 Hi, this is Joe Laurier. Before you watch our latest episode of CN Live, I just wanted to thank you, the viewers and readers of Consortium News for your past generosity in funding our unique website. It was begun 25 years ago in November 1995 by Bob Perry, one of the best investigative reporters in American journalistic history. Bob depended on readers as well for the independence that Consortium News has always had. And during these days of crisis and pandemic and the crisis in journalism with Julian Assange languishing in prison, we ask you to support us through these tough times so that we can continue to bring you these special stories, a unique perspective on news that you won't find in corporate media. Thank you. So 10 of CN Live, I'm Joe Laurier, editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Voss. Plenty of people in Europe and in the US are wondering why Australia has so far been able to escape the same devastation of the coronavirus pandemic that they've experienced. While the US moves towards 2 million infections and has surpassed 105,000 dead, Australia has only had around 7,000 cases resulting in just 103 deaths. It didn't necessarily come easily to Australia, however, and the pandemic has seriously undermined relations with its biggest trading partner. Here to discuss the many ramifications of the pandemic down under are Arthur Chesterville Evans, an epidemiologist, pulmonologist, and politician who served in the New South Wales parliament, Tony Kevin, a former Australian ambassador to Cambodia and Poland, and Oscar Grenfell, member of Australia's Socialist Equality Parties National Committee, and a former candidate for the House of Representatives here in Australia. We welcome all to CN Live. Arthur, since you're a medical doctor, I wanted to start off with a few questions about the virus itself. It seems that four months after this has begun sweeping the world, there's still many unanswered questions about the nature of this virus. For example, if you get it and you recover or you have immunity, are there any moves that are serious about treatments? How far are we from a vaccine? And how does this attack people in different ways? Some people may have a cough, others just a flu-like symptoms and others then can breathe and sometimes within a day or so. So Arthur, could you just bring us up to speed on what your knowledge is of the nature of the noble coronavirus? Well, I think you'd have to say there's quite a lot not known, Joe, when you don't know something you think will do somebody else know more than I do. But I mean, just reading generally, I don't think anyone's sure to answer some of your questions that whether you get immunity or not, you know, the virus changes like a flu changes. And the question is if you beat off one strain and it mutates, are you okay for the next strain and how much resistance do you then have? So the assumption that you get herd immunity if you have an infection is not even certain. So the herd immunity concept is, you know, like if you get polio or polio vaccine, you never get polio, right? Safe. With flu, you can get it every year. Now, the question is with coronavirus, is it going to mutate to that level? And I don't think that question is still answered. Certainly, it seems that the coronavirus does mutate and the, I don't know, there's enough people getting reinfected and enough data on the antibodies to say whether you get immunity after you've been infected. The assumption is that you will. But I mean, that's still, I think, an assumption. And obviously, if you're planning your whole national campaign on herd immunity, the pretty important area of ignorance, if you want to put it that way. Right. Well, the herd immunity issue is a huge one. We could spend the whole show just on that, particularly as it played out in Great Britain and apparently in the U.S. as well, where there's been a seem to me a kind of denial setting in or a fatigue of being quarantined. And people wanted to get back even though there are a number of reasons why they shouldn't. And there are hotspots in the U.S. bubbling up. California has seen upsurge again. Arkansas, where Elizabeth is, has had an upsurge. While it's gone down in New York, it's going up in other places, Virginia. We've had our own differences here with a whole subset of a subculture about believing that the lockdowns, the quarantines, or some kind of government plot to gain control. I find that very hard to believe. In fact, lockdowns and quarantines have gone back to the Middle Ages with the Black Death. When you don't have a vaccine, when you don't have any drugs to treat this with, this is the only thing you're really left with. And while we are right to be suspicious of government and authorities, sometimes we have to do what they tell us because this is the only way to deal with this. And I don't see how big capital would have gained from the destruction of an economy by willingly setting this up. I mentioned vaccines and treatment out there, just staying on the medical issue for a little while more. Where do we stand with that? It doesn't seem like there's any treatment that's really been shown to be effective and vaccines could be a year or more away. Or you may never have a vaccine. There seems to be this certainty that we will have one. There's still no vaccine for AIDS, for HIV-AIDS, for example. Well, exactly. There's no vaccine for AIDS. There's no vaccine for SARS and there's no vaccine for MERS and there's no, I don't think there's a vaccine for Ebola either. So I mean, the assumption that you're going to get a vaccine, I don't think it's true. We may get a vaccine. We're certainly doing a lot of work trying to, but it's not that easy and it may not be successful. So the vaccine's a bit of a pie in the sky. I don't think any of the treatments actually work. That some of the antiviral treatments might, but they're all a bit marginal. I mean, obviously the malaria treatment didn't really have a scientific rationale. I don't think. And it hasn't worked. It's now proven to do more harm than good. So the treatments are not too good. The vaccines are not too good. And the lockdowns, obviously, as you say, have worked since the middle ages. And of course, when ships used to come to Australia, they had a little part of a harbor that was quarantined and they had to stay there for a month. And if they had any diseases and they flew the yellow flag when they came in, they got sent to that part and they had to wait until everybody died or got over it. And then they were allowed to join the rest of us. I think the Australian government, which managed the bushfires so badly and was highly criticised for not taking expert advice earlier, thought, well, geez, we've made a big mess of that. We'd better take expert advice on COVID. And of course, the thing that a number of countries had was that Chinese were having this problem. And if we just locked them out for a little while, we could get our act together. And Australia kind of did get its act together. Made a few mistakes, let a cruise ship in with lots of infected passengers on board. But in the relative scale of things, people abate the lockdown and it's gone reasonably well. I personally think we should all be wearing masks as we come out because it makes a hell of a lot of transmission less from the person who's infected and huge difference. And it makes some difference for the person on the receiving end, if you want to say, if there's virus in the air. Well, Arthur, before we get into the political economic ramifications, one other question, why does it seem to infect people in such different ways? Is it the strength of the virus that they got or the numbers of the virus? Is it the particular immune system of those people? Some people may just get a cough. Others get no symptoms or asymptomatic. Do we have any idea why it affects people so different? No, it does seem to affect people with preexisting diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease. And, yeah, and it seems to affect old people a lot worse if you look at the people dying. And I think that's then led to these fairly horrendous idea that, well, it doesn't matter about the old people that were going to die anyway. I mean, talk about seeing people as commodities is really, I guess it's really put the squeeze on the idea that some people don't matter, which is if you abandon the idea that you have a universal care for humanity, then you start saying, well, which ones do we let go first? And if it's the oldies or the poor ones or whatever, it's kind of like, well, it's a great new world, isn't it? It's kind of like the useless eaters of the Nazis, that's how they call them. Arthur, you're also a politician as well as a doctor. So I want you to weigh in on the political side. And I'm going to bring in Oscar Grenfell, now Oscar Socialist Equality Party in Australia. You wrote a piece just a couple of days ago saying, quote, the entire political establishment of Australia is seeking to utilize the coronavirus pandemic to implement longstanding