, but also criticised by the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, because it might bring forward the closure of coal plants, which is of course a necessary development if you are a government now wanting to trumpet a downward trend in emissions. You know it makes sense.Would a lower emissions forecast be good news?Lower emissions would, of course, be great. But if it happens it isn’t something we should get too excited about, for two reasons.The first should be pretty obvious – the government will not have actually done anything yet. These are projections, not actual emissions.Before Covid-19 hit, Australia’s national emissions remained stubbornly flat under the Coalition, having dipped only about 2% in the more than six years since it was elected. They will be lower this year due to the pandemic, but that is not something the government can claim credit for, and it may not continue.The second reason is, as mentioned above, Australia’s target is nothing to crow about. It was a fudge from the beginning. The size of the cut – 26%-28% – was just a lift of the US commitment under the Paris agreement, with one notable difference – the Obama administration promised that target for 2025, while the Australian government pushed it back to 2030.Getting to net zero emissions, as scientists say is necessary, isn’t just about the end goal. It’s about how much you emit as you get there. To play its fair part in meeting the goals of the Paris agreement, Australia can only emit so much over the next three decades.Advice to the government in 2015 suggested playing its part would require a cut equivalent to between 45% and 65% by 2030. A recent analysis by analysts at the Climate Action Tracker found Australia’s fair share over that timeframe was 66%. The current target does not get the job done.So will the government do more on climate?It is not impossible, but it is far from guaranteed.There will be pressure on Australia over the next year not only to set a target of net zero by 2050, but to go further by 2030 than promised. The US under Biden will be required to set a new target for that date and other major countries are expected to do the same. Dropping the plan to use carryover credits will not be enough to satisfy their expectations.Apart from saying we can meet our (lowball) 2030 target without a Kyoto-era accounting trick (cue applause) there’s no sign at the moment the government is working up a higher 2030 target. It is working on a long-term climate strategy, which was a commitment under the Paris agreement. It was due this year, but has been pushed back to before the next major climate summit in Glasgow late next year. It is expected, but not guaranteed, to include modelling of what future action on climate will mean for Australia.There are a couple of other policies in the works. The government has dumped a long-promised electric vehicle strategy and replaced it with the promise of a “future fuels” plan on hydrogen, electric and bio-fuelled vehicles, but it is not expected to deliver significant new commitments to accelerate an emissions cut.Potentially more significantly, it has also said it will look at the safeguard mechanism, a Tony Abbott-era policy that was supposed to limit emissions from big industrial sites. So far, the scheme has barely justified its existence. Companies have mostly just been allowed to increase their CO2 limit, known as a baseline, and pollute more.Presumably recognising this is not sustainable, the government earlier this year said it accepted a recommendation from a review headed by former Business Council of Australia president Grant King that the mechanism should be changed so that companies would be rewarded for cutting emissions below their baseline if they were undertaking “transformative” projects and not just producing less or shutting down. It sounds like a step back towards carbon pricing – rewarding cuts and, if the Coalition can stomach it, finally penalising increases in emissions.Would the government go back to carbon pricing?Morrison should use his political capital and his internal authority to drive a substantive change – but he won’t want to lose his job over it. Part of what’s going on with Morrison’s shift in language is the prime minister testing how much he can get away with: how positive can he sound about emissions reduction before the right of the Liberal party starts having a tantrum, or before the National party has a public meltdown because someone has whispered coal is not good for humanity after all? Think of Morrison as inching along a dimly lit ledge several stories above the ground.But the rest of the world isn’t waiting for the Coalition to get its act together. Action on emissions is picking up elsewhere and at some point Australia will have to deal with rising CO2 from big industry and transport. In the meantime, as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO recently reported, climate change is already here and extreme weather events are getting worse. More

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      Trumpism will persist until we rekindle faith in people’s ability to reshape the world | Jeff Sparrow

