Fast losing our status as a respected international citizen

GROWING up through the 1970s to the 1990s, one was aware that under the quartet of prime ministers Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating, Australia took seriously its role as an international citizen.

In fact, it led the way on combating the evil of apartheid in South Africa, and under Paul Keating on reduction on nuclear arms.

But along came John Howard and Australia became perceived as variously a human rights pariah, a stooge of Washington and a bully of its near neighbours.

Current Prime Minister

Greg Barns

Scott Morrison, a man of myopic vision, confirmed the diminished status of this nation on the global stage last week.

Mr Morrison’s foreign policy speech, delivered on Thursday, took aim at global efforts to combat climate change and the importance of the United Nations. Nativism, and isolation are the order of day, except of course when it comes to money, where Mr Morrison proclaimed himself an internationalist — as well he might, given the Liberal Party relies on donations from global firms and banks.

Mr Morrison’s claim that in relation to climate change and the other disaster and existential threat to humanity — that of exploding number of refugees forced to languish in hell-on-Earth camps or to risk drowning because they escape oppression by boarding the only form of escape open to them, namely people-smuggler boats — Australia will not be co-operating with international bodies that are unelected and which demand action, was deeply embarrassing.

Mr Morrison’s speech, delivered at the Lowy Institute, a think tank, included these lines: “The world works best, we believe, I believe, when the character and distinctiveness of independent nations is preserved within a framework of mutual respect. This includes respecting the electoral mandates of their constituencies.” And then: “We should avoid any reflex towards a negative globalism that coercively seeks to impose a mandate from an often-illdefined borderless global community and, worse still, an unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy.”

This is all code for we will not act as a responsible, civilised nation that encourages a global effort to deal with climate change. In fact, we will simply continue to use deceptive numbers to claim we are reducing emissions when in fact we are not. And on refugees we want to continue to inflict as much cruelty on asylum-seekers as possible, including, of course, women and children.

And Mr Morrison, fresh from his forelock-tugging in Washington, wants to confirm that Australia will stand firm with the US in its nativist view of the world. On that note, Mr Morrison in his speech put paid to any hope Australia might have of being a smart regional force when he beat up on China by repeating Donald Trump’s absurd lines about