Anthony Albanese

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Anthony Albanese

Anthony Albanese is the Prime Minister of Ausralia.

Mentor

Tom Uren was Anthony Albanese's political mentor and father figure.[1]

Albanese stated in June 2021 that "I grew up without a dad, but not without a father. Tom Uren was my father figure". [2]

Loyal staffers

Anthony Albanese quoted in the The Guardian US:

“People know what I need,” he says. “Tim Gartrell (chief of staff) was my first campaign director in 1996. Jeff Singleton (deputy chief of staff) has worked for me for 20 years. Alex Sanchez (senior economics adviser) was in my tute at Sydney University. Jenny Mason (senior adviser) was on Sydney University’s student representative council with me and Paul Fletcher in 1983. There are people who are lifelong supporters, who get me, who know me, and that gives me comfort.”[3]

Office of the Prime Minister of Australia Employees

Inner Circle

In September 2019 The Weekend Australian published a list of Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese's new team - "The Power List: Bill Shorten loyalists shown the door as Anthony Albanese builds new team"

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Inner Sanctum

Confidants

CPA/SEARCH Foundation ties

Anthony Albanese has a long history with former members of the Communist Party of Australia the New Left Party and current supporters of the SEARCH Foundation.

Stiglitz Tour

Nobel Laureate, former World Bank Chief Economist, and best-selling author Professor Joseph Stiglitz toured Australia in July 2022 to discuss the need to expand the role of governments, unions, and civil society. His call for a windfall profits tax made national headlines.

The tour, hosted by The Australia Institute, saw Professor Stiglitz speak to the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, national television and news outlets, and at a wide range of events for the general public, policymakers, unions, civil society, investors and philanthropists.

“Professor Joseph Stiglitz is not only one of the world’s leading intellectuals and policy advisers, he has a unique ability to translate complex economic issues into language that both engages and informs, something essential for our democracy to flourish,” said Ben Oquist, executive director of The Australia Institute.

“The Australia Institute is delighted to host such a guest at such an important time in Australia’s economic policy debates. The essential and expanding role for government in driving economic prosperity is too little discussed. We hope this tour can help address that deficit.”

Stiglitz's itinerary included giving the The Inaugural Laurie Carmichael Lecture: The Economic Benefits of Trade Unions, with Sally McManus at the The Capitol, Melbourne.

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He also met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.[6]

"Bible of the Albanese Labor Party"

In 1976 Stuart MacIntyre married Martha Bruton, a social anthropologist. They have two daughters, Mary MacIntyre and Jess MacIntyre.

According to Janet McCalman from The Conversation's obituary of Stuart MacIntyre:

His books began with the study of British Marxism A Proletarian Science (1980), the subject of his Cambridge doctorate and the grounding of his mastery of Marxist thought. He wrote on colonial liberalism, the Labor Party, the Council for Civil Liberties and collaborated on a wide range of works with both scholars and journalists, catalysing debate on history, politics and institutions in the public domain.
He was dedicated to the mission of teaching civics in Australian schools. And he wrote on the history and place of the social sciences in Australia.
His greatest work is arguably his penultimate monograph: Australia’s Boldest Experiment: war and reconstruction in the 1940s (published in 2015). It promises to be his most influential because for our own time of existential crisis, he shows how Labor prime ministers, John Curtin and Ben Chifley, advised by the brilliant public servant Dr H.C. Coombs, began building modern Australia amidst the stringencies of war: to win the peace as well as the war.
It is a book about political vision and moral courage, and it is now the bible of the Albanese Labor Party. Macintyre’s greatest legacy may yet be written in a better Australia, and it’s the one that would please him most.[7]

Stilwell and Ranald

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Frank Stilwell (on the right of picture) being greeted by Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese (left of picture), who was one of his former students in Political Economy at the University of Sydney. (In the centre of the picture, smiling, is Dr Pat Ranald, a Research Associate in the Political Economy department) - 9 June 2023.

'Comradely Response'

'Comradely Response'

In a video dated July 9, 2020, Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt speaks on the Green New Deal in a talk moderated by Luke Whitington of the SEARCH Foundation.

During question time Frank Stilwell comments that he recently sent an email to "Albo" (Anthony Albanese) promoting the Green New Deal.

According to Stilwell, Albanese's reply was "non-commital" but also a "comradely response".

VOICE launch

Anthony Albanese with Thomas Mayo

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, surrounded by members of the First Nations Referendum Working Group (Thomas Mayo to his right), speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on March 23.

Thomas Mayo is the national Indigenous officer of the Maritime Union of Australia. He was the author of the Voice to Parliament Handbook and is a member of the prime minister's referendum working group for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

In the Address to the SEARCH Foundation in August 2021, Mayo says the body would help decide what laws and funding are needed for Aboriginal communities and also to "punish politicians that ignore our advice."

Eddie Funde Memorial

A celebration of the the life of Eddie Funde was held at Sydney Trades Hall on 19th June 2018. The venue was very appropriate because this was where Eddie established the African National Congress office after his arrival in 1983. After the breakdown of apartheid, Funde relocated to Johannesburg in 1992 and was appointed to a number of leading positions in the newly emerging democratic South Africa, initially as the chair of the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

The Commemoration opened the with a stirring rendition of Nkosi Sikelel’ Africa by the Sydney Trade Union Choir.

Daren McDonald, a close friend, was the MC and had attended the funeral in South Africa from which he had brought back striking excerpts expressing the whole Nation’s loss.

Helen McCue, co-founder of Union Aid Abroad APHEDA, and Audrey McDonald, former National Secretary, Union of Australia Women, delivered a joint Eulogy with personal anecdotes. The deeply felt response came from Her Excellency Beryl Sisulu, the South African High Commissioner. Messages of Support came from Adam McCarthy, the current Australian High Commissioner in Pretoria, Anthony Albanese MP, Tanya Plibersek MP, and Senator Jenny McAllister.[8] When Eddie Funde's wife Nosizwe Funde died in 2021 Daren McDonald wrote a eulogy:

At school, Nosizwe had been a highly accomplished student. Recognising her talent, the underground liberation movement arranged for her to complete her education in Bulgaria where she graduated as an engineer, taking her exams in Bulgarian and yet still topping her year.
Nosizwe arrived in Australia a stateless citizen travelling on a United Nations passport. Here she supported Eddie to set up the ANC’s Australasian Mission which became the voice of Nelson Mandela in our country and New Zealand.
Labor Leader Anthony Albanese says that “Nosizwe put herself on the line fighting for her homeland as a dedicated servant of the anti-apartheid movement. In the process, she also won the hearts of so many here in her adopted home of Australia.”[9]

Albo4leader

Circa September 2013 the Albo4leader Twitter account was suspended. Organiser Luke Whitington said he thought it was because of the rapid surge in activity.