plans for further pro-business restructuring of industrial relations and workplace conditions. And there's a big difference saying this was engineered by elites. And another one to say that big capital is taking advantage of a crisis. It's called disaster capitalism. We've seen many examples of that. They didn't welcome this crisis. They've suffered. We've had people, Prince Charles, the Prime Minister of Britain got sick and had to be hospitalized. So certainly they were not immune to this virus. But now, as we're in some parts of the world coming out of it, you are saying from what I've just quoted that big capital is going to try to take advantage. Can you explain a little more about that, Oscar? Clearly we're living through a global crisis that's really unprecedented since the Second World War. And I think what it's triggered is a full-scale economic, social and political breakdown of the capitalist system. I think it's revealed the manner in which governments internationally develop policies in the interests of the corporate and financial elite without reference to the needs of ordinary working people. If you look at what's taken place since March, you've had governments around the world bailing out the corporations, the financial sector to the tune of trillions of dollars. We've seen that in the United States with the CARES Act that was passed, with bipartisan support, Democrats, Republicans coming together to give really more money to Wall Street than has ever been funneled into the private sector in human history. And I think similar processes are underway here. The economic crisis triggered by the pandemic resulted in mass unemployment virtually overnight. In the space of six weeks, you had a million people thrown out of work. And as in the US, the government responded with major bailouts for big business, the largest corporations, and really a pittance for the unemployed and welfare recipients. But I think what one of the significant features of the crisis here, which is present elsewhere as well, is the coming together of the entire political establishment. The Scott Morrison conservative government has been backed to the hilt throughout this crisis by the trade unions, the Labor Party. And I think what they're seeking to do is to use this to carry out longstanding plans for a further pro-business restructuring of the economy. What you had when the crisis began was the unions and the government coming together to overhaul workplace conditions for over three million hospitality and clerical workers. Their penalty rates were scrapped. Shift restrictions were abolished. Now they're seeking to impose this far more broadly. You have the establishment by the government of a tripartite body, tripartite bodies, governments, the unions and employers sitting down behind closed doors. It's clear from what's been revealed publicly is that the aim of this will be to further slash penalty rates. The watchword is employment flexibility, so a further reduction of full-time work. I think what we're seeing is a vast, a further restructuring of social and economic relations, which really dates back to 2008. I mean, the austerity measures. American watching this, like myself, would say, geez, I mean, you had a job keeper program in which wages were still, if I'm not incorrect, still being paid. The government was helping employers to pay their workers. You have had Medicare for all. Medicare, it's called here in Australia, right? Which we cannot get in the United States. And any politician who really looks like he's going to get it is sidetracked and sideline. It looks like a paradise compared to the US, but yet you're saying that even within Australia, they're moving even closer and closer towards an American model because of this crisis and this will accelerate it? Yeah, I think they're using the crisis to accelerate longer-standing plans. I mean, if you look at the situation with the pandemic itself, it's true that the cases have not been on the scale of the United States and Britain, but it was very touch and go. I mean, Morrison instituted lockdown measures after you had doctors, medical experts demanding it. There's now been a University of Sydney study release saying that if they had have done it a week later, there may have been 35,000 additional infections. And now what they're doing is they're rushing to remove these lockdown measures under conditions where the virus is still circulating within the community. There are ongoing clusters at meatworks in Melbourne, numbers of aged care facilities, and the position of all of the governments is that they won't be eradicating the virus or seeking to because it's too expensive. They'll manage it and people are just going to need to live with this. So I think clearly the situation here is not the same as elsewhere, but the drive to force workers back onto the job, to force students back into classrooms is the same. And the primary motive is to ensure a resumption of corporate profit-making activities. You mentioned Morrison. So let me bring Tony, Kevin, and even before we get to China. And Arthur, too, please weigh in because you mentioned. I could comment on this. Morrison, yeah. I mean, Morrison, it seems like it's so poorly on the fires that he opportunity here to do well, but it was really the state premiers that forced his hand to do it. Isn't that right, Arthur? Well, no, some of the states have actually locked their borders against other states because they've actually been virus-free. Four of the states are virus-free and they've just said, hey, we're locking the border and the federal government said, no, no, no, when we had federation, we had free trade across our state borders. And health crises are an exemption in the Constitution if you want to put that way. But Morrison has had this agenda to deregulate and flexibilize the labor market along the American model where it's raised to the bottom in terms of wages. You've got to remember Australia had protectionism until in the 1960s until maybe the 70s. And of course, we were highly unionized in manufacturing industry and got very good pay and conditions. I visited the US in 1985. I had a fellowship to study workplace absence at the time. And I talked about wages and conditions and penalty rates and paid holidays and stuff. The Americans couldn't believe what a good deal the Australian workers had. They were slabbergasted. When I asked them what their conditions were, they'd immediately put out this little book from their back pocket, which their complicated employment contracts, which will renegotiate it every few years. And they would quote, you know, conditions that were hopeless compared to ours. And of course, then we got Medicare in 1975, which was universal healthcare for all. And the government's been demolishing that by stages and by stealth as they are in Britain to go to an American model because that suits the big end of town, you know, if you're going to die, you've got to die poor, you know, they're going to take your money. They're going to turn sickness into wealth, you know. I mean, they really believe that you can do this forever, you know. Maybe I could come in at this point. Tony, please. Yes, Tony. I think we dodged a bullet in Australia. We dodged a huge bullet partly by luck, partly by geography, that simply that there is this issue of the land sea gap that gives us some sort of an opportunity to control people coming in by sea or by air. Not that we did very well. The Australian Border Force proved to be Australian border fast. But still we did, despite the Ruby Princess bringing in massive infection, we have managed to keep the numbers of deaths down. We have managed to advise some very good public health advice around the country, I have to say, dodged a very big bullet. I do take my hat off to the state premiers. They're much closer to the grass roots than the federal government in Canberra. And they seem to be more attuned to public health imperative of keeping people alive and treating all life as equally valuable. I salute all that. I don't see any imagination in the recovery phase. It's as clear as daylight to Brian Freddie that if we don't find an antidote or a vaccine, we're not going to be able to go back to the systems we've had as before. Just to take the example of public transporting cities and office buildings and elevators and office buildings, lifts. We can't move people around in the way in which we used to before COVID-19 if we don't get a vaccine or cure the COVID-19. And it looks as if we're not going to. So I mean, staring us in the face is a massive restructuring of our whole life. But when I'm a whole economic and social life, when I read the Australian financial press in review, I don't get a glimmering of any understanding of this. There seems to be a desire to put the genie back in the bottle and somehow go back to where we were. We can't. I don't think I share Oscar's pessimism that the capitalists are trying to use this to shift the balance between labour and capital. I mean, I know they would always like