Wouldn’t it be lovely…..

Dan

Yes, it is sport that we need to define where we and China are different as pertaining to the Pacific nations. Other than that, what the Pacific needs to see is real action on climate change. Where we can show that we are serious and different even as China opens up a new coal fired power station weekly?

And here I am not talking about renewable options that guarantee power price surges that may triple current power bills for joe average? But rather the nuclear option. But not as conventional nuclear power but rather unconventional SMR, MSR thorium. That are connected to microgrids via under road, cling wrap thin, super conductor graphene.

That after massively reducing transmission/distribution losses, then allow wholesale prices as low as 1 cent PKWH. And a 200% mark up that is still just 3 cents PKWH. And where we build a purpose built factory here in Oz, to mass produce the small modular reactors here for domestic use and as a major export commodity to an energy starved world! TBC.
Alan B.

It's not about Penny Wong. It's about government policy. Wong has gone visiting because she was told to, by her boss, and with the assistance and advice of her department. Wong herself is just another politician, with no particular qualifications.

It has to be said, though, that the Albanese government appears, so far, to be much more interested in the region than the Morrison all-mouth-and-trousers government was. As Greg Sheridan has said, Morrison was all talk on defence, the CCP and his laughable Pacific "family".

Cont. The Chinese and their coal embargo has backfired. We can't mine enough coal now to meet current new demand. Moreover, as the Chinese mine their own coal to replace imports they're scaping the bottom of the barrel. After they mined and burnt coal for centuries, given the age of Chinese civilization, their reserves are seriously depleted.

And we have found other markets where they pay three or four times more. But that outcome is limited and when the Russian/Ukraine war has run its course, the Russians will open the taps and flood the market until they build up their empty cash reserves, as will others (OPEC) feeling the new economic realities.

This means we have limited time to transition to MSR thorium and should given we own around 40% of the world's known reserves. And could pay for all I've suggested if we became a repository for the world's nuclear waste, which in MSR technology is just unspent fuel which has around 90% of its recoverable energy still available. Where the remaining 5-10% is still useful as long life space batteries or even very safe, self charging nuclear batteries that turn harmful rads into trickle charge electric current. Even as they provide a useful free heat source!

All that prevents any of this is tin-eared, recalcitrant politicians sitting on the treasury benches and in the Senate, where their brains are crippled by self imposed idiotic idealogical imperatives. TBC.
Alan B.

ttbn,

Love her or hate her, and I'm sure in your case its the latter, Penny Wong is one of our most capable politicians. Compare that to the "good old days" of the Morrison government, when the likes of Morrison's glove puppet Simon Birmingham said something like; "I rang the Chinese minister several times, but his phone went onto message bank, and he didn't ring me back". A nightmare isn't so bad while you are having it, its only when you wake up that you realise how terrible it was. The Morrison government as Australia's collective nightmare, tolerable while we were having it, but horrible now we have woken up.

Yes Paul and the former PM and deputy PM the two most unpopular politicians we've had for decades both of who were coal advocates! The days of coal are at an end and those pollies that cannot see that and the need to transition to clean green, carbon-free energy are doomed to fail!

People are no longer welded to this or that party! And those parties that think all they need is a better salesman to sell their message are doomed to follow the democrats into political oblivion!

Carbon-free energy that doesn't also tank the economy is limited to two options, MSR thorium that can also be re-tasked to burn nuclear waste and reduce the half-life to just 300 years!

The other referenced option is solar thermal that incorporates heat sinks. Bloody big vacuum flasks that keep useful heat as molten salt for up to a week. And our arid interior is tailor made for that option!

Meaning neither of those options need gas or fossil fuel backups ever, or expensive battery or pumped hydro backstops ever or power prices three or four times more than now! We want to export clean green energy to the world and that means it has to be cheaper than locally available options.

It is a market after all and a competitive one at that. Market success is always determined by price sensitive volume, not self defeating margins! Few if any polly-waffling pollies get that! And a few greens as well?
Alan B.

Penny Wong is a virtue-signalling low achiever. Remember her statement against gay marriage?

Abbott in a couple of years got 3 FTA's signed while Labor has yet to get one.

Nothing very free about most 'free' trade agreements - https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6141655/nothing-free-about-tony-abbotts-free-trade-agreements
They invariably favour the big bully-boy corporates with loud voices and deep pockets. And they very often come at the expense of lower paid local workers and of hard-fought environmental standards.
And besides, what value is a free trade agreement with Asia's largest economy if you don't have the diplomatic skills to maintain it?
This is where Penny Wong might give us a fighting chance of resurrecting the lost trade and the once mutually-respectful relationships trashed by Dutton and Morrison.