He said the organisation had not been in contact with Albanese, other than a tweet asking him to contest the leadership (against Bill Shorten). It's Facebook account was still"going gangbusters", Whitington said.[10]

The man behind the campaign, Luke Whitington, an elected member of the NSW Labor Policy Forum and staffer for state backbencher Peter Primrose, told The Diary the account should be back in about 24 hours and that he'd like to get out of Twitter jail as soon as possible.[11]

A day after being launched, the "Anthony Albanese for Labor Leader" Facebook page had attracted more than 700 "likes on Tuesday evening.

The "albo4leader Twitter handle meanwhile was reporting a spike in "albomentum.

The group claims it isn't connected to the outgoing deputy prime minister, and understands the Sydney-based MP hasn't yet thrown his hat in the ring.

"But it's obvious he's the best candidate to unite and lead Labor! states a message on the Facebook page, below an image depicting a young, long-haired Mr Albanese from his university days.[12]

"Our ASIO Files launch"

In 2010, Humphrey McQueen called for the burning of the thousands of ASIO files compiled on political activists in Australia.

For historians reliant on these sometimes dubious sources, it was a controversial thought.

Taking a different approach to the vexed issue of ASIO surveillance, Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files, highlights the sometimes absurd preoccupations of the Australian intelligence services.

The book, which is edited by Meredith Burgmann, takes the novel approach of having those subject to surveillance discuss their files.

Chapters in the book are written by Kevin Cook (with Heather Goodall), Mark Aarons, Alan Hardy and Alan Hardy on Frank Hardy, Frances Letters, Phillip Adams, Jack Waterford, Verity Burgmann, Colin Cooper, Rowan Cahill, Joan Bielski, Elizabeth Evatt on Clive Evatt, Tim Anderson, Penny Lockwood, Peter Cundall, Dennis Altman, Gary Foley, Lex Watson, Michael Kirby, Tony Reeves, Jean McLean, Peter Murphy, David Stratton, Anne Summers, Wendy Bacon - on herself and Jim Bacon, and others.

The book was launched by Anthony Albanese at Madame Brussels on 11 June 2012.[13]

Global day of action over global warming

November 4 2006 was a global day of action over global warming, in the lead up to the United Nations Conference in Nairobi on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The Howard government has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, along with the Bush administration. Over 20,000 marched on a wet day in Sydney, and over 100,000 nation-wide. Speakers included Greens leader Senator Bob Brown, Labor Environment spokesperson Anthony Albanese, and UnionsNSW Secretary John Robertson.

The event was organised by the Nature Conservation Council of NSW and Greenpeace, with the support of many unions and other community organisations, including the SEARCH Foundation.[14]

'A fine balance'

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SEARCH News September, 2003, pages 4,5,6.

NOW WE THE PEOPLE

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WE THE PEOPLE CONFERENCE 14 -15 JULY 2001

NEWTOWN THEATRE (354 King St, Newtown, Sydney)

Speakers include:

The closing plenary was to discuss "A better way for Australia in a globalising world".

Sunday PM - Christine Milne (Australian Greens), Anthony Albanese MHR for Grayndler, Greg Barns, Chris Dodds (ACOSS), John Maitland (CFMEU), Pat Thompson (ATSIC), Senator Andrew Bartlett (Australian Democrats).

ALP federal MP Anthony Albanese supported the new movement of street protests against corporate globalisation, and called for the struggle to be firmly linked to the basic needs of ordinary Australians. He applauded the new anti-capitalist ideology in the movement.

CFMEU leader John Maitland called for the movement to engage with big business in the tough fight to change their practices.

Tasmanian Greens activist Christine Milne warned against the massive political clout of big business and pointed out that they buy the Coalition and the Labor Party. She called for a ban on political donations by business.[15]

In July 2001, endorsers of the SEARCH Foundation's NOW WE THE PEOPLE conference in Sydney included Anthony Albanese.

Politics in the Pub, April 2016

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Frank Stilwell with Anthony Albanese, April 2, 2016.

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Politics in the Pub, November 1989

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Politics in the Pub "Socialist Politics: Paste Tense, Future Prospects", Harold Park Hotel, Glebe. November 3 1989.

With Brian Aarons and Anthony Albanese.

Politics in the Pub, October 1988

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Anthony Albanese, Marie Delaney, Politics in the Pub "Youth talks about youth issues", Harold Park Hotel, Glebe. October 28, 1988.

Treaty letter

Anthony Albanese has supported a treaty with Aboriginal Australians for nearly four decades, it has been revealed, as an open letter he signed in 1986 which outlined a demand for reparations resurfaces.

The then 23-year-old Anthony Albanese signed the open letter to The National Times, dated April 18, 1986, with Indigenous leaders Patrick Dodson and Marcia Langton.

The letter supported the 'granting of land rights and appropriate compensation' for the 'invasion of Aboriginal land'.

It called for 'recognition of (Aboriginal) sovereignty, land rights, and compensation for lands lost and for social and cultural disruption'.

Mr Dodson and Ms Langton, who are both heavily involved in the 'Yes' campaign ahead of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, were listed as points of contact for readers seeking more information.[16]

Broadside Weekly board

An addition to the alternative media is due to appear this week with the first issue of a new paper, Broadside Weekly.

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Described as "an independent, broadly based left and progressive weekly", Broadside will be formally launched in Sydney on June 5.

Proposals for the project were initiated in the second half of 1990. The new paper has a supporters' association headed by a board consisting of Brian Aarons, Anthony Albanese, Wendy Bacon, Peter Barrack, Meredith Burgmann, Wendy Caird, Patricia Caswell, Kerren Clark, Tony Cooke, Drew Hutton, Ron Knowles, Stuart MacIntyre, Tom McDonald, Peter Murphy, Carmel Shute, Suganthi Singarayar, John Sutton, Lindsay Tanner, Jo Vallentine and Roger Woock.[17]

Broadside Weekly was supported by the SEARCH Foundation.

Broadside Weekly sponsors

Sponsorof the the Broadside Weekly listed in issue number 3, June 17, 1992, page 15 included Anthony Albanese.