to. They're greedy bastards, but I don't see it happening. But what I do see is a gradient comprehension. And I hope when we talked about the international angle later on, we'll discover this there too. But just taking to the domestic angle, there are a few people, not enough, unfortunately, saying, look, this is the time to really think about our social model in Australia. How do we decentralise? How do we reduce the uglier features of the way we crowd into cities and create increasingly unhealthy conditions in those cities? I don't see any of that creative thinking, unfortunately. But at the medical level, I think we've been, thankfully, pretty lucky. Oscar, did you want to comment on that before we move on? Yeah. I mean, I think clearly, as we discussed before, the situation here is not the same as elsewhere. But this is a global crisis. I mean, what goes away can come back. And I think the dangers are not over. You know, there is a huge campaign by governments and the media to sort of suggest that it's back to the new normal under conditions where the virus is still circulating. I mean, having workers in large-scale industries, having their schools completely open, of which the state governments have introduced, threatens their health and safety of millions. I think they're taking a gamble. And if you look at it, I mean, the claim is that the lockdown measures instituted here resulted in fewer infections than in the United States and Britain. But they're now seeking to remove those very same lockdown measures. And the state premiers, the federal government have been quite explicit that this will result in spikes, new infections. They claim that they can manage this. I certainly wouldn't be so certain about that. I think that this agenda is provoking significant opposition. We've seen that from teachers, construction workers, and others who have been forced onto the job. And it's emerging in opposition to the trade unions, which have collaborated with the state and federal governments. Certainly what we're calling for is the development of safety action committees of workers themselves to monitor the health situation, you know, impose social distancing in their workplaces. But we're raising this needs to be connected to a broader political fight. I mean, I think if you look at it on a global scale, the pandemic has revealed the immense growth of social inequality and the fact that workers' interests, their most basic rights even to life cannot be defended within the framework of the capitalist system. So we're certainly raising the necessity for an independent socialist movement of the working class. I think the medical people do think in general that we're opening up too early. And I think also that there's been much more emphasis on wearing masks. If you're going to go into public transport, where you can't really socially distance and the bugs are coming out of your mouth when you talk, you really should be wearing a mask. I think if we're going to go out of lockdown, we've got to go into masks. It's a big time. I think we're unlocking too early. There's still cases being found. There were two schools closed last week. There were four new cases yesterday, which were community acquired. In other words, we didn't know where they came from. So there's still bugs out there and the pressure to unlock is coming very much from the financial community, I think. And the public say, well, look, we need a better welfare system for casual workers and others who are falling through the cracks. Our government, because it's very big end of town oriented, didn't give the money to the individuals. It gave it to the, it generally gave it to what was called the JobKeeper program. In other words, you gave it to the bosses and the bosses gave it to the workers. So once again, it's very much concentrated on a revival by helping capital. And that's, I guess, a philosophic position of a conservative government. That brings me to my first question, which is open for all of you to answer. But I wanted to know, in speaking to an international audience, what would you say the Australian political feeling of the general public has been regarding this effort, this push to reopen and during the lockdown itself? Because obviously, there's been a lot of different sentiments flying around in the U.S. But I'd like our audience to get an idea of what you feel the temperature of the public has been on the lockdown and then on reopening. I would say that the public have been very sensible myself, except that this has to happen. And the people on the bad end of the deal, in a sense, have been getting a bad end of the deal for quite a long time. So they were not really surprised. And the people that come to the deal have been having a comfortable time for a long time. And so in that sense, the status quo was pretty reasonable. And I think they cut the government a lot of slack because they've done so much better than they did with the bushfires. And they're hoping for consensus in the new society. And I think the question is whether the government will go with its ideological zeal and try to make a business led recovery by helping business, which is very much the trickle down economic system that they have favoured well ever since they've been in power, really. I would come in to say that people are a little bit confused and I certainly am as to how you can have a demand led recovery when so many of the ways in which people used to spend money are no longer available to them. You can't go to the movies. You can't go to the opera. You can't go to the footy. There are so many things you can't do that you used to be able to do that used to be the way a lot of Australians spent their money and kept the economy going. And I don't think the business sector has got any answer to this. If the demand is not there and I don't think the demand is there, there is really no alternative but to basically pay us to sit at home and do nothing because that way at least you have some sort of economic activity going on. People still have to buy food. People still have to keep their houses. People still have to go to whatever jobs they still have. But there's a great air of unreality about it all and I think ordinary people feel this. The government don't know where we're going. I don't think anybody knows where we're going to be quite honest. I think there is real concern and uncertainty. I think the crisis is also fueling long standing social anger and opposition particularly from the working class. We've seen the situation in the United States where this brutal police murder has been the spark for really very significant mass demonstrations involving workers and young people of all races. And I think it's clear that these protests have been motivated by the immediate incident, this horrific killing, that they're giving expression to much broader opposition over inequality, the build up of the police, the military and the dominance of the corporate and financial elite over politics. I think the same processes are at work in every country in one form or other including here. Just one point I would make is I don't think in Australia the sort of pro-business character of the response to this crisis is solely the result of the right wing proclivities of the Morrison government. I mean, Sally McManus, the head of the Australian unions, has been at the absolute forefront. She supported the JobKeeper program which is a complete sham. I mean, it's essentially the government subsidizing the wages bill of the largest corporations. It doesn't guarantee any jobs in the longer term. And she's been very explicit that if governments at the state and federal level and the companies work with the trade unions, they can have whatever they want. So I think this crisis is exposing to millions of people the character of the entire political establishment, including the unions, which we raise are completely corporatized entities. They're no longer workers organizations in any sense. I would go ahead to some extent on that. I don't think there's anything like the anger in Australia that there is in the U.S. I mean, I couldn't see any riot. I couldn't see a trigger to a riot anything like you have in Minneapolis, really. It's true, Sally McManus supported the JobKeeper program, but she's generally regarded as a moderate, very sensible and decent person. And she said, well, okay, you're giving the money to the bosses and then to the workers rather than directly to the workers. But hey, the money is still going out to the people. And so she is trying to negotiate a new approach, if you like. And the government is committed to its sort of ideological trickle down approach, but they've at least asked her to the table and the negotiations are starting. So I mean, I think most people are giving it a go at the moment and saying, well, let's hope that Sally can modify this agenda. I wanted to ask Oscar about something he wrote in his recent article. I'll just quote for the listeners. He wrote that regarding fears in ruling circles of mounting social and