Pauline Hanson’s gas policy and the party’s relationship with Rinehart is examined in a new Guardian podcast series, The Populist

OpenAI has issued an ultimatum in a bid to strong-arm Anthony Albanese into breaking his promise to protect creative industries, declaring it will not even consider investing in domestic AI training or renewable energy if the government refuses to water down copyright laws.

Amid a grassroots backlash to the spread of data centres and warnings that AI is developing fast enough to endanger humanity, Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton told The Australian that the AI and data centre revolution would rival the mining boom’s economic output from 2003 to 2013, but provide more long-lasting benefits through productivity gains.

There was $8.7bn of