CONTESTED GROUND: Weak, vulnerable, backwater – Australia's choice between strategic camps and managed decline

And I'm going to start with the unceremonious firing of the British Prime-- former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and his replacement with, uh, Andy Burnham, and this pivot that he is taking in his language around listening to the working class, seeking...

Now, there's a political element to that, where he's trying to cut off and mitigate the rise of the likes of, of Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe's Restore.

But there's a recognition that Labour hasn't been listening to their traditional voter base, and that is around jobs in the industrial north, steel jobs, industrial manufacturing jobs, and the costs of energy and how they are leaving the United Kingdom dangerously exposed at a time where, in Europe, there's a hot war.

In the Middle East, there's a hot war.

And if all of this sounds familiar, that's why I'm raising it with Ross today.

And I would dare say that we're in a fairly similar, if not more dire position than what the United Kingdom's in.

I think that's right.

Both countries have, uh, deindustrialized in the last thirty years in a dramatic way-

Mm

... frankly, and that's been self-inflicted largely.

Mm.

And that's sort of coincided with a more aggressive Russia for the UK in the last twenty years or so.

And you know, Vladimir Putin has really pushed the envelope, putting it mildly, in what he's done in Ukraine, and he threatens to do elsewhere.

But the bigger issue, I think, for both of our countries, the UK and Australia, is what's been going on in Beijing and, and what the Chinese are doing, because they have distorted global trade, global economics, and, and-

Mm

... and so on.

And the new UK Prime Minister, what, what worries me, uh, aside from the, the dire problems they, they do have right across their society and economy right now, is that I don't know that he has a lot of depth of experience on international issues.

I've seen very little evidence for that.

Mm.

He does have some ministers who do, but-- and they've got a lot of work to do to get their heads around this.

Mm.

But so do we.

And we also, one of the points that I wanted to pick up from your introduction really was one of the reasons we're in the dire situation we are in, and one of the reasons why what we said last week at the conference was new to so many people who are, many of them, pretty senior in their companies, is that we haven't had frank discussion and frank briefings from government-

Mm

... and for that matter, from other, other community people who are really well informed in this space about what's really going on.