political discontent amid a resurgence of the class struggle internationally, which I believe is something you just referenced. I just like you to expand on that, whether in terms of the United States and the events there at the moment or in Australia. Is that kind of a silver lining, this resurgence that you describe of the awareness of class struggle? What we've seen over the past two years is a huge uptick in protests, demonstrations, strikes on a global scale, clearly preceding the pandemic. You've had the yellow vest movement in France, serious unrest and opposition among auto workers in the United States, mass protest movements in North Africa. I think one of the significant features of this is that it has increasingly acquired a global character. I think workers recognize that wherever they happen to be, they face fundamentally the same issues and it has emerged in many cases as a rebellion against the old trade union and social democratic organizations, which have suppressed the class struggle for a whole period. So I think that the pandemic and the crisis associated with it is escalating that we've seen it in the United States over the past days. And I think certainly what we anticipate is that that is only going to deepen and expand and it is a global process. I mean, in Australia, there's always a huge pressure that it's an island at the bottom of the world. It's somehow exempt from what's going on internationally. I don't think that's the case. I mean, vast social inequality, the imperviousness of the official parties to the needs and interests of ordinary people are as present here as anywhere else. Just quickly in response to Arthur, I'd raise in terms of the unions coming on board with the government. I mean, we have seen this before in the 1980s. You had the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Labor Party, government of Bob Hawke signed a series of accords. I mean, what they provided for was the deregulation of the economy, the gutting of hundreds of thousands of jobs, particularly in manufacturing and industry. And the fact that Australia has some of the highest levels of casual and precarious employment in the advanced world is a direct consequence of that. So I think that record is a warning of what's now being prepared at an even higher level. I think when we come in at this point to talk about the impact on Australia and globalization, I think I'd have a lot in common with what Oscar just said. We did allow ourselves to be deindustrialized in this country. We allowed whole sectors of our manufacturing capability that incidentally helped see us through World War II fall into disrepair, fall into disuse. The enthusiasm of Australian manufacturing disappeared in the 70s and 80s and 90s. We've become a nation of financial manipulators and restaurateurs and waiters, basically. Although we think of ourselves as the clever people, we don't seem to be able to provide a satisfying lifestyle based on self-sufficiency or any degree of self-sufficiency. We were sucked in by the globalization model for climate sinker. And now we're the consequences. I just saw a terrifying statistic this morning. There are 100,000 people, crew members, many of whom are hospitality crew members stranded on board cruise ships all around the world. Nobody wants them, nobody wants the people, nobody wants ships. It's a metaphor for the breakdown of the globalization model. I don't think we're going to see those huge ugly monsters looming over circular key in Sydney again anytime soon. And I'm very glad about that. I think if we do maintain a form of globalization, it's going to be very, very different from what we have now. Yes. Well, I think Tony just threw out a question, Bob, and he wants to respond to that before we move on to Australian-Chinese relations. I think Australia had a lot of protectionism for those manufacturing industries in the sense that they weren't globally competitive. And rather than back individual industries, the government said, I don't know, we mustn't try and back winners. Governments can never back winners. So there was a sort of ideological unwillingness to say, well, we've got an advantage in, say, solar technology or some other aspect and actually back ourselves to do stuff and have a national plan. The assumption is that the market will fix everything. But of course, our domestic market is small and so globalization with our high wages, the jobs tend to go overseas. So in a sense, there's been a lack of leadership and a lack of courage in all of that. But I think at some point, we have to take away our protectionism and of course, that result in a lot of jobs lost. And to blame the unions for not standing up for us is perhaps not realistic given the globalizing trade in the world. Now, I don't know what the answer is, but at least I know, I think the answer was to have a national plan and to back some industries in which we had a competitive advantage and put some money into them. That's what I think. But I mean, that's very good in retrospect. It's probably still the case. The small countries, they have to get with a small local market, they have to be exporting and they have to be very good to do that. And they have to have a good plan and good technology. And we've been a bit bad at that quite honestly. And we mostly make coffee and dig up minerals. Our industry makes coffee and our or does mining really. And of course, we know that the education industry, which is suffering very badly with the lack of ability to get foreign students, but the foreign students, as soon as they've got enough critical mass to have universities in China to educate the Chinese, they won't be coming to us. So in a sense, this is a sunset industry, although it doesn't recognize it. That's a good segue into our next topic. I just want to remind everyone you're watching CN Live and we're talking about the pandemic in Australia with Tony Kevin, Oscar Grenfeld and Arthur Chesterfield Evans. Tony, you've written a piece recently for Consorting News. That was about many aspects of Australian history and current political situation, but you also talked about a key moment right now in the relations between China and Australia that Arthur just alluded to. Can you give us an overall view of what you said in that piece and what Australia has done wrong here in your opinion about its relations with China? Well, we were far too quick to take up our usual role as the loyal colonial satrap of the United States. Indecently, hastily, we supported President Trump's call for China to basically come clean on what had been done wrong over COVID-19 without realizing how utterly offensive framing the problem in those terms was for China is to China. We then tried to pretend that as the international reaction to that crude diplomacy put things back on the rails gradually and China eventually became part of a push to have the World Health Organization organizer and open impartial investigation into all the questions that really do need to be put, not just to China, but to America as well, because it's a long history of Chinese American fingerprints all over COVID-19. So we find ourselves in a usual situation where not only are the Chinese rather despising us for our thumbs in it, but also great many other Asian countries are despising us for our thumbs in us. And they're wondering whether it's worth talking to Australia anymore because we can just be relied upon to be Donald Trump on steroids. At the same time as this is happening, there's a complete lack of serious internal debate in Australia at the intellectual level on what the alternatives might be. There's a sort of a Stalinist crushing of dissent among Australia's intelligence. You're a strategic elite that for someone like me is very discouraging to see. Oscar, if you want to join in please on the issue of how Australia has kind of cut their nose off despite their faces when it comes to their relations with China. And here we have Scott Morrison following Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump, tough on China when the consequences Australia are quite severe. Arthur mentioned exporting and the country, small countries export. And for what I understand, China is no longer importing Australian meat because of this angry exchange that's gone on. Oscar. Yeah, I mean, I think clearly the Morrison government, but also the federal Labor Party opposition have been functioning during the pandemic is something of an attack dog of the United States. I mean, they called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus just days after Trump launched his first attack on the WHO and under conditions where the Trump administration was putting forward, you know, what had been a right wing conspiracy theory that this somehow merged, you know, a Wuhan laboratory. This is not new. I mean, Australia has been on the front lines of an escalating US military buildup directed against China since 2011. Clearly the Australian ruling elite confronts a dilemma between its reliance on trade relations with China on the one hand, and