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      About 70% of Republicans apparently believe the 2020 presidential election to have been neither free nor fair.That’s a big chunk of voters rejecting, on entirely bogus grounds, the legitimacy of the new president.And it’s not the first time either.From 2011, Donald Trump engendered support for his own tilt at the White House by questioning the legality of the Obama presidency. He built his political career upon the embrace of “birtherism”, a racist conspiracy that emerged during the election of 2008.Back then, rightwing blogs and talk radio shows claimed Obama was not a “natural-born citizen of the US”, and thus ineligible for office under Article Two of the constitution.A Harris Poll in 2010 found an astonishing 25% of respondents questioned Obama’s right to serve, as the birthers tried to persuade electoral college voters, the supreme court and members of the college to block his certification.More than any other figure, Trump brought that rejection of Obama’s legitimacy into the mainstream.“If he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility …” he told NBC’s Today Show in 2011, “then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics.”For the Tea Party movement and the Republican fringe, birtherism underpinned a rightwing conviction that Obama’s presidency represented a kind of coup.You don’t need to cry fraud to explain recent presidential electionsMind you, after the 2016 election, a significant proportion of Democrats thought the same about Trump’s victory.As David Greenberg notes, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter and John Lewis were among those who publicly labelled Trump “illegitimate”, elected only as the result of Russian meddling. Some Democrats blamed Vladimir Putin for the WikiLeaks release of the Podesta emails or suggested Russian social bots fixed the outcome; others falsely claimed that voting booths had been rigged or that Trump was in fact a “Manchurian candidate” employed in Putin’s service.For such people, Trump wasn’t merely an odious, rightwing demagogue. He was also an impostor, whose presence in the Oval Office signified systemic institutional failure.The refusal by Trump’s supporters to accept the 2020 result as genuine didn’t then come entirely from nowhere. Indeed, it’s been a long time since partisans of a defeated presidential candidate haven’t denounced the process that allowed their opponent to win.Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.For years, surveys have revealed a massive and ongoing decline in trust in basic institutions, including those associated with democracy.In early 2020, for instance, the communications firm Edelman polled 34,000 people in 28 countries for its Trust Barometer report. It found a tremendous decrease in the public’s respect for institutions, with almost everywhere “government and media … perceived as both incompetent and unethical”.Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed believed the media to be “contaminated with untrustworthy information” and 66% did not expect government leaders “to successfully address our country’s challenges”.Even in Australia, one of the wealthiest and most secure nations in the world, more than half of people polled saw the system as failing them, and a large majority no longer possessed confidence in the media.We might think this cynicism would favour progressives, given the left’s longstanding critique of institutional power.But it’s not as simple as that.Obama won office because George W Bush had plunged America into permanent, unpopular wars. Trump triumphed in 2016 because he faced a weak opponent; he lost in 2020 when his response to Covid-19 revealed his utter ineptitude.In other words, you don’t need to cry fraud to explain recent presidential elections. You can understand the outcomes easily enough in terms of decisions by voters.But only if you acknowledge voters’ ability to make such decisions.Conspiracy theories proceed on an entirely different basis. They present ordinary people as gulls, the perpetual dupes of power; they suggest events unfold, always and everywhere, according to the will of hidden string pullers.Rather than asking why their candidate didn’t appeal to electors, the conspiracist looks for external manipulation – implicitly accepting that only the elite can make history.In different circumstances, a widespread cynicism about the existing institutions might propel a movement to deepen and widen participation in political affairs. Right now, however, it seems to be linked to a prevailing pessimism about democratic agency, one that can all too easily provide openings for authoritarian demagogues.Joe Biden takes office as the embodiment of American business-as-usual. Despite polling far more votes than Trump, he remains the ultimate insider, associated with many of the most consistently hated policies in recent years (from the Iraq war, which he championed, to mass incarceration, which he helped initiate).Not surprisingly, if you survey rightwing social media, you can see the new argument cohering at a frightening speed, with more and more accounts claiming that Biden was illegitimately foisted on honest Americans by a nefarious elite. Far-right agitators, many of whom had long since given up on Trump, have embraced the #stopthesteal campaign with enthusiasm, with the upcoming Million Maga march potentially bringing together motley white nationalist and fascist groups in what looks very much like an attempted reprise of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.Just as Trump’s rise inspired imitators elsewhere, we should expect the right’s narrative to spread internationally. Already, baseless allegations of electoral fraud have been echoed by Australian politicians – and it’s still early days yet.Trump might be gone but, until we can rekindle faith in ordinary people’s ability to reshape the world, Trumpism will remain very much with us. More