Broad Left Weekly sponsors

160 people sponsored the Broad Left Weekly in a pamphlet published in the January 30 1991 Tribune - including Anthony Albanese.

NSW Socialist Left representatives

Labor Left representatives who advocate the values and goals of the NSW Socialist Left faction in federal Parliament.

Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek, Linda Burney, Stephen Jones, Susan Templeman, Pat Conroy, Sharon Claydon, Tim Ayres, Jerome Laxale, Jenny McAllister, Fiona Phillips, Anne Stanley.[18]

Bruce Childs connection

May 4, 2023.

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Bruce Childs was a friend, a mentor to myself and many others, and a giant of the labour movement.
Trade union secretary, ALP official, Senator, National ALP Left convenor, peace activist. A man of principle.

Socialist Left

Anthony Albanese cut his teeth in Labor’s ruthless New South Wales (NSW) Head Office. Every federal ALP leader in living memory has been from the party’s right. By contrast, Albanese hails from what is referred to internally as the “hard” wing of the NSW Socialist Left faction.

In the early 1980s, led by the future MP for Sydney, Peter Baldwin, rank-and-file members of the Left — at the time called the Steering Committee — waged branch warfare against the ruling right-wing machine.

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Paul Keating, then the party’s president, intervened, warning of a Bennite revolt that could destroy the ALP. He described inner-city members as people who “believe in wider nature strips, more trees and [who want to] go back to making wicker baskets in Balmain.” Keating was also worried that the left current was quickly taking over from the ALP’s Catholic old guard.

The “Balmain Basket Weavers” were on the radical left. They were also highly organized — and throughout the late ’70s and early ’80s, they were winning, taking over, and transforming inner-city party machines that had been right-wing for half a century.

The Left scored its greatest triumph when Baldwin won a vote to deselect the right-aligned member for Sydney, Les McMahon, and took his place in federal parliament. Baldwin’s platform echoed that of Tony Benn in the British Labour Party. He promised to revive the “dead letter” of the ALP’s commitment to socializing the means of production by advocating for the nationalization of industry as part of the next Labor government’s program. He argued that industrial democracy would be crucial to this goal.

Once Baldwin opened the floodgates, members of the socialist caucus in Sydney’s inner west replaced every right-wing MP, one by one, until they had all been driven out. The Socialist Left crusade was victorious in NSW. The Baldwinites then set their sights on the party as a whole, and encouraged the Left to organize a grassroots-led democratic revolution in every state branch. Their goal was to transform the ALP, from below, into a socialist party.

These successes did not last. On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and the NSW Steering Committee changed its name to the NSW Socialist Left. At the same time, Anthony Albanese, the driving force behind a now-dominant sub-faction known as the “Hard Left,” took over the Socialist Left as a whole, overthrowing the Baldwinites. The Hard Left has dominated the faction ever since.

With the support of unions formerly associated with the Communist Party of Australia, Albanese’s “hard-left” moniker appeared to be legitimate.

The Hard Left was opposed by the rather less fortunately named Soft Left, as the Baldwinites were now dubbed. The real difference between the two sub-factions lay in their sources of power. The oppositional Soft Left was run from the bottom-up by a legion of suburban branch activists, while Albanese’s Hard Left cohered around an aristocracy of union secretaries, political staffers, lobbyists, and student politicians, mainly graduates from the elite University of Sydney.

The Hard Left consolidated their clique’s power at the expense of rank-and-file members.[19]

Interview with CPA

A young Anthony Albanese, then Assistant Secretary of the New South Wales Labor Party, participated in a forum "Talking Politics: The changing Left - coherence, theory" with the official magazine of the Communist Party of Australia, Tribune April 3, 1991, pages 12, 13.

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Others interviewed were Labor candidate and Communist Party of Australia "fellow traveller" Meredith Burgmann, Sydney University academic and self-described "communist" Joseph Halevi and Communist Party of Australia member Betty Hounslow.

"STATEMENT REGARDING ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS"

In April 1986 several hundred attendees of The Broad Left Conference in Melbourne signed an add in the National Times "STATEMENT REGARDING ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS".

Signatories included Anthony Albanese.

The Broad Left Conference

The Communist Party of Australia, Association for Communist Unity and others organized The Broad Left Conference, which was held 1986 28th-31st March, at the NEW SOUTH WALES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Broadway, Sydney.

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The Broad Left Conference sponsors included Anthony Albanese and dozens of communist affiliated activists including : Jennie George, Pat Clancy, Meredith Burgmann, Brian Aarons, Ted Wheelwright, Arthur Greig, Carmel Shute, George Zangalis, John Halfpenny, Julius Roe, Linda Rubinstein, Maurie Crow, Mark Taft, Audrey McDonald, Brian McGahen, Bev Symons, Craig Johnston, Carol Matthews, Dom Syme, Edna Ryan, Flo Cluff, Frank Hardy, George Gotsis, John Benson, Ruth Crow, Sam Goldbloom, Stelios Kourbetis, Stuart MacIntyre, V.G. Venturini, Wally Curran, Joyce Clarke, John McCarthy, Jack Mundey, Joe Owens, Jozefa Sobski, Joyce Stevens, Jacquie Widin, Laurie Carmichael, Lee O'Gorman, Sheril Berkovitch, Stan Sharkey, Sergio Zorino, Tas Bull, Tom McDonald, Warwick Neilley, Graham Smith, Deborah Baldassi, Jim Mitchell, Ron Barklay, Mike Donaldson, Merv Nixon, Sally Bowen, Stan Woodbury, Humphrey McQueen, Grahame McCulloch, Rivo Gandini, Vic Slater, Dick Anear, Dan O'Neill, Hugh Hamilton, Peter O'Brien, Jenny Prohaska, Max Bound, Pierre Slicer, Barbara Curthoys, Kay Wicks, Peter Barrack, Brian Manning.

On her friend "Albo"

Former Communist Party of Australia "very close fellow traveller" Meredith Burgmann has known Anthony Albanese since the 1980s.