its strategic partnership with the United States. But I think what's clear is that the choice has been made. I mean, the dominant sections of the Australian political establishment are backing military provocations, diplomatic threats, which do pose the real risk of nuclear war in this region and internationally. And I don't think it's just a question of following along the coattails of the US or them being American puppets. The Australian ruling elite has since the end of World War II advanced its own predatory interests, particularly in the Pacific, under the umbrella of the US alliance and by functioning as its deputy sheriff in the region. Just one quick point I would make is I don't think the answer to this is a more independent foreign policy or a retreat into the national hearth with protectionist measures. What we're raising is that we do live in a world economy, a global society, and the critical issue is the working class uniting internationally against all of these governments that are implicated in war preparations and against the capitalist system, which underlies those military dangers. Arthur, I'm sure you've got something to say about all of this. I think China willy-nilly was tactless and very, very stupid. I think there was going to be a world movement to look at the evolution of the COVID virus so that we can do better next time, and that's very sensible. And the Europeans came on board. They probably would have come on board a week or two later anyway. And the WHO is probably the correct vehicle to use it. I mean, what other vehicle are you going to use for a world health investigation? But Australia jumped up like a... I'm not quite sure why. I mean, the obvious explanation is they jumped up to please Donald Trump. I don't know. There's some very strange forces in Australia's political system that are anti-China with Huawei and so on. And I think they just went off heart cocked and I'm not quite sure why. There seemed to be no upside from the Australian point of view to be attacking China. Everybody had a problem. China probably was slow to get started and hit it for a little while. But once they got going, I mean, the Chinese have less cases now than the Americans have got deaths. I mean, you have to admit that whatever the Chinese did once they got their acts together, they got it together pretty well. I mean, they may be hiding stuff, but they still did pretty well. And although they may have been a bit late telling the WHO, it wasn't that late. And the delays in the other countries were largely their own fault, really. They had several weeks' notice of things were going on in China, which the Chinese didn't have. So to blame it all on China, it seems to me just silly. And the Australian government making trouble was very silly indeed. And now, of course, our barley producers and our meat producers and so on are paying us the Chinese who've been in the tech well on not very good grounds, really. Oscar answered a question before I got a chance to ask it, and that was, what is it in Australia's interest for them to be so beholden to the United States? And he points out that the Australian elite has their own interests around and the US helps them. So it's not simply a matter, as he's saying, of being a puppet of Washington because I don't think one could see Australia's being in any grave danger of an external enemy that they need US protection. So, Tony, I wonder if you might respond to what Oscar said about that. One of the things that always distinguished us favorably from the United States, and I say this without disrespect from my many American friends, is that we always had a much better idea of a social consensus. It was a feeling of we are all Australians together. There is a genuine low key not beating them breast sort of sense of community here as Australians. And it means that I'm a little bit distant from Oscar because he's obviously very focused on the class struggle and I am too. But I'm also aware that there is a sense of communality in Australia that I'm very grateful for and very proud of. That's a long-winded introduction to saying that in recent years, at the elite level in this country, Australians have become more selfish. You're seeing behavior at the level of elites that would have been ruled completely out of order 20 or 30 years ago. And in my article, I used a metaphor of Rip Van Winkle coming back after 30 years and not recognizing what we've become. I think that there's a career interest, there's a professional interest, there's an industrial interest, there's an Australian War Party now. It doesn't know what it is. It doesn't really recognize itself. But my goodness, you only have to read through the financial review every day, and I'm doing it regularly now, to see the assumptions and the values that are getting free reign there. It's not a happy sight to me because I grew up thinking Australia was better than that. We have to recognize that the world is changing very fast indeed. Relative power relativities between China and America, and also not forgetting my old friend Russia, are changing. Europe is sniffing the wind. The onset of a genuine multipolarity is really happening in the world. And America can't see it. And America, when I say America, I mean their elite, can only see it in terms of the struggle for power between Washington and Beijing. There always has to be just really one enemy, and everything has to be focused on that enemy. There are no enemies. There's a multilateral balance of countries all trying to find ways of living with each other, as has been the case for centuries really. China is proving very nimble in this new world, very nimble indeed. And the Asian governments are proving pretty nimble too. They know how to take issue with China when they need to, but without being provocative, without sort of barking in China's face, we in Australia really have to learn those skills very rapidly, or else we're going to do not just our economy, but our society, the great disservice. I think there's still time for Australia. I'm optimistic, but my goodness, we do have to learn a lot of unfamiliar lessons very quickly. Well, Tony, there was an incident a couple of days ago of quite enormous interest, I think, where the Premier of Victoria stuck to his guns to continue in a relationship on the belt and road initiative with China. And Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, called the entire Australian-US relationship into question, only for the US ambassador the next day to say, well, he didn't really mean it. Can you tell us what all that was about? Well, first of all, Mike Pompeo habitually uses mafia tactics. He's a thug, and he learned his trade in the CIA, and it shows all the time. I think the ambassador, though, rather surprisingly, did try to clean up the mess after the parade had gone by, because he realised how badly what Pompeo had said was going down in Australia. We really do not like being bullied and intimidated even by our great and powerful friends. Look, I think it was a very interesting little episode. The Victorian Premier, Dan Andrew, stuck to his guns. He said, look, the Belt and Road Initiative offers great economic potential for Victoria as a manufacturing state. We need to be part of it, and I'm not apologising for anything and good for him. It brought home, perhaps, stiff only briefly to Australia's political and strategic elite. They've got to start thinking about economics a bit more creatively. They can't go on pretending that the economy will somehow look after itself. Nobody's mentioned Australian agriculture here, but we've allowed what happened to the Russian Central Asian republics with the desertification of the Russian Soviet Central Asian republics. We're allowing that to happen to our inland, and it's heartbreaking to see the way big agribusiness cotton farmers and so on have sucked the lifeblood out of our inland river system, so that as a form of agricultural mining, really, we've destroyed in the last 20 years so much of what had been painstakingly created in Australia over the previous 200, which was a viable agriculture-based economy producing food and fibre for the world. We've really blown that. For a moment, I want to go back to the story of the ambassador and Pompeo, American ambassadors around the world work for the Secretary of State. Did Pompeo just float that and then tell him to pull it back? Was this guy being insubordinate? He didn't seem to have lost his job. Do you have any insight into that? And also, Morris and I believe said this was a matter for the federal government. He was sort of taking the American side. Wasn't he if I'm not mistaken? The whole episode just showed the increasing incoherence of government policy where these issues of economics and politics intersect. I think Morris, who's the mediocre Prime Minister, I don't think he really understands after the time what he's doing. He has many different faces. You don't quite know which face he's going to present when he steps in front of a microphone on any particular day. He's