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      It's not 'Trump derangement syndrome' to see that the US has to be good before it is great | Nick Bhasin

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      When Joe Biden was declared the winner of the US election over the weekend, I joined millions of my fellow Americans in their relief. The nightmare of the past four years was over. Donald Trump was done. I couldn’t be there in person but I retweeted a couple of things and hugged my family.
      But after an exhausting election week – “North Carolina’s blue, now it’s red, wait only 17 people in the state have voted, what is happening?!” – the question remains …
      How was it this close?
      How did millions of Americans look at four years of lying, spreading disinformation, exacerbating racial tensions, and downplaying and mismanaging a pandemic and say “more”?
      Turns out a quarter of a million dead from Covid just wasn’t that big a deal. Child separation? Not a problem. Democrats chose a compassionate, moderate, old white guy so no one would be scared off by identity politics and spooky “socialist” policies and 71 million people STILL said, “Nope. Give us the rich guy who’s in a lot of debt and pays no taxes and says that caravans of immigrants and thugs and animals will ruin our lives.”
      2016 wasn’t a fluke. It was an entrée. More people voted for Trump this time, and he increased his support among minorities if you believe exit polls, which I don’t because the polls – and the punditry based on them – were useless. They promised a decisive victory for Biden but Trump’s strategy of combining D-grade celebrity charisma and appealing to people’s basest instincts worked.
      As the famous saying goes, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but how your country can entertain you with a dark, ugly spectacle filled with chaos and emptiness.”
      In May of 2008, I met an American woman in Sydney who’d been living in the UK. She was a Harry Potter fan (always suspicious for an adult) and insisted that she’d never move back to the US because “that place is f**ked”.
      I was furious. I had just moved to Sydney and I wasn’t ready to throw my home country under the bus.
      Then in 2016 Donald Trump was elected president.
      Living abroad for the last 13 years has helped me appreciate the great things about my country (I’m also an Australian citizen). They were things I took for granted when I lived there – the energy and diversity of the cities, the geographical beauty, the Mexican food.
      But the flaws seem much, much worse. The mass shootings (that’s not a problem here); the lack of universal healthcare (we’ve got it); the climate change denialism (um … no comment); treating asylum seekers like criminals (no, Australia isn’t perfect). There’s something about American ideology that won’t allow these problems to be fixed or even convincingly addressed.
      The Trump administration wrapped up all of this and more into a bigoted package for its supporters – Trump never tried to be the president for the whole country – and stuck a big middle finger up to the rest of the world, which laughed in return. I’ve been living among the laughers. It’s not a good feeling.
      In four years of low points, one of the most personally wounding came in July of 2019, when Trump suggested that four progressive congresswomen (all women of colour, three US-born) go back to where they came from.
      With this classic battle cry for bigots, Trump and his supporters (including the Republican party – only four of their members joined the Democrats’ official rebuke) made it clear that I, the son of an immigrant from India and a Puerto Rican from New York, was not welcome. My family was not welcome.
      One of those congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was forced to remind the children of America that: “No matter what the president says, this country belongs to you. And it belongs to everyone.”
      For a lot of my country, those hurt feelings made me a snowflake crying lib tears. I had “Trump derangement syndrome”. I was taking him too seriously and literally – the President of the GD United States.
      I know we’re not supposed to focus on identity politics and cultural issues, but it’s episodes like this that make Kamala Harris’s ascension resonate. The first female vice-president. The first black vice-president. The first Indian vice-president. Not only do we belong. We can be in charge.
      Barring some catastrophe before 14 December, when election results are certified, America will try to move forward. Trump will do his best to make sure the transition proceeds with zero dignity for him or the country – he still hasn’t conceded and his 300 desperate lawsuits are still going forward, though many have been dismissed.
      But the damage he’s done will stay with us for some time. Republicans complicit in the degradation of the country’s character who kowtowed to Trump were re-elected. A QAnon believer will join Congress, as well as a certain other representative who relishes owning the libs.
      As most of the rest of world already knew, the myth of America as an incorruptible force for good in the world was due for dismantling. So in that sense, maybe Donald Trump has done the US a favour in showing us just how “normal” America is, no better than other countries that elect authoritarian populists with delusions of grandeur who encourage fear.
      And if we accept that, maybe we can start to make practical changes that help people and convince them that popular policies labelled as socialist by the right aren’t scary. Maybe we can start to dismantle another American myth – that everyone is better off on their own, free to get rich or sink into destitution. Maybe 2021 can be the beginning of a new era, when we acknowledge that we have to be good before we can be great.
      The 2020 election didn’t deliver the enormous repudiation America needed. It showed us how deeply divided we are. But a win is a win. Most of the country made the moral choice not to be represented by selfishness and hatred. And for now, that’s a reason to hope that America is a little less f**ked.
      • Nick Bhasin is a writer and editor. Follow him at @nickbhasin More

