With friends like these, who needs enemies? The US is supposed to be Australia's "closest ally, and our principal economic and strategic partner", but it is clearer than ever that US President Donald Trump represents a direct threat to our security, our economy and our stability, unleashing a global energy crisis. But in politics, you should never waste a crisis - will Anthony Albanese seize the moment?
It is no exaggeration to say the world was preparing itself for the worst last week, up to and including the threat of nuclear war.
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will," Trump said in a post on Truth Social, threatening the existence of the roughly 90 million people who live in Iran if the country refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump did not wipe out civilization in Iran, but it still does not feel beyond the realm of possibility, given his past behaviour and pronouncements. Together, the US and Israel have killed many civilians by targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran and Lebanon, the latter of which is not part of the ceasefire agreement agreed to after Trump threatened to annihilate Iran. First Trump sparked a global energy crisis and then he criticised other countries for not helping to fix the mess he and Netanyahu created.
Europe has seen the illegal war on Iran as the latest in a long and painful series of lessons that the US can no longer be trusted as an ally, including its betrayal of Ukraine and the fact that Denmark was preparing to blow up airport runways in Greenland in response to a US invasion. Let's be clear, many European countries backed the war in Iran initially. But as Trump demonstrates that he went to war with no clear plans, objectives or exit strategy, more and more European countries are withholding cooperation with the US and pursuing practical ways to decouple Europe from dependence on US finance and IT systems.
Spain is leading that charge. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez refused permission for the UX to use Spanish military bases and airspace for operations against Iran and refused even to celebrate the ceasefire. He has consistently taken a principled stance, prioritising upholding international law over staying silent to preserve the alliance with the United States.
"The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket," Sanchez said.
Yet the Australian government's response to the US's latest failed military intervention in the Middle East has been a lot more muted. At first, the Albanese government backed the war on Iran, but declined to comment on its legality, saying it was a matter for the US and Israel. Then, when Trump threatened to blow Iran off the map, things got a bit more serious and Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC's 7.30: "I don't think anyone should be threatening the destruction of a civilisation."
Trump's actions and rhetoric are increasingly unhinged. You don't need to be a foreign policy or security expert to understand the threat he poses to Australia's national and economic security. The AUKUS agreement guarantees us precisely zero nuclear submarines and handcuffs us to an increasingly volatile military superpower in democratic decline. Yet there is no sense from anyone in government that Australia has power and agency in our relationship with the US. Or that the US's behaviour is cause to reconsider the wisdom of tying our countries closer together militarily.
Australia does have power, we just act like we don't. The reality is that we are one of the biggest economies on the planet. We have a stable and peaceful democracy. We played a leading role in establishing the United Nations in the wake of the devastation of World War II. And we are blessed with an abundance of natural resources. As my colleague Richard Denniss has observed in the past, Australia has a larger share of the world traded coal market than Saudi Arabia has of the world traded oil market. Australia has a larger share of the traded iron ore market than all of OPEC's share of the oil market. And we compete with Qatar and the US as the biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG). So, we actually have a lot of power to exert to secure our national interest.
Most Australians are experiencing the consequences of this illegal war on Iran at the petrol bowser. After Iran took out close to 20 per cent of Qatar's gas production in retaliation, gas prices are set to rise too, like they did after Russia's war on Ukraine.
The gas industry is using the energy crisis to undermine the groundswell of support for putting a 25 per cent tax on gas exports. But it's actually a very sensible time to implement a tax on gas exports.
In 2023, Australia's Treasury wrote that no LNG exporter had ever paid Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT). Put simply, Australia's so-called "rent tax" on gas and oil, a tax explicitly designed to tax "super profits" (known to economists as "rents") failed to capture any of the windfall profits that accrued to the gas industry from Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Multinational gas companies walked away with more than $100 billion in windfall profits while Australians got bupkis. If Australia had implemented a 25 per cent gas export tax back in 2022, Australia Institute research shows it would have generated an additional $68 billion in revenue.
Now, a flat 25 per cent tax on gas exports has received support from no less than the union movement to the CEO of Commonwealth Bank, and politically from Clive Palmer's party to the Greens and Independents to One Nation voters.
The Albanese government didn't do anything to build that support, but it's never going to have a better opportunity to use it to implement a tax on gas exports.