Bullies, never able to hit upwards, always kick down.  The United States beats their vassals in the Indo-Pacific and Europe with vulgar presumption.  Their vassals kick down to their own appointees, expecting compliance and respect to various degrees.  Australia, long known as Washington’s regional deputy sheriff, looks down on its Pacific Island neighbours as basket cases for charity, potential enclaves for terrorism, and vulnerable to the temptation of rival powers.  The language of a relationship falsely described as friendship is better seen as one of financial asymmetry, strategic use and a mockery trapped in the formaldehyde of colonialism.  Australians are both confused tourists and mercenaries in the region – and it shows.

On the sidelines of the 54th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Honiara in the Solomon Islands, Australian officials had made it clear that all Pacific Island media would have no role in covering the September 10 press conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, held, with boisterous irony, at a sports facility funded by the People’s Republic of China.  Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) was told that “the presser was only for Australian journalists.”

When he was asked by an Australian journalist, Stefan Armbruster, about the bar on Pacific journalists attending the press gathering, the words, delivered with snotty indifference were: “I don’t know what you are talking about mate.”  Armbruster expressed his........

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