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      Scott Morrison congratulates Joe Biden on US election win and flags Australian visit in 2021

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      Scott Morrison has signalled he would invite Joe Biden to visit Australia for the 70th anniversary of the Anzus treaty in 2021 as he congratulated the Democrat for winning the US presidential election.
      Morrison told reporters that Canberra would continue to deal with the Trump administration during the transition period but looked forward to working with Biden from January.
      The Australian prime minister described the former vice-president in the Obama administration as possessing a “deep understanding” of national security issues, including the importance of the post-war alliance to ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. The Anzus treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States was signed in September 1951.
      “I look forward to inviting the president-elect to join us next year … and for us to be able to celebrate 70 years of peace and stability and security that has been established by this incredible relationship,” Morrison told reporters on Sunday.
      “This is a profound time, not just for the United States, but for our partnership and the world more broadly and I look forward to forging a great partnership in the spirit of the relationships that has always existed between prime ministers of Australia and presidents of the United States.”
      Biden’s election will increase diplomatic pressure on Australia to step up its commitments on climate change.
      The incoming president has promised that America will rejoin the Paris agreement and will reach net zero emissions by 2050. Biden has also signalled he will take steps to reinvigorate global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
      Morrison has been emphasising that Australia will take a technological approach to emissions reduction, and the Coalition is thus far resisting pressure to sign up to a net zero commitment by mid-century despite being a signatory to the Paris agreement.
      While some in the Liberal party feel the Coalition needs to turn the page on the climate wars the National party will resist moves to increase ambition around abatement.
      Asked about Biden’s commitment to net zero, Morrison said Australia was a signatory to the Paris agreement “and that is something we hold fast to”.
      “We have a strong story to tell about our achievement when it comes to commitments on the global stage,” he told reporters.
      “I also particularly welcome the comments that were made during the campaign by vice president Biden, at the time, when he showed a lot of similarity to Australia’s views on how technology can be used to address the lower emissions challenge.
      “We want to see global emissions fall and it’s not enough for us to meet our commitments – we need to have the transformational technologies that are scalable and affordable for the developing world as well because that is where all the emissions increases are coming from in the decade ahead in the next 20 years.”
      Trump, who was on the golf course when the news broke that he was to be a one-term president, has not yet conceded defeat and is continuing to make unsubstantiated claims casting doubt over the legitimacy of the process.
      But world leaders have lined up to congratulate the president-elect and his running mate, Kamala Harris.
      In a statement issued ahead of his remarks in Sydney, the Australian prime minister said: “Today, the world faces many challenges, including managing the Covid-19 pandemic, on both a health and economic front, ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and peace and stability.”
      “American leadership is indispensable to meeting these challenges and upholding the rules, norms and standards of our international community,” Morrison said.
      “We also look forward to working with president-elect Biden and his administration to continue to fight the Covid-19 global pandemic and recession, to develop a vaccine, drive a global economic recovery, and develop new technologies to reduce global emissions as we practically confront the challenge of climate change.
      “We welcome the president-elect’s commitment to multilateral institutions and strengthening democracies.”

