The Rest is Politics (US edition) With Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters, it’s even more important than ever to resist his re-branding of the Capitol riots as a “day of love”. Anthony Scaramucci (who I don’t think I like very much) and the BBC’s correspondent Katty Kay are running a series, similar to the one they did on the 2016 election, How Trump Won the White House eight years after the event. In this present series, they are looking at the 2020 election which was won by Joe Biden, and which led to January 6 2021. Episode 1: Trump’s Insurrection: The Collapse of his Presidency looks at the circumstances that led to Trump’s defeat when a year earlier he looked invincible. First there was COVID, which Trump downplayed at first, delaying for 6 weeks which let to a million deaths. (A million!) Trump was a natural conspiracy theory fueller, and like a crazy uncle, he embraced the idea of bleach. Then there was the death of George Floyd which led to huge mobs of protestors on both sides, at a time when people were supposed to be isolating. In the midst of the riots Trump was sent to a “safe room” which led to accusations of being a scaredy-cat, which he countered by his walk to St John’s Chapel flanked by the military and bearing a bible. His instinct was to order police and troops to shoot at protestors- something to bear in mind as we head into his second presidency. Trump began calling for the elections to be delayed, but this didn’t happen. After the election Pelosi formed a secret committee to investigate possible scenarios where Trump would cause problems, and January 6th was identified as a problematic date then. After an initial flush of votes for Trump, the postal votes began to be tallied and Trump’s lead disappeared. Nonetheless, he went out in the early morning and claimed victory prematurely.
The History Listen The ABC is recycling its programs over the summer break, and this episode on John Friedrich Friedrich the Fraud was originally aired on 9 December 2023. From the ABC website “the former head of the Victorian Division of National Safety Council of Australia, was also once called Australia’s greatest conman. Back in the 1980s, he famously made $293 million of investors’ money disappear. When his fraud was uncovered, he went missing himself for sixteen days, prompting a nationwide manhunt and a media storm that reported both facts and the fictions.” In my mind, the controversy over Friedrich and the National Safety Council all gets mixed up with the mess that Victoria was in at the time. It seems incredible that Friedrich had this whole constructed persona that saw him able to apply for huge amounts of money fraudulently – and yet no-one can say where the money actually went.
Global Roaming I nearly always listen to Global Roaming each week, but I don’t usually record it here because most of the episodes are too current and ephemeral for me to want to recall them later. But over the summer break, Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald have been hosting a 6-part series AUKUS Investigated which leaves me thinking that we have been absolutely sold a pup that sees us paying US to beef up its submarine capacity for submarines that they could easily withhold from us because they find that they need them themselves. Episode 1 investigates how AUKUS came about – who spoke to who, what the true motivation was for going nuclear and whether the total secrecy around the deal was justified. (I can’t believe that a nuclear submarine is going to remain ‘invisible’ forever, which gets rid of that argument). Episode 2 Bang for Buck? explores what the scheme involves, what the key challenges are to making it work, and we get some cold hard facts about what it is really going to cost us. Episode 3: The China Question addresses the elephant in the room, which is that this whole thing is actually about China. Episode 4: The 51st American State? asks whether we are getting the short end of the stick with this deal, and sacrificing our sovereignty to boot (my answer- yes. We’re opening up for two big army bases on our soil just like Pine Gap) Episode 5: Radioactive Ripples what happens to the waste that will remain dangerous for generations of Australians to come? Is this just the introduction of Australia as nuclear dump for the rest of the AUKUS partnership? I bet the nuclear industry is salivating over this. Episode 6: Premier Peter Malinauskas is very enthusiastic about AUKUS, as he should be given that in theory the submarines will be built there. While I agree that we should have sovereign ship building capacity (just like we should have sovereign pharmaceutical-manafucturing capacity, too) I think that we should bite the bullet, devote more money to defence, and go it alone. This is a really good series, which raises lots of questions.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 