a phony. I think he wanted to put down Premier Victoria for really selfish political reasons because the Premier of Victoria had really shown him up as a poor leader. It was Andrews who pushed social distancing. It was Andrews who pushed closing down schools. We have a lot to thank Premier Dan Andrews for, and I don't think Morris liked it. It's quite possible that he and Pompeo got together over the phone and said, well, let's take this guy down a little. Who knows? It could be that Andrews showed if you stand up for a bully, a bully will back down as well. Oscar, on this issue of American-Australian relations, in Tony's piece he mentions Gough Whitland, who we know through documents, and there are new documents that are going to be released now. I've been told that a court has said that all the communication between Sir John Kerr and the Queen at the time about the fate of Prime Minister Gough Whitland could be released. They're not the private property of Buckingham Palace that they belong to the Commonwealth. So we might be learning more about that. So this issue of US-Australian relations goes way back to the mid-70s in terms of America saying we're laying down the law. How bad has it gotten since then? Well, I think over the past several years there's been a whole campaign here by the official parties in the media alleging that there's pervasive Chinese interference in Australian politics. I mean, there's no evidence that's been provided of that. But what's very clear is that the US state, the CIA, interfere on a daily basis in Australian politics. I mean, they have their protected assets, not just in the Liberal National Party, but in the Labor Party. That's something that WikiLeaks revealed in the trade union officialdom. And certainly, they intervene to engineer policy outcomes favorable to Washington. One of the points we made about the removal of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in 2010 is that he'd proposed, he'd raised the need for Washington to make some sort of accommodation with China and the Asia Pacific to first all conflict. That was under conditions where Clinton and Obama were preparing this aggressive US pivot to Asia very shortly thereafter. Rudd was deposed in a party room coup which was orchestrated by individuals who were exposed by WikiLeaks as protected sources of the US embassy. So certainly, there's all sorts of machinations and whatnot. But I think, I mean, there's no anti-war faction of the Australian establishment. There's certainly layers who are concerned about the implications of this for trade, for the economy, but they don't have any alternative. I mean, even if you look at Rudd, he expressed concern, but he told Hillary Clinton in private meetings, if it comes to war, we're with you. And I'd also note, there are numbers of, or a layer of think tank analysts and whatnot who have called for Australia to adopt a more independent foreign policy. Hugh White is particularly prominent among them. Their position is that Australia needs to massively expand its military spending so it can go it alone under conditions where it can no longer rely on the United States. So I think, you know, the issue is there's immense opposition within the working class to militarism and war that needs to be mobilized and activated. I would agree with Oscar on that. I'd like to put in a word for my old profession, diplomacy. We actually have to rediscover the art of talking to all kinds of people in a civil way in a mutually productive and mutually respectful way. We can't afford to have pariahs in international relations. I mean, for a long time, Russia was the pariah the last four or five years. Now, China is becoming a pariah. I'm talking about here in Australia. And elites don't seem to realize how much they are shooting themselves in the foot. By denying Australia the opportunity to just get out there, talk to all the people in the world community, see what we have in common, see what problems we have to learn to get along in the traditional, classic way. We do have a military industrial complex in this country. You see it plastered all over the Canberra airports and all these corporations making massive shareholder profits out of building useless components in the American military machine. We should be spending that money on infrastructure on rebuilding Australia. And we should be working internationally to be a decent international citizen. And without starting with prejudice against any particular countries. I see Russia and China as two countries that are trying to make their way in the world in a decent way, in a respectful way of other countries. And I would like to see a reciprocal courtesy towards them that they endeavor to maintain towards others. Well, unlikely from the U.S. Butros Butros Gali, the former and late Secretary General, wrote in his memoir, though, when he was studying to become a diplomat, he learned that the Roman Empire didn't really need it. And he came to that conclusion, particularly after being Secretary General and mixing it up with Madeleine Albright, the then UN ambassador, that U.S. also had no need for diplomacy. They would just bully their way through the world. And that's what we see in Australia. It seems to be a receptive to that. And particularly this Prime Minister, or as you pointed out, Tony, in your piece was on a beach in Hawaii during the height of the fires. And that was a paid for by the U.S. that junk it to Hawaii. That's not very encouraging for the future of that relationship. Arthur, can you weigh in on U.S.-Australian relations? And it seems like U.S. can maybe learn something from Australia when it comes to this pandemic as well. Well, I think the U.S. can learn just about anybody in this pandemic. They're making a real mess of it. I don't think anyone disputes that really. I wouldn't claim to be an expert on Australian-U.S. relations. I mean, I'd be one of the people who advocate a more independent foreign policy. I mean, I think Australia's foreign policy in terms of, say, being the only people who vote for outrageous Israeli activities in the West Bank or taking a very poor attitude on climate change along with American models and having their bases here for no good reason really. I don't think we need U.S. troops on Australian soil. And I think that is very provocative to the Chinese and very needlessly so. If there's a serious war, the Americans will act in their own interests. And that may or may not involve Australia. It will depend what other priorities have to be defended. And I think that will happen whether we have been their lapdog the last few years or not. So, being totally pragmatic about it, the U.S. global battle with China will go on whatever we do. And being a lapdog won't guarantee that if the Americans are pressed for resources that they'll come here rather than fight for Europe or whatever else they might want to do at the time. I mean, if this thing gets to real shooting, then we're all in big trouble, I think. And really, it's much better to take an independent negotiated view and try and be a middle partner because China is far more important to us economically than the U.S. is actually. And this idea that China is going to come and invade Australia, I mean, what invasion they're doing is going to be with soft power and economics and not traditional military power, where they probably couldn't be stopped if they were coming anyway. So, we really have to be far more intelligent in our approach. And this idea we're all going to get invaded from the North and we need the Americans to come and fight like they did in 1945 is a very old-fashioned and silly view, I think. And I'm right with Tony on that. Oscar mentioned WikiLeaks a moment ago, and it seems like it would be negligent to discuss Australia and COVID-19 without at least mentioning the fate of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange, who obviously is Australian. So, I wanted to just open the floor to you all for any comment you might have on the danger that Assange could contract COVID while imprisoned in Belmarsh, which is known as the UK's Guantanamo. And I also wanted to ask you if there's any political traction that you sense right now in Australia regarding pressuring the UK to free Assange, at least to house arrest, to avoid him potentially dying with his pre-existing conditions that weakened his lung specifically? Well, I'd certainly talk about that. I've been with the Julian's campaign. As an inmate of a prison, he's almost at the mercy of the prison itself as to how much he's exposed to. I do think he's had some health problems. I'm not sure of them, but he's had some lung problems. And this is generally assumed to make him more vulnerable to COVID-19. So, I mean, I think he's vulnerable medically and he's vulnerable socially. I think it would suit the American authorities just fine if he died of COVID. The whole thing would be diffused. He'd be gone and he would have been in jail because of his political actions. And that's as good a deterrent as you need, isn't it? The