She says of Albanese:

Albo always used to say, I’m in the Labor Party, because I’m in the Left. And the people we were fighting at the time, he used to say, they’re in the Left because they are in the Labor Party. And he saw that as a big distinction.[20]

Australian Fabians:

21 May, 2023 "Eleven Steps Ahead - Meredith Burgmann on her friend Albo as Prime Minister"

I have known Albo since the eighties.
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Like many of us, I still find the words ‘Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’ very weird. Knowing the man, it probably sounds quite strange to him too. I’m not sure I ever saw him as a future prime minister, and I don’t think he saw himself in that way either. Unlike those pushy princes with perfect teeth and shiny hair who announce their intentions when they arrive at the University Debating Club, Albo was always pretty reticent about his future. He may have been reticent about it but he has always been good at looking into the future and seeing things that others don’t. This has made him the interesting strategist that he is. His early career and 26 years in parliament taught him a lot. There will be very few rookie errors from Albo as prime minister.
I met Anthony Albanese as a young student in the Criterion Hotel — the old Criterion which used to be on the corner of Sussex and Liverpool. It was where the general Left congregated from about 1970 until its demolition in 1986. Albo turned up there as a friend of my then research assistant, Jo Scard.
He introduced himself to me as ‘Albo’ — and insisted on me calling him that. Even then he had such joie de vivre and self-confidence that I actually remember meeting him. I doubt if I would remember meeting any other 19 year old in the Criterion on a Friday night after many beers.There was just something about him even then.
One of the things that arose out of this view of the world was his very early belief that women should be members of parliament. He was crucially important in organising women into seats from the early ‘90s onwards (well before quotas). He was instrumental in encouraging Janelle Saffin, Tanya Plibersek, Maggie Deahm, Linda Burney, Carmel Tebbutt, Penny Sharpe, Jo Haylen and many others to take on the role.
With me it almost amounted to bullying. I was an academic and very happy being an academic. I was president of my union, the Academics Union (now NTEU) and active in the left of the union movement — not so much the ALP.
Albo came around to see me one day, knocked on my door and said he wanted to take me out to lunch, which should have aroused my suspicions then and there. At lunch he put to me that I should go into the upper house and I said ‘don’t be silly — I’m an academic’. All academics ever want to do is be academics. So I sent him away.
However over that weekend I marked 200 first year essays. And by the time he came back on the Tuesday to ask if I had reconsidered, I had in fact reconsidered — and that’s how my political life started. So if I ever have to nominate a mentor, I always say Albo, even though he is 16 years younger than me.
He understood the issue of getting women into Parliament so much earlier than other men. When feminist icon (and first NSW woman in Federal Parliament) Jeannette McHugh’s seat of Philip was abolished in a redistribution, Albo somehow organised for her to represent the seat of Grayndler, by convincing everyone that it was the neighbouring seat. It actually wasn’t ‘neighbouring’ but everyone was totally won over by Albo’s enthusiastic advocacy.
Albo and I had terrible arguments (photo attached). Strangely they were never about women’s issues. He saw me as too centred on inner city concerns, such as anti-war and anti-uranium activism, and kept hammering me about the need for the Left to broaden itself out to the western suburbs and take on issues such as housing and poverty. However we were always united in our shared belief that the unions were the basis of Labor’s existence.
One of the things that everyone always remembers is how good he was at relating to the rank-and-file. Albo loved getting out and meeting the branch members. Down to earth and sociable, he was a great hit at Country Conference and mostly managed to make friends and have a beer with everybody in the entire town.
As I have been quoted as saying, ‘you always knew the party had started when Albo arrived’. I realise as Party Leader he now has to project a more staid and statesmanlike persona but I miss the old ebullient Albo.
Although he never had any self-doubt, I never heard him say that he was going to be prime minister. In fact, I never even heard him say that he was going to be in Parliament. What he once said to me was that he thought he was really well suited to doing the job that he had at the time, which was being leader of the Left in NSW and fighting the good fight in Head Office.
He has been quoted as saying that he doubted whether he wanted to be party leader, saying ‘I don’t have the destiny thing’, and I know that’s true. He did agonise about running against Bill Shorten in 2013.
I talked to him at his election night party in 2013, when we lost the election. I was trying to convince him to run and he said to me, ‘I think I’m just too tired’, and he did look terrible. He was exhausted because he had not only been Minister for Infrastructure, but he’d been Leader of the House in a very tight situation where it would have taken every ounce of his strategic nous to get stuff through the hung parliament.
So what made him decide him to stand? I don’t know really but I suspect it was a whole lot of people like me telling him to do so. I’m still not sure that being PM was his target. After the desperately depressing election of 2019, I’m sure he sat down and worked out exactly what went wrong and what needed to be done to get a different result. Then he set out to do it.
The ALP’s Weatherill/Emerson report on the 2019 loss pinpoints the public’s lack of enthusiasm for Bill Shorten, but other problems such as ‘too many policies’ and ‘not enough persuasion’ would have struck a chord with Albo’s own views about having to bring the public along with you when taking big policy steps.
There has been much discussion about the way in which he streamlined policy commitments and ‘removed barnacles’. However, I would like to make the important point that Albo is cautious but not timid — and there’s a huge difference. He has been cautious in how he has approached defence and foreign policy matters but has certainly not been timid in his enthusiastic and very early support for the First Nations voice to Parliament. He has not been timid about his belief in climate change or the need to raise workers’ wages either.
There is no right wing machine that he will have to cater for. There are no corporations or lobby groupswaiting for their pay off. As the NSW Left Assistant Secretary, he did not take part in some of the more shady dealings that took place in Sussex Street. He was ideologically opposed to corporate largesse and too clever to get himself involved.
Katherine Murphy’s contribution to the new ‘Albo as PM’ genre, Quarterly Essay 88 ‘Lone Wolf: Albanese and the New Politics’, is an interesting piece, but strangely titled. I agree more with Crikey writer Chris Warren, who also knew the young Albo well: ‘Anthony was not a ‘Lone Wolf’, rather he was creating his own pack of wolves’.
In the mid to late 1980s Albo was part of a brutal intra-Left struggle in the NSW Party. It was the carry-over from a 1970s split which had never healed. Albo built around himself in NSW a group of likeminded progressives (the ‘Hard Left’) who believed in union movement involvement, whereas the oppositional “Soft Left” led by Martin Ferguson were more focussed on the branches, and consequentially the winning of seats.
The first strike in this campaign was when a very young Albo won the position of Left Assistant Secretary (basically leader of the Left) from the Ferguson candidate who was considered a shoo-in. As the Left leader, he managed to outwit the Right on numerous occasions and began attracting his own support base and also managed to inspire some prominent crossovers. He would always cheerfully describe these types as ‘on the transfer list’.
When he went into Parliament Albo continued to remould the Left so that eventually we ended up with a dominant National Left grouping which is often referred to, for convenience sake, as the ‘Albo Left’. Sometimes these new factions cosseted by Albo involved massive realignments.
So, not a lone wolf but, as Chris Warren says, ‘the leader of the pack’.
Albo always had the capacity to make friends and cement allies in weird places. In my role as a duty MLC, I would often arrive in a country town to talk to some Right wing party members only to discover they were huge Albo fans from way back. He had partied with them one night or visited their mum in a nursing home. Everyone always remembered.
Since a short stint working for Bob Carr in the 1990s, Albo has had a genuinely easy relationship with many in the Right. He is very able to temporarily cast aside political differences in order to concentrate on what needs to be done at the time. I was not surprised to see that he had recently dined privately with Business Council CEO Jennifer Westacott and BCA President Tim Reed. Possibly he was bending their ear about climate change or even IR reform. It would have been a convivial evening. He can be very entertaining and this tactic of picking off players individually will continue.
One of the reasons that Albo has been so underestimated both by his opponents and by the media is that he is genuinely daggy. He has a grating accent and until recently a pretty uncouth way of presenting himself. He was the original ocker dad turning up at headbanging concerts and enthusiastically necking a beer. He was genuine though.
The government’s legislative record has been robust. He knows how to carry plans through and get stuff done, which, coming after years of Coalition nothingness will be very refreshing.
He is not a policy wonk. He won’t be sitting up at night going over tiny details in long submissions. The words ‘programmatic specificity’ will never pass his lips. He doesn’t need to be a policy wonk when he has a skilled public service (which he believes in) and his own talented ministers to provide the particulars.
He also has a prodigious memory. When he was in Young Labor he knew everyone’s telephone number off by heart and used to spout them out almost like a party trick, which is why I was so surprised at his ‘unemployment rate’ flub on the first day of campaigning. Oh well everyone has a brain fade occasionally.
He knows how to implement policy and how to get the best out of his front bench team.
He is tactically very smart. I once said to him that I was getting better and I could now think three steps ahead, and he just laughed at me and said ‘yeah, but I’m eleven steps ahead’. I reckon that’s probably true. He’s the master of the long game. In any fight within the party he always knew how to keep the back channels open. He knew the importance of not breaking down communication.
He did love outwitting his opponents who were trying to support more conservative positions or were manoeuvring against us at a factional level. When I was in parliament he would sometimes contact me and say ‘Joe Blogs from the Telegraph is going to ring you in 5 minutes and you are going to say this’. I would do so, knowing I was part of some intricate plan to get a Left objective supported or a terrible policy scrapped. It always worked.
If I was pushed to talk about what policy he was most involved with during this period it was always poverty. He talked a lot about social disadvantage. He was particularly interested in housing — the need for good public and social housing policies. This did not just arise out of his own circumstances, but from working for Tom Uren, the great Whitlam Minister for Urban and Regional Development. Albo’s election policy promise of $10bn for social and affordable housing was no surprise to me.
I knew he’d been a student activist at Sydney Uni around the importance of political economy courses, which totally ties in with his whole emphasison poverty and the role of workers in a society.
We did have shocking arguments and I can remember at one stage both of us shouting at each other in tears. Which brings me to another thing that needs to be said about Albo, which is that he cries at the drop of a hat. I remember his victory party when he first got elected to Parliament in 1996. It was terrible because the Labor Party had lost the election. Albo held it together pretty well during his speech but when he started to thank his mother he burst into tears. Mind you we were all in tears that night anyway.
Albo is a fighter. He’s very loyal and he doesn’t mind getting into scraps. He recognises that sometimes he has to make enemies. Once he said to me, ‘you know me, I don’t have a second gear’ and that is absolutely right. Sometimes it’s to his detriment.But at least you know where you stand.
I’m showing my age, but the one thing I don’t cope with is his beloved music. The Pixies and the Celibate Rifles are not my idea of fun. He once told me who his great hero in life was — not Marx or even Whitlam. His great hero in life was Kurt Cobain. Really![21]

