It's hard to believe that a Morrison-led government is capable of doing anything about China. But, where is that wonderful United Nations, with it's continual criticism of Western countries, including Australia, when it comes to Chinese aggression?

Titch titch ...

Small country big problem!

Dan

More water flows down the fly than all the combined rivers in Australia.

Concrete reaches its maximum strength in 80 or so years! So, A Hydro project should pay for itself over time. Especially if there're smelters and an insdustrial park!

We should fund it and ask NZ hydro to add their expertise. Always providing we have a lean on the project until our contribution is fully refunded,in say 30-5o years.

In the interim, the projects and industry this single project will allow, should change the face and prosperity of PNG for all time!

Money has never been cheaper or more available! And should allow us to do more big idea projects at home.

Not the least of which is MSR thorium and the huge medical tourism that would follow. And just the start of (tip of the iceberg) the big ideas we could do now, if intelligently led by leaders with vision and backbone!
Alan B.

It is a frightening prospect.
If PNG defaults, China will move in and take over PNG.
China will claim that PNG is part of their historical territories.
They will claim that the 15th century Chinese admiral reclaimed PNG
as a vassal state from the time of the Central Kingdom.

Likewise their claims on Vietnamese and Indonesian territories can
easily be extended to Australia. There has already been mention that
the aforementioned Admiral visited Northern Australia on his way to Africa.
It all seems far fetched, but how do you disprove it ?

Bazz. Spot on mate! And the reason we need to be the ones funding the scheme and holding a lean over the project! Otherwise, PNG could go FI? Given the level of oficial corruption the length and breadth of that society?
Alan B.

But Alan, if the Chinese took over PNG what good would having the lean
on the project. They would leave a local administration in place, but
the banker calls the tune.
There are two possibilities on the horizon that may change everything.
First the UN will become more ineffective as the control of its
voting solidifies with the OIS, Organisation of Islamic States.
The now forming alliance between China and the Islamic countries
collapses due to both having an imperative to control the world.

Also there has been a rumbling of financial troubles ahead for China.
One of these scenarios or combination of them all give the "west" an opportunity.
I agree however PNG is a right now problem.

The word is 'lien' not 'lean'.

The authors claim that "Our aid programs, generous though they are" is rubbish. Australia's foreign aid as a percentage of GDP has been in decline ever since the Coalition took office; "(Foreign aid is) the disproportionate victim of the Coalition governments budget savings measures since forming government in 2013. As Fairfax’s Matt Wade reports, while only about 1% of budget expenditure it has made up around 25% of all budget cuts".

Speaking with a friend in Fiji recently where coronavirus has had a big impact, not on the health front so much, that's been very good, but on the economic front. Millions of Australians have enjoyed a fabulous holiday in Fiji over the years, with ever smiling low paid Fijian workers catering to their every need to ensure they do have a great holiday. Unfortunate Fiji's largest industry, tourism is suffering badly. I asked my friend "How's things in the village?"...okay he tells me, but there's no not much money coming in with no work, no cash for staples (bought food), electricity, phones etc. With things as tight as they are, maybe Fiji, and I'm sure other small Pacific nations are in the same boat, they will have to seek more foreign aid to relive the economic problems. Should Australia and New Zealand for that matter, continue their stingy approach to aid, then the Islanders would do well to look to alternate sources. AND the alternate sources are very willing to help out, at a price of course.

Australia can stop the groaning and gnashing of teeth when it comes to the Pacific if we are not willing to step up to the plate, and do our bit.

Paul1405,

It's too late in the game of geopolitics for Australia get the Melanesian nation-states on it's side.

They have gone over to China and will be absorbed into the Chinese sphere of influence all to the exclusion of Australian interests.

It won't be long before we see a string of Chinese military bases stretching from the South China Sea to the western edge of Polynesia.

This will cut Australia off from China's main Pacific enemies: The US, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

When the invasion comes it won't come from the north like the Japanese attempted but will come from the south. The Chinese will basically be able to walk in through the back door.

Come on Paul, you want to try to buy the friendship & loyalty of the pacific islands by out bidding China. Do try to get a grip on it mate, you appear to have left reality.

As for stingy, what good has foreign aid ever done us, or the general public of those it has been given to, SFA. Better to keep the money at home to help our own, we sure as hell are going to need it, if only to salvage what a lefty government has done to Victoria, & the rest by what it is going to cost us to fix.

How many of our men died keeping the communists out of Malaysia? How much gratitude did that earn us.

We need all the cash we can get to start arming ourselves with enough nuclear arms to make us just too costly to invade. If it is cheaper to buy us than invade us, china will use the common sense that our & all western lefties have lost.

We had better get in quick. The only source of suitable arms is the USA, & if the coming election goes wrong, they may be no more use than Europe within a very short period.

Lien;
tks ttbn, I knew the spelling was wrong but could not remember what was correct.
There is no way we can increase foreign aid, we are at our borrowing
limit now and remember that interest rates might well increase.
I do not know whether the money we borrow is a variable rate and if
it is we are already in big trouble if the rate moves up.
Bonds will follow also.
The conversation is rather meaningless unless we know about the rates.

Correction noted ttbn. Yes a lien and a lean as well. Reckon that would look like a permenantly stationed and fully equipped covid, dingue and malaria vaccinated battalion/citizen soldiers on station! Indefinately!