Australian government, I think, has been very lapped on with the Americans. We don't want to upset the Americans who are trying with every abuse of the legal system, really. I mean, he was, the Swedes have dropped his alleged sexual assault charge, which he... It was an allegation that there wasn't even ever a charge. Never charged. It was never even charged. It was a skipping bail. The idea that you get years and years in a embassy and then years and years in jail for skipping bail, which normally makes a minor fine for a charge that never progressed, it's an abuse of the legal process that he's still there. And Australia's lack of respect for the rule of law is a disgrace. And the lapdog behaviour of the British legal system is a disgrace as well. Now, there are people in the Australian political system trying to change that. And the number of reasons that they're highly placed ones as well. And there are petitions going, which we all sign, of course. But the strength of the lapdog position, if you want to call it that, within the Australian Conservative establishment is very strong. And they are, of course, the Australians have been extremely gutless as a nation in supporting a Sanders' rights. Unfortunately, we... It took an American to get David Hicks out of Guantanamo Bay. The Australian government never did anything to get David Hicks home. It was an American, Michael Lowery, his American lawyer who got him out. I totally associate myself with what Arthur just said. I feel very, very sad about the tragedy of Julian's house. I wish I could do more. We just keep saying it's unjust and whether we'll achieve anything remains to be seen. Yeah, just briefly, I agree that the refusal to release him on bail demonstrates what the purpose of this whole operation against the Sange is. It's not a legal process so much as a show trial aimed at his physical destruction and an end to the WikiLeaks project. I think that's very clear from the fact that he is being exposed to the danger of coronavirus, despite being on remand. I mean, he's not being convicted of any crime, but he's being held in a maximum security prison. In terms of the Australian situation, I mean, it's the government, the Labor Party, also the trade unions. I mean, they're all completely silent on his plight. The Greens have said virtually nothing. I think what's very clear is that the fight for his freedom is bound up with the mobilisation of ordinary people against war, against the negligent official response to the pandemic, the same governments which are seeking to essentially murder a Sange have instituted policies of herd immunity, and the like, jeopardising the lives of millions of ordinary people. So I think, you know, as defenders of democratic rights, we need to turn out and explain to the working class that the fight for its social and democratic rights is inseparable from the defence of class war prisoners such as the Sange and others. Had a Sange been returned to his country, he may benefit from the low number of infections. Excuse me, in Australia, but that did not happen. There is a parliamentary group that I presume is still working. They haven't made a lot of headway. And as Oscar said, there seems to be an across-the-board ignorance of this issue or negligence, I should say, about the Sange's condition. I'd like to close the program and give everyone a final word if they would about how Australia has done so well here and what they could do better, particularly in their foreign relations. Let's begin with across the board, Tony. I would like to say that, in a couple of weeks' time, 2000 American soldiers will be descending on Darwin in Northern Australia for maneuvers. Darwin has been, Northern Territory has been relatively mercifully free of COVID-19. It hasn't got into our Indigenous population up there. This is like a ruby princess arriving, unfortunately. This is 2000 mostly men. They won't have been properly quarantined before they get here. They'll be getting out there into the Darwin pubs and bars and restaurants, having fun, doing what soldiers do. I think there's going to be a massive and completely unnecessary spike in infections in the Northern Territory. And if Australian national government were responsible, which they're not, they would be saying to the Americans, call off these maneuvers. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Wait till next year. But it won't happen. Well, Tony, I hope that's a prediction that doesn't come true. Oscar, your final thoughts, please. I think it's a huge global crisis from which no country is exempt. I think what we anticipate is that the class struggle will intensify here and internationally over the coming weeks and months. I'd encourage everyone to read a statement posted on the World Socialist Website by our party in the U.S., the Socialist Equality Party, just pointing to the significance of these mass demonstrations that have been erupting in response to the killing of George Floyd and outlining a socialist perspective and program to take those forward. Arthur, your final thoughts on the pandemic in Australia? Well, I think if we're going to try and take the lockdown down, we really have to make face compulsory. I think Tony's exactly right. It's totally irresponsible to bring 2000 U.S. troops into the Northern Territory, which is a territory that's completely COVID free. And I think one of the things is if you have populations that are particularly disadvantaged people and they get infected, you will never get that infection out. If it gets in the indigenous population who, of course, travel around a lot in their family relationships and so on, that will have immense damage to that community. And they will be a reservoir for infecting society for many years to come. So it's totally irresponsible. And I think it should be stopped. But at a broader level, we have to let the breakout happen slowly. And I think we have to be vigilant that the rebuild is a real view of our society and not just back to a neoliberal, give it to the big companies and let them trickle it down to the people, because that's not going to solve our problems, particularly as Tony was saying with the demand problem. Thank you, Arthur. And I thank Tony Kevin in Canberra, the Australian capital, Oscar Grenfell in Sydney. My cohost, Elizabeth Voss, Australian born, but now living in Arkansas. And Arthur Chesterfield Evans also in Sydney for joining us for this very interesting discussion about Australia, the pandemic and relations with the US and China. We've had an update. I checked the relevant public documents. And there are three of these. Firstly, there's the ABC news release of 30th of March 2020, announcing US Marines deployment to Darwin postponed due to coronavirus pandemic. And that 30th of March news release made clear that because of COVID-19, the federal government on advice of the health department had decided to postpone the exercises. It appeared to be until next year, until 2021. And the news release says that Northern Territories Minister Michael Gunner spoke to the Defence Minister about the matter over the weekend. This is the right decision, he said. When we're on the other side of this crisis, I know Territorians will welcome back Marines with open arms. Miss Reynolds said that she would continue her discussions with the Chief Minister. She said, I remain fully engaged with the Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner on this matter. So that was on 30th of March. The second press release I want to report to you came out on the 6th of May, some five weeks later. It was headed, Alliance Cooperation continues amid pandemic and Marine rotation to proceed. Once again, it's the release by Minister Linda Reynolds. This morning I spoke with my colleague and friend, US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper, and there continues to be a bit of blah, blah, blah about the Alliance. And when we get to the important language, I was pleased when formed Secretary Esper, that after careful consideration, the government has decided that a modified 2020 Marine Rotational Force can proceed later this year, according to strict measures in place to protect against COVID-19. The decision was based on Australia's record to date in managing the impacts from COVID-19, as well as strict adherence by deployed US Marines to the mandatory 14 day quarantine and other requirements. Secretary Esper and I confirmed our respective commitment to ensuring the health and safety of Australians with special provision for local indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. So that was the media release on the 6th of May. The third release, which came out on the 21st of May, headed Defence Prepares for Arrival of US Marines, once again by Minister Linda Reynolds, said, arrangements in the Northern Territory are in place to ensure the safe and effective conduct of the Marine Rotational Force Darwin this year. I'm pleased that the modified deployment, reduced deployment of 1,200 Marines, not 2,000, will proceed this year following careful