Meredith Burgmann AM is a former president of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Hard Left

After nearly a decade of being controlled by those who were to become the Soft Left,29 the early 1980s saw the formation of an alternative power grouping. Led by Anthony Albanese, who was at the time shifting his focus from student politics to internal ALP politics, members of this grouping were soon to align themselves with the Hard Left. In general, this group was more concerned than the Soft Left with international issues, and maintained closer links "links with broader left-wing groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament and the African National Congress."

In 1985, the Left had controlled Young Labor in its own right for 12 years.

Albanese was a key player by this stage, and was to become President (by a narrow margin) at that year’s annual conference. But in January 1986, a Young Labor Left caucus meeting was held to decide who would be the three delegates to the Central Steering Committee caucus. When the issue was forced to a ballot, the Soft Left took all three positions. The loss hardened Albanese’s resolve to defeat the Soft Left.

The Albanese supporters were known as the ‘Walker-ites’, ‘Bolsheviks’, ‘Ratbags’, ‘Doers’, ‘Industrial Left’, ‘Socialist Left’ or ‘Hard Left’. [22]

Student radical

Anthony Albanese attended St Joseph's Primary School in Camperdown and then St Mary's Cathedral College. After finishing school, he worked for the Commonwealth Bank for two years before studying economics at the University of Sydney. There, he became involved in student politics and was elected to the Students' Representative Council.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

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Frank Stilwell has just sat down for lunch at his favourite cafe when he starts dropping - in the nicest possible way - the names of some of his former students.
"This respectable federal minister, I recall, was actually suspended from the university for his activism on one occasion," he says with a smirk. "He broke into the clock tower of the main quadrangle as part of an occupation movement."
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He's talking about Anthony Albanese, the federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, when a student at the University of Sydney in the early 1980s.
Stilwell played a role in one of the most acrimonious and long-running disputes in the history of Australian academia: the 40-year fight to establish a separate department of political economy at Sydney Uni, finally achieved in 2008.
The dispute was between rival factions of economists and students. The mainstream orthodox economists were on one side, proponents of an alternative program in political economy the other.
Stilwell says when he arrived at the university he found himself at the centre of this aggressive push by radical students to have a range of alternative theories taught.
As the decades unfolded, the protests stirred plenty: tactical police units called in; rooms occupied; the clock tower occupied; vehicles parked on the lawn in protest; tents erected; national conferences and dissident workshops held.
Stilwell says he had actually come to teach the orthodox economics in which he had been trained.
Once he got here his opinions of mainstream economics, and how it was taught, changed thanks to three big influences: the Vietnam War protest movement, his friendship with the late Professor Ted Wheelwright and the enthusiasm and dedication of his radical students.
Albanese says he remembers Stilwell's support for protesters in the early 1980s.
"[Frank] was very supportive of political activism," Albanese says. "There was an attempt by the conservative ideologues to shut down debate about progressive economic thought. That was the context. It was a very interesting struggle because it was overtly political about education and people's rights to learn a diversity of views."[23]
The story of the long struggle is now documented in Political Economy Now!, penned by three of main combatants in the fight – Frank Stilwell, Gavan Butler and Evan Jones. These renegade academics were not deterred by the David and Goliath situation that emerged, as they came up against the likes of Vice-Chancellor Bruce Williams and other orthodox economics stalwarts such as Professors Warren Hogan and Colin Simkin.
Butler, Stilwell and Jones were relatively junior lecturers when they arrived in the early 1970s, but they were backed by other farsighted academics, notably Associate Professor ‘Red’ Ted Wheelwright and Geelum Simpson-Lee, staff-elected Dean of the Economics Faculty.[24]