      Scott Morrison
      (@ScottMorrisonMP)
      Congratulations to @joebiden and @kamalaharris – Australia wishes you every success in office. The Australia-US Alliance is deep and enduring, and built on shared values. I look forward to working with you closely as we face the world’s many challenges together.

      November 7, 2020

      With Biden’s victory projected, Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister who famously tussled with Trump early in his presidency about the US refugee swap deal, kept his reaction on Twitter succinct.

      Malcolm Turnbull
      (@TurnbullMalcolm)
      Congratulations Joe Biden and Kamala Harris! What a relief that you won. 🙏🙏🙏

      November 7, 2020

      He later told ABC TV that Biden’s win would mean a return to “normal transmission” with the US administration no longer making decisions by “wild tweets” in the early hours of the morning.
      Morrison, who forged a constructive relationship with Trump, on Sunday morning noted Australia had enjoyed “a strong working relationship with the current administration, one that has seen the strength of our alliance continue to grow and deepen”.
      [embedded content]
      He said Australia would “continue to work closely with president Trump and his administration in the transition period between now and 20 January”.
      The projected result overnight was also welcomed by the Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese.

      Anthony Albanese
      (@AlboMP)
      Congratulations to @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris on a victory delivered with record support with a progressive agenda based on decency, honest government, creating opportunity and dealing with the pandemic and the challenge of climate change

      November 7, 2020

      Albanese said: “The US alliance has been our most important partnership since WW2 and your commitment to leadership will see this strengthened into the future.”
      The Labor leader later told reporters that Biden was “a friend of Australia” and he welcomed America’s imminent return to the Paris accord and multilateral institutions.
      After Trump last week falsely claimed victory in the presidential election and flagged supreme court action to truncate the count, Labor declared American voters deserved to have their voices heard. The shadow foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said the democratic process needed to be respected “even when it takes time”.
      On Sunday morning Australian time, Trump was still claiming without evidence that Republican observers were blocked from scrutineering in counting rooms. In a capitalised tweet he said: “I won the election”. Twitter flagged the statement with a note that: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
      Albanese said on Sunday it was critical that the outgoing administration respected democratic principles. “The other thing that needs to happen – and this is the context here – is that Scott Morrison needs to dissociate himself … from government members who are questioning the democratic process and continue to do so.”
      “The fact is that these conspiracy theories do nothing to advance our common interest of standing up for democratic values,” Albanese said. More

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      Joe Biden’s move to net zero emissions will leave Australia in the (coal) dust | Bill Hare