planning and preparations undertaken by both Australia and the United States to minimize COVID-19 risk for the Northern Territory. Each Marine will be screened four days prior to departure. They will then be screened and tested for COVID-19 upon arrival in Australia before being quarantined for 14 days at specially prepared Defence facilities in the Darwin area. Each Marine will be retested at the conclusion of the quarantine period. This rotation has been able to proceed with all the necessary protection related to COVID-19 because of the excellent cooperation between the US Marine Corps, the Australian Government and the Northern Territory Government. Now, let me give a bit of analysis of these three press releases. The first one, the one in March, 30th of March, cancelling the deployment, said quite clearly the decision was taken in cooperation with the Northern Territory Government and on advice from the Department of Health. And Mr. Gunner, the Chief Minister, said clearly that he looked forward to proceeding with these regular annual exercises when we're on the other side of this, when we're on the other side of this. The second press release, the release of the 6th of May with Mark Esper makes no mention of any consultation with the Northern Territory Government, no mention at all. And it also speaks of proceeding later this year, that was the 6th of May later this year. Now, the third release came just 15 days later, later this year my hat, two weeks later. And suddenly it's on for young and old. We've got 1200 Marines coming, starting at the beginning of June, instead of arriving in April as originally planned, arriving two months later in June. Hello, is the pandemic over? Did something happen between April and June that I'm not aware of? Has Australia suddenly become a safe place? Do we suddenly not have to worry about social distancing or worrying how we behave ourselves? I mean, if we can bring 1200 red-blooded US Marines into Darwin for three months of maneuvers and thinking that we're safe, hello, well, I mean, what else is important about protecting ourselves from COVID-19? I'm serious. There's been a massive breakdown in responsible decision making. In this third press release, there's no mention of consultation with the Northern Territory Government. There's no mention of advice from the Department of Health. There's no mention of this major decision having gone through the national augmented COVID Cabinet. There's no mention of any advice from the Chief Medical Officer or Commonwealth Friend and Murphy. And that's not the only thing that worries me about all this. I mean, just reading the three press releases worries me in itself, looking at this history of how things have happened over the space of a few weeks from 30th of March, 6th of May, 21 May. What worries me finally is the massive news blackout on all this. I checked carefully on Google search. There is no coverage by the Australian mainstream media or the ABC of the two releases by Minister Reynolds on the 6th and the 21st of May. Absolute blackout. Now, how is this possible? The Minister of Defense puts out a press release on a deployment of 1200 Marines going to Darwin when the Australian pandemic is still not over and it doesn't get reported in the Australian media. What's going on here? Has there been some sort of informal advice to the media? Oh, look, we're putting out a press release, but we'd rather you're not report it. I mean, what is going on? The Marines could be getting off the planes as I speak. And when I turn up Google and look up what the mainstream media is saying, there is still absolutely nothing on these major decisions taken during May. May. It's also significant that the American military itself has been a particular hotspot for COVID-19. We all familiar with the story of the aircraft carrier Franklin Roosevelt, which was rife with COVID-19 and had to be evacuated. When you get a lot of single men or men on their own going on maneuvers in a foreign country, you would want to have the most stringent quarantines on them. And a four day check beforehand and 14 days in the territory is to me quite irresponsibly inadequate. There may be inadvertent carriers. There may be men carrying COVID-19 who don't know they've got it. We don't know enough yet about the period in which a person can have COVID-19 without it becoming very evident. And given the scale of risk involved, the risk of the indigenous people of the Northern Territory who are enormously vulnerable, once the disease gets out to them, there'll be no stopping it. Given the difficult conditions of sanitation and so forth in indigenous settlements, it'll become endemic. So given the scale of the risk, why on earth did Linda Reynolds think it was safe to go ahead in confrontation with her American counterpart, Mark Espar, with accelerating this decision, when it seemed very clear from the March 30th press release that Northern Territory Government was very happy for the ex-advisors to simply not take place this year. That seemed to be the agreement. So there's been something very odd happening over the last few weeks. And I would really hope that we can find out more. What pressures did Australian government come under from the Americans between 30th of March and 6th of May to make Linda Reynolds turn turtle flip-flop? How did she shut up the Northern Territory Government after they made very clear that they wanted nothing to happen until 2021? What sort of pressures would she put under by Mark Espar, the American Secretary of Defense? And how did she communicate those pressures to other people around the Australian system? There are so many questions here. So many. I think the first person to talk to would be Brendan Murphy, to ask him whether he had been involved in the original decision to recommend that they be postponed until 2021. That was his advice as Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer to the national augmented cabinet. He probably couldn't answer whether it came up for discussion in the augmented cabinet because their discussion is confidential. But he could be asked, did he know about the decision in the 30th of March and had he contributed to it? And what does he think about the subsequent decision to allow 1,200 people to come with four days pre-arrival screening and 14 days quarantining? Does he think that is adequate for 1,200 Marines arriving in a small town of Darwin? So I think Brendan Murphy might be the first point of contact. Clearly anybody in the Department of Defense would tell you nothing. And the second point of contact might be the Northern Territory Chief Minister's Office. I think you could say, well, how was Mr. Gunner involved in this very major revision of his original advice on the 30th of March when he professed himself to be very relieved that nobody was coming here until 2021? I'm really concerned about the politics of this because Ruby Princess, I read somewhere that we've had 102 deaths in Australia and something like 30 or 40 percent of those deaths, that 30 or 40 people can be directly attributed to Ruby Princess. Now, 1,200 Marines descending on Darwin, inadequate screening, inadequate quarantining. We're not looking at a good situation, I don't think. If that's what they're going to do, then we have to warn the people of Darwin, the people wait for them. It sounds to me that they're being railroaded. It sounds to me that they are too. But unfortunately, they're rolling over and letting it happen. It sort of confirms to my mind that outside a couple of brave state premiers, particularly Daniel Andrews, but also the guy in WA and also Queensland and New South Wales to some extent, the federal cabinet just wants to roll over to the Americans. Well, that's right. I think that it's all about displaying strength to China. All of that being loyal allies. Absolutely. A show of force. That's much more important at the moment and it's all theater because are we really going to go into war with China? But it's about the importance of displaying solidarity, America at the moment, have their exercises, a bit of a slave strength, and that that sort of theater is superseding the need to protect the people of the Northern Territory. Well, I think you're right. When you say it's theater, I think probably people within the Australian system were basically second guessing what they feared might be an American adverse response and thinking to themselves, is Trump going to think of this or is Pompeo going to think of this as Australian disloyalty or weakness? We'd better just tough this one out and change our decision. In other words, I think people may have anticipated American displeasure without the American displeasure even being expressed. They may have just anticipated second guessing. Yeah, we don't want to disappoint the Americans. And why did they drop 800 people? I mean, what criteria did they use to whittle that down from 2000 to 1200? Good question. Maybe we're only going to get half a dose of COVID-19. I'm Joe Laurier. You've watched CN Live. Thank you all very much.