Bronwyn,

Once again you have served up another steaming plate of bollocks.

FTAs grant market access, reduced or removed tariffs and a reduction in customs paperwork which benefits small businesses as much or more than corporates that have in-house legal and customs depts.

This increased trade significantly from the moribund trade union-run Labor party.

The Chinese Ambassador in the news resently, seeming to want to reset relations with Australia? And talked about Australia needing to take concrete steps first. Without identifying what those steps were.

I don't think we need to do very much as the steps would make us subservient? And china started this trade war with a selective embargo on trade goods, coal being front and centre with coal ships parked for up to a year in Chinese ports!

We were saved by the Russian/Ukraine war, as nations around the world started to buy coal as a substitute for Russian gas. And saved our bacon so to speak.

Let there be no doubt that this reprieve is temporary and when Russian hostilities end we will be back to square one And coal prices so low we could only sell at a loss.

This means we have some time to transition to MSR thorium and power prices that take all the current steam out of inflation! As well as massively increasing profits and production! Also driving down our massive debt via expanded production/profitability!

Other choices include further debt growth even as interest rates mean some spending will have to go. Pensions, aged care, education and health, e.g. Or fueling further runaway inflation.

The transition to nuclear power could be paid for by us becoming a repository for the world's nuclear waste and using the annual millions earned to pay for the factory we'd need to mass produce SMRs.

We were once the third wealthiest nation on the planet, but that was in the days when government was in the business of being in business. And the "right" energy business is a guaranteed success and our path back to a prosperous future!
Alan B.

Probably just angered China more.

Hey Alan B.
The issues China has with us are known to those like Jeffrey Wall, but they don't want us to know them.
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/fourteen-points-on-australias-icy-times-with-china/

They'll admit there are 14 points (it's no secret)
- But no-one in Australia will publish what those points are.

One of those 14 points is for the government to stop funding the ASPI
- people like Jeffrey Wall CSM CBE, the author of this article.
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/author/jeffrey-wall/

People like Jeffrey Wall CSM CBE want to march us into a war we cannot possibly win.

The US is done.
We think it's the worlds strongest superpower, but it's not anymore.
They project power with their carrier groups and fight smaller countries, but are no match for China or Russia.
Russia and China have hypersonic weapons,
they only need to shoot 20 of them at a US carrier, they can't defend against them all, the carriers will be sunk.
They can't project the power they once had anywhere anymore.
I've watched videos that show how western volunteers that have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan that have gone to fight in the Ukraine war are fleeing in terror.

"Fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, But..."| Why Putin's War Has Jolted Ukraine's "Foreign Fighters"
http://youtu.be/TVHOX3NyTSM

People like Jeffrey should just shut their mouths, and stop trying to march Australians into wars we can't possibly win.

What do you think Americans do when they face this?
Russian Firing Rocket Battery
http://youtu.be/5Vkz3opneLo
- They run.

No-ones going to beat China's army in China.
http://youtu.be/ahL-kFB0BvM

Just the same as Ukraine and the West are not going to take back the parts of Ukraine Russia has taken.
It's pure fantasy.

All the West can do is try to project a power it no longer has.
- And try to fight with money and trade.

If the West send troops against another superpower, other countries the West has screwed over will rush to fight them.
The US will be shown up as it's real power being non-existent, and it wont risk that.
It will only fight wars against weaker adversaries.
- Goat herders and such.

Putin might go hunt the Gerald Ford as soon as the Belgorod's commissioned.
Interestingly named, Belgorod is the national nuclear warhead storage in Russia.
It's also the name of their soon to be commissioned 5th generation submarine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Belgorod_(K-329)
184 metres long, twin nuclear reactors, up to 1km depth and armed with 6 Poseidon drones.

- Payback for arming the Ukrainians and the sinking of the Moskva.

Russian TV threatens 'UK's nuclear annihilation with giant radioactive tsunami & Satan-2 missiles'
http://youtu.be/7SnTkc0r6gk

Do you remember how the US goaded Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor?
- They cut off their oil.
The West is still playing the same silly games only this time they're trying to cut off Putin's oil sales.
- But this time won't turn out like last time.
The West is going to lose, and already is.
WWIII's already begun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

"Has Penny Wong given us a fighting chance of significantly slowing China’s expansion in the Pacific?
Um, no. Albo has now seen to that without a murmur from the ABC, which took the LNP downtown on Sino-Australian relations.