From the Financial Review:

In February (2022), after his belief in conventional economic theory was questioned in a newspaper article, Albanese sought to table in Parliament an essay he wrote for a Sydney University bachelors of economics degree that he started in 1981.
In the micro-economics paper, Albanese argued that companies will not increase output if costs are rising – and rising costs will discourage new companies from competing with them.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg taunted Albanese by describing the hand-written essay as a high school paper.
But the put-down ignored Albanese’s undergraduate involvement in one of the decisive conflicts in Australian university economics teaching.
In his first year, Albanese enrolled in a conventional economics course and an introduction to political economy, which argues that the economy is shaped by forces that serve specific interests, such as big business.
The head of the department, economist Warren Hogan, believed that political economy was too theoretical and wanted to introduce more rigorous teaching, including complex mathematics and statistics, according to his son, who shares the same name and is also an economist.
About 1983, Hogan proposed ending political economy’s status as a separate stream within the undergraduate economics degree.
The change would have downgraded its status and reduced the influence of two prominent left-wing academics, Frank Stilwell and Ted Wheelwright, who had developed a following on campus.
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Albanese and other students protested. They occupied the clock tower in the university’s quadrangle. Several protesters scaled the tower and bent the clock’s hands. A caravan was towed on to campus to function as a protest headquarters and a place to sleep.
After three weeks, a new unit of the NSW police, the tactical response unit, removed the students from campus offices. Albanese and eight others were charged with discipline breaches by the university. Albanese was briefly banned from campus and fined about $100.
In an interview broadcast by the ABC in 2013, Albanese implied the university’s leaders didn’t take stronger action against the protesters because of the merits of their cause.
“The attempt to abolish the course had a very strident response from students, academics and the broader community,” he said. “If you like, a civil disobedience campaign.”[25]

Police arrested David Re, Adam Rorris, Tony Westmore, Daniel Luscombe, Chris Gration and Anthony Albanese.

University authorities issued disciplinary proceedings against three more student activists Paul Porteous, Marijke Conrade and Maria Barac.[26]

Refugee rally

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REFUGEES WHY THEY SHOULD BE WELCOME HERE

Wednesday 8 December (1999) 7.30 pm at UTS Tower Block Rm 411, Broadway.

Speakers: Margaret Piper (Refugee Council of Australia) Faris Mahmood (Iraqi refugee and socialist) and Alison Stewart (Editor Socialist Worker)

RALLY FOR REFUGEE RIGHTS

Rally and March

Saturday 11 December 11 am Newtown Plaza opposite Newtown Train Station

Speakers: Liz Biok (Refugee lawyer, International Commission of Jurists), Dr Pishtewin Hussain (Iraqi Refugee), Anthony Albanese (MP, member for Grayndler) and Lan Vy Tu (Socialist Worker).[27]

Defending LEAN

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LEAN meeting

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Albo in full flight at LEAN Inner West’s public forum, with Mark Butler MP talking climate change in Sydney’s Balmain Town Hall. So great to see such a great crew and two of our favourite climate change advocates in the Federal parliamentary party. Yay to local LEAN branches springing up all over the country! Anthony Albanese MP

LEAN webinar

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Anthony Albanese Aboriginal activist

Davis/Anderson connection

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Anthony Albanese with Megan Davis and Pat Anderson.

"Birth of the land rights movement"

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Lingiari tribute

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Anthony Albanese "Peace activist"

Armistice Day

The 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, November 11, 2018was commemorated in Sydney with a series of events highlighting the struggles of the peace movement over the past century.

Armistice Day 2018 was marked with a community remembrance ceremony at the entrance to the Addison Road Community Centre (ARCC), with the presentation of 20 new plaques celebrating the achievements of noted campaigners for peace over the years. Recipients included anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigner John Hallam, lawyer Bernard Collaery and "Witness K" for defending East Timor's right to sovereignty, prisoner rights activist Brett Collins, Iranian refugee journalist Behrouz Boochani and songwriter John Dengate.

This was followed by the closing of the art exhibition, "War is Over! Armistice and the Dream of Peace" at the nearby StirrUp Gallery. The exhibition of anti-war paintings and drawings had run from November 4. The closure ceremony featured local federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese, long-time peace activist Hannah Middleton and the Solidarity Choir.[28]

Celebrating Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

ICAN Australia January 2022, 2021.

Celebrating the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

With the Tom Uren Memorial Fund, Anthony Albanese MP, Dr Helen Durham, Costa Rican Ambassador Armando Vargas Araya and Gem Romuld.

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Robert Tickner, Jemila Rushton, Mich-Elle Myers, Tim Ayres, Sharon Claydon, Tilman Ruffin, Deidre Palmer, Andrew Giles, Helen Watt, Ruth Mitchell, Rose Read, John Stace, Karina Lester, John Lammey, June Smith, Kamala Angel, Andrea Mayes, Liz Freeman, Romina Beitseen.[29]

TPNW champion

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From ICAN Australia:

Australia is set to embrace the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world under its newly elected prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who has been a vocal supporter of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The Australian Labor Party, which won government at the polls on 21 May, made a pre-election pledge to sign and ratify the landmark disarmament treaty. Such a move would make Australia the first country currently under the United States’ so-called “nuclear umbrella” to become a TPNW state party.[30]
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Labor's TPNW commitment

From ICAN Australia:

A self-described member of the anti-nuclear movement “for more than four decades”, Mr Albanese introduced a motion at Labor’s national conference in December 2018 committing the party to sign and ratify the TPNW in government. In an impassioned speech to party members, he said: “I don’t argue that this is easy. I don’t argue that it’s simple. But I do argue that it’s just,” adding that it is consistent with the role that Labor governments have played internationally in the past. “Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane, and indiscriminate weapons ever created,” he said. “Today we have an opportunity to take a step towards their elimination.”
The motion was adopted with unanimous support. Responding to the arguments of those in his party who had been hesitant at first to commit to the treaty, Mr Albanese said that it was “not true” that becoming a state party would “interfere with” Australia’s relations with the United States. “The fact is that we can disagree with our friends in the short term, while maintaining those relations,” he said, citing as an example Australia’s ratification of the 1997 anti-personnel mine ban convention, which the United States had fiercely opposed at the time but now broadly accepts. One way to move nuclear-armed states forward on disarmament and build “universality of support” for the TPNW, he argued, “is by Australia playing a role”.
He conceded that “we need to take into account and work through a range of complex issues on enforcement, on effectiveness, and on verification”, but he noted that Article 4 of the treaty sets out a process for verifying the elimination of nuclear-weapon programmes and Article 3 stipulates safeguards “as strong as” those under the Non-Proliferation Treaty – a half-century-old agreement that has helped limit the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries. Quoting the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, Mr Albanese roundly dismissed the claim that the TPNW undermines this earlier treaty. “That’s not the view of the experts.”
He also underscored “the overwhelming support of the Australian people” for the TPNW, as demonstrated by successive public opinion polls. (The most recent such poll, conducted by Ipsos for ICAN in March 2022, found that 76 per cent of Australians believe that the government should sign the TPNW, with just 6 per cent against and 18 per cent undecided.) Furthermore, he noted, four in five federal Labor politicians, across party factions, have signed ICAN’s parliamentary pledge – a personal undertaking to work for Australia’s ratification of the treaty.
The Australian Labor Party reaffirmed its 2018 policy commitment on the TPNW at a special platform conference in March 2021, following the treaty’s global entry into force. Party branches in the states of South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, as well as in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, have also passed motions reinforcing the national position, as have more than 50 local branches across the country. According to Mr Albanese, Labor’s “carefully negotiated commitment” is consistent with its “values and our long history of advocacy on weapons of mass destruction”. It is, he said, “Labor at our best”.[31]

The path to the TPNW

From ICAN Australia:

In October 2016, when the UN General Assembly’s first committee adopted a resolution mandating negotiations on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons”, Mr Albanese criticised the Australian government of the day for opposing it. Australia should attend the negotiating conference, he insisted, and “stop working to undermine this process”, warning that Australia’s absence would “tarnish our international reputation as a disarmament supporter”. He saw the negotiations as “a huge opportunity for the international community to make real progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons”.
When work on the draft treaty began in New York in March 2017, Mr Albanese told SBS News: “Negotiations to ban nuclear weapons are going to be difficult. But we also know if you aren’t inside the tent, participating in negotiations, you can’t influence the outcome.” He added: “Over the years, many hundreds of thousands of Australians have demonstrated their support for peaceful nuclear disarmament. Therefore, I think the Australian people will be disappointed that Australia is choosing to not even participate in the forum.”
In July 2017, following three weeks of intense negotiations, 122 countries voted to adopt the TPNW at the United Nations – a major breakthrough in multilateral disarmament efforts, which had been at a standstill for three decades. Having opted out of the process, Australia did not cast a vote. In Canberra a month later, as the Australian parliament resumed work following its winter recess, Mr Albanese joined a group of protesters outside the ministerial wing of parliament house with a banner that read: “While you were away, we banned the bomb. Now sign the treaty.”
Two months later, in October 2017, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that ICAN had won that year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of [nuclear] weapons”. This, according to Mr Albanese, “should be a source of pride for Australia”, as the campaign was founded in Melbourne in 2007. “It is quite a remarkable achievement for an organisation essentially made up of volunteers, with very few resources, to make such inroads into changing public opinion and changing opinions of governments,” he said.
Later that month, Mr Albanese tabled a petition in the house of representatives appealing to the prime minister to join the TPNW. More than 90 community, religious, and human rights groups backed it, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, the National Council of Churches, the Australian Council for International Development, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. “Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons on earth,” Mr Albanese said upon presenting the document. “They pose a threat so grave, they’re an existential risk to all humanity.”
In September 2018, on the first anniversary of the TPNW’s opening for signature, Mr Albanese addressed a rally of ICAN activists in Canberra who had ridden 900 kilometres from Melbourne on what they dubbed the “Nobel Peace Ride”. He thanked ICAN for promoting “locally, nationally, and internationally” the importance of a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons. “It is an example of Australian determination shaping international conversation.”
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In January 2021, after the TPNW reached the threshold of 50 ratifications and entered into force, Mr Albanese reiterated Labor’s commitment to sign and ratify the treaty in government. He and Penny Wong, who will serve as Australia’s foreign minister in the new government, welcomed this “significant milestone” and congratulated ICAN on its role in reaching it. “Australia can and should lead international efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons,” they said in a statement. Speaking at an ICAN event to mark the occasion, Mr Albanese added: “It is, I think, a good week for humanity” – referring not only to the TPNW’s coming into force, but also, obliquely, the end of the presidency of Donald J. Trump one day earlier.[32]

Continuing Tom Uren’s legacy

From ICAN Australia:

Mr Albanese’s views on nuclear weapons were shaped during his time as a political staffer to the late Tom Uren, who served as a Labor government minister in the 1980s and 90s. An icon of the party’s Left faction, he was a mentor to Mr Albanese. As a prisoner of war in Japan in World War II, Mr Uren witnessed the sky turn crimson over Nagasaki when a single atomic bomb reduced the city to smouldering ruins, killing more than 74,000 people. He later described the United States’ attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “crimes against humanity”, and dedicated himself to the cause of eliminating nuclear weapons from the world. In Mr Albanese’s words: “He came back, having fought for Australia, a fighter for peace and disarmament.”
In his final years, Mr Uren became a passionate supporter of ICAN’s work. In 2012, at the age of 91, he launched an ICAN exhibition in Melbourne, organised in partnership with the mayor’s office in Hiroshima, featuring artefacts from the atomic bombings, including melted glass bottles and the charred remains of a school uniform. Following Mr Uren’s death in 2015, ICAN established the Tom Uren Memorial Fund in his honour, to continue his legacy as a peacemaker. Mr Albanese launched it at Labor’s national conference in Melbourne and at parliament house that year and serves as a patron. Each year, he hosts a lecture for the fund.
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Announcing the fund’s establishment in a speech to parliament, Mr Albanese said: “We must work together to disarm, so that, when nations have disputes, there is no chance that their arguments will get out of hand and lead to nuclear conflict.” He urged “the community to get behind the fund for the good of humanity and to recognise the lifetime of peaceful activism of my dear friend the late Tom Uren”. When the Australian Labor Party adopted its policy in support of the TPNW in 2018, Mr Albanese quoted his former mentor: “The struggle for nuclear disarmament is the most important struggle for the human race.”[33]

Evatt support/ Tom Uren Memorial Fund

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Evatt Foundationll is with llFrank Stilwell, February 10, 2017.