Try and reneg and guess what? A few well placed VLT stealth, hover-capable, aircraft-launched missiles would send a tsunamis of a flood downriver? After most of the battalion was repatriated! And the mission flown out as the tidal flood took away the dam and all downstream infrastructure! Now that is a lean, ttbn. Didn't think I'd need to be so specific?

Our Navy needs to be refitted/reequipped as nuclear powered and nuclear-capable. And part of the negotiating backdrop if all our requirements are to be agreed to?

Just a friendly visit or two! Replete with a visitor's day! As the sailors describe the awesome, (Port Moresby annihilating, e.g.) firepower of the inboard weaponary!

We've got a lot of catching up to do with our weapons and weapon's platforms! And money has never been cheaper! And equipment will never ever be cheaper! We need to do this because the potential sabre rattling adversery, is so equipped an has no respect for our current military or its arsenal!

The more we can do of this rearming at home the more jobs and economic flow through jobs we can and must create. And given the current youth unemployment, never ever a better time to reintroduce, compulsory conscription.

And more time spent outdoors resulting in better mental health/immunity outcomes! And the usual benefits of overseas service. Leave it with you.
Alan B.

Phil,

You need to embrace your Asianess in order to see the big picture.

You are always talking as if it is still the 1960s and 1970s you are living in.

Australian is now an Asian nation-state created out of the Great Asianization Period (1980-2020) in Australian history.

The Chinese refer to Australia as Asian and believe that China should rule over Asia.

It is people like you especially in Queensland who have put that idea into the heads of the Chinese by selling off the country to them.

Why do you think millions of Chinese have been migrating to Australia during the Great Asianization Period? It's because they believe that they have ownership over an Asianized Australia and they know that it is just a matter of time before China takes total control. They see themselves as colonists sent to establish roots in Australia in readiness for the coming of total control by their ancestral motherland China.

Back with the nuclear nonsense are we Hassy, remember when you proposed on the forum "we", I assume America, should nuk Pakistan and wipe out 200 million innocent men, women and children, all on the pretext of getting them first before they get us.

Why am I reading so much militaristic trash on the forum?

The total amount of Australian aid to Fiji is a relatively small amount at about $60 million or 1.5% of our total ODA. Australia did contribute an extra $35 million in relief following Cyclone Winston which hit Fiji in 2016.

You really do need to grow up sometime Paul. It is a great big nasty world we live in, & being effectively defenseless is no way to assure a happy life.

If the yanks had been half as strong in 1940 as they were in 1945, do you really think the Japs would have attacked Pearl Harbor? Not bloody likely.

I know it is hard for a fool to understand, but the reason to be very well armed is so you don't have to use those arms. You don't have to be able to win a fight, just be strong enough that attacking you is counter productive. If the cost of fighting you is greater than the spoils of defeating you, there is a pretty fair chance that even a belligerent power will pick on some one else.

Meanwhile, great people that they are, I wouldn't start putting much reliance on Fiji being much help in any type of serious argument with China. We are going to need every cent we can gather to help our own out of the bloody mess our leaders, & Andrews in particular have got us into.

Fortunately for them, the islanders are not so dependent yet on the consumer civilisation that they can not live a happy life without phones. Right now I think a lot of Ozzies will be going without a lot more than phones, for quite some time.

To Hasbeen- Yes you said what I was thinking. Kudos. In a bidding war with China we will be destroyed. Australia has an economy of $1T- China (gnp for 2019 was $14,554.34B, a 8.66% increase from 2018).

http://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gnp-gross-national-product

Share of world GDP (PPP)[308]
Year Share
1980 2.32%
1990 4.11%
2000 7.40%
2010 13.89%
2018 18.72%

The west keeps giving money to China in the form of consumer spending only to have it used against us in the form of regional dominance and Chinese arms acquisition. And yes I agree with you on Australia's need for nuclear weapons. Although I'm not sure I would completely trust the government to use them correctly due to their "Locke Liberalist Profligate Bipartisan Ideology".

I don't think that you will get Green Paul to go against China in any substantial way- the Socialists appear to support China in solidarity with their communist comrades in their actions in Hong Kong for example- I think Paul did admit that China's policy was wrong in one case.

David F also a Green's supporter has admitted that China's policy is wrong on multiple occasions- not sure why he supports The Green's.

Bandt is an interesting character as was Di Natale. The Green's seem to have moved to the so called Far-Left since Bob Brown.

There are those of us that don't support the aims of the warmongers. Claims that arming oneself to the teeth is a way of avoiding war is a lie. Post WWII and the most advanced military power, the United States, has shown itself to also be the most belligerent. Under the guise of "Might is Wright" the US, has engaged in war after war, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and elsewhere. Supposedly in the name of "defending American interest" the United States has seen fit to kill millions of innocent people for no other purpose than to exert it dominance.

CM, China's sovereignty over Hong Kong is not in question. The fall out from past colonialism is the problem. I deplore the use of violence by the Chinese authorities against the people of Hong Kong! I also deplore their acts of violence against minorities within China. Isolating China in the way we isolated the Soviet Union is a receipt for disaster, both for them and us. Australia instead of trying to be some pipsqueak sabre rattler in our dealings with China, we should have pursued an independent paths years ago and maybe today we could have some influence in these matters. China views Australia as nothing more than an annoying fly, released by the fly master in Washington to try and upset them. A quick swat and the fly would be gone!

Hassy, you need to grow up, your call for the nuclear annihilation of millions shows your mental capacity.

Paul1405,

Phil's (Hasbeen) mental and intellectual capacity has not changed since the day he was born.