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      The election of Joe Biden to the White House is likely to see Australia increasingly isolated as the world heads to net zero emissions, with quite fundamental implications for our economy. Let’s have a look at what has happened in the last two months.In September, the European Union proposed increasing its 2030 target from 40% to at least 55% reduction below 1990 levels in order to meet the net zero by 2050 target it adopted in 2019. Critically, the EU has made climate action one of its three main Covid-19 response priorities, so that at least 30% of its multi-annual budget and recovery fund is to be spent on achieving its increased 2030 emission reduction targets and its climate neutrality goal for 2050. These new goals for the EU27 would bring its domestic emissions very close to a 1.5°C Paris compatible level for the period to 2050. The UK has similar goals and ambitions to the EU27.Shortly afterwards, President Xi Jinping announced that China would “aim to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060”, the first time China has acknowledged the need to reach anything close to zero CO2 emissions by mid-century. If it covers all greenhouse gas emissions it would also be very close to what is needed by mid-century to be in line with the Paris agreement’s long-term goal. If this goal covers CO2 only, then China would need to achieve carbon neutrality around 2050 for this to be compatible with the Paris agreement.With China responsible for about a quarter of the world’s emissions, a move to net zero by mid-century has very significant implications for global temperature, lowering the Climate Action Tracker’s end of century projections by 0.2-0.3oC towards 2.4-2.5oC, compared with the previous 2.7oC projection.In October, both Japan and South Korea also announced net zero GHG goals for 2050. Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, announced Japan would aim for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with several specific measures, including a fundamental revision of its policy on coal-fired power plants. In an important change to Japan’s narrative, Suga emphasised the benefits to economic growth from the net zero commitment, whereas he’d previously characterised it as a cost.Getting to net zero essentially means the phasing out of coal, gas and oilThis was followed two days later by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, announcing his commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, replacing coal power generation with renewable energy to create new markets, industries and jobs.Taken together, these four countries account for about 40% of global GHG emissions. There is also a large number of smaller countries with comparable net zero emissions commitments that would bring the total global coverage to about 48% of global emissions.What’s notable about all of these announcements is that they were made in the absence of any commitment by the United States and before any US presidential election outcome. China’s announcement in particular seems to reflect a geopolitical judgement by the Chinese government that they intend to move forward with ambitious climate goals even without the US.Arguably, these moves by this set of countries on their own will generate a major global move towards increased ambition and towards net zero by 2050.So where does this leave Australia? These net zero by mid-century moves by its major export markets create huge challenges.In 2019 China, South Korea and Japan accounted for 72% by value of Australia’s exports of LNG and coal: 88% of Australia’s LNG exports; 75% of thermal coal exports; and 51% of metallurgical coal exports. It is notable that none of these countries have focused on natural gas and all have mentioned renewable energy and other technologies, and all recognise that early action on coal is needed.The election of Joe Biden could trip this already major momentum into a landslide towards higher climate ambition. His election means the US will re-enter the Paris agreement, reverse the Trump administration’s rollbacks and make a significant contribution to closing the Paris agreement’s ambition gap with a new 2030 target. If he took the initiative to reboot US action in line with his plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050, Biden could reduce US emissions substantially by 2030.If he is able to fully implement his proposed Energy and Climate Package, and continues to be supported by the existing strong sub-national action in the US, the US could significantly reduce its 2030 emissions, reducing the gap between where it is headed now and a Paris agreement-compatible emission range for that year.Even in the case of delays and challenges to federal action, the efforts of state and local actors, such as the We Are Still In campaign, are expected to continue. A recent study estimated that enhanced action by subnational actors in the US could reduce emissions by 37% below 2005 levels by 2030. Biden as US president may not have control of the Senate (although the vote count on this result is far from over – and may not be resolved until January), but there are workarounds.Biden also has a net zero 2050 goal, which will place the US close to a Paris agreement-compatible emissions pathway. This would further lower the 2100 projected warming by about 0.1°C, and further if America undertook negative emissions action of scale beyond 2050. So the EU, China, Japan, South Korea and the US – about two thirds of the global economy, about half the world’s emissions and close to 75% of our fossil fuel export markets –will have net zero goals for 2050 or shortly afterwards. This is a massive shift.Let there be no misunderstanding about what this means. Getting to net zero essentially means the phasing out of coal, gas and oil, with markets more or less halved by 2030. This is a seismic shift for Australia and it means that it’s very likely that demand for our coal and gas will drop at least as fast as it has risen in the past few decades.It would hardly be a strategy for Australia to follow Poland’s lead and simply start to stockpile coal in warehouses. Diplomatically, Australia will find itself increasingly isolated, even in its own region and in particular with its close Pacific Island neighbours, not to mention the two superpowers, China and the US.Australia needs a forward-looking strategy aimed at taking advantage of its massive natural advantages in renewable energy and the resources essential for the low and zero carbon transition, and one that provides for a just transition for the communities and workforces affected by the rapid reduction in the markets that they have hitherto dependent upon.There is no time to be lost dithering, denying and obfuscating.• Bill Hare, a physicist and climate scientist, is the managing director of Climate Analytics More