Disarmament Dinner for the Tom Uren Memorial Fund supported by the Evatt Foundation.

A passionate anti-nuclear and peace activist, Tom Uren believed that the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was a crime against humanity, and fought all his political life against these immoral weapons.
This year, nations will gather at the United Nations to negotiate a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, a vital step on the path to the realisation of Tom's dream of nuclear abolition.
It is a crucial time to pressure the Australian Government to join the majority of nations in supporting a ban.

Speakers:

Anti-Uranium

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Marrickville Peace Group

By 2005 it was becoming clear that there was little happening on the peace front in Sydney, despite Australia’s involvement in the ongoing war in Iraq. In an effort to bring attention back to this issue, the Marrickville Peace Group began its ‘Twenty-O-Three’ initiative. Using the unique invasion date for its title – 20.03.2003 – the group collected signatures on an open letter it had written to President Bush at a rally it organised in Martin Place. The plan was to send the open letter to President Bush via the US Consul General.

The initiative was repeated over four years, with an open letter being delivered to the US Consul General on the anniversary of the invasion each year. Local MP Anthony Albanese spoke at one of these rallies. Lee Rhiannon (Greens MP in NSW Parliament at the time) spoke at another. In 2007, then Kerry Nettle (former Greens Senator) lent her support in trying to get the US Consul General to accept the letter in person, without success.

From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004. On February 26, a public forum on the US-led war on Iraq sponsored by the Marrickville Peace Group was addressed by Anna Samson from the Stop the War Coalition, federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese, Greens representative Colin Hesse and Sue Johnson, the Socialist Alliance's candidate for the federal electorate of Grayndler.[34]

Letter 'NO Star Wars'

FOREIGN MINISTER ALEXANDER DOWNER

THE HON. PETER REITH, MINISTER FOR DEFENCE

PRIME MINISTER JOHN HOWARD THE HON. KIM BEAZLEY LAURIE BRERETON

RE: US/AUSTRALIAN MINISTERIALS JULY 31 2001

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Dear Alexander Downer and Peter Reith

The undersigned groups are writing to you with respect to the forthcoming US/Australian ministerial meetings which we understand are sceduled on 30 July in Canberra.

We applaud the concern you have expressed to the US government over the CTBT. It is vital that Australia continue to press the US to ratify the CTBT.

We are deeply concerned that the Australian government may either at these meetings or during the meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister John Howard, move Australia toward deeper cooperation with the US on the controversial, and in our view unwise and destabilizing, missile defence program.

We note that the right-wing US Heritage Foundation has already suggested Australian involvement in missile defence, and our concerns on that matter have already been conveyed in writing to Mr. Howard.

We would remind you of the letter from 610 organizations and parliamentarians worldwide (including 19 Australian parliamentarians), which shows clearly that opposition to missile defence is widespread throughout the NGO community and the wider public realm.

We would also remind you that the Australian Senate has twice, on June 29 2000 and on March 1 2001, passed resolutions asking that Australia not support missile defence in any way. We believe these resolutions reflect the view of the broader Australian community with respect to missile defence-related issues.

The opposition emerging in europe to missile defence, in which major acts of civil disobedience take place at missile defence-related installations, show that these expressions of worldwide and national opposition to missile defence cannot be ignored or set aside.

The government has argued that missile defence is innocuous and that 'it is missiles that hurt people'.

This completely misses the point, which is that the deployment of missile defence, particularly if that involves a unilateral setting aside of the ABM treaty, will re-ignite the global nuclear arms race and set back efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons by decades. The re-commencement of a global nuclear arms race is simply too dangerous to be allowed to happen.

Reductions in nuclear warhead numbers and reductions in alert status, flagged by the Bush administration, are on the other hand welcome and are essential steps toward the total and unequivocal elimination of nuclear weapons. However, the deployment of missile defence may well make those vital steps impossible, and is inconsistent with genuine moves toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

We strongly urge that, when you meet with the US government at the end of July and when Prime Minister Howard meets with George Bush on September 10th, the Australian government make it clear to President Bush and his administration:

i)That we strongly support their suggested deep cuts to nuclear weapons numbers, and the lowering of alert status of ICBMs.

ii)That Australia will in no way support the missile defence program which undercuts the above goals.

iii)That the joint facilities are not available for any purpose that is not within the current ABM treaty, the NPT, and the CTBT.

Yours Sincerely,

References

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ [Albanese, Anthony (20 June 2021). "Tom Uren AC Memorial Lecture". anthonyalbanese.com.au.]
  3. ↑ [2]
  4. ↑ [3]
  5. ↑ [4]
  6. ↑ [5]
  7. ↑ [6]
  8. ↑ [7]
  9. ↑ [8]
  10. ↑ [9]
  11. ↑ [10]
  12. ↑ [11]
  13. ↑ [12]
  14. ↑ [13]
  15. ↑ [14]
  16. ↑ [15]
  17. ↑ [16]
  18. ↑ [17]
  19. ↑ [18]
  20. ↑ [19]
  21. ↑ [20]
  22. ↑ [Leigh, Andrew (2000). "Factions and Fractions: A Case Study of Power Politics in the Australian Labor Party" (PDF). Australian Journal of Political Science. 35 (3): 427–448. doi:10.1080/713649348. S2CID 144601220]
  23. ↑ [21]
  24. ↑ [22]
  25. ↑ [23]
  26. ↑ [Political Economy Now!, Gavan Butler, Frank Stilwell, Evan Jones page 63]
  27. ↑ [24]
  28. ↑ [25]
  29. ↑ [26]
  30. ↑ [27]
  31. ↑ [28]
  32. ↑ [29]
  33. ↑ [30]
  34. ↑ [31]
  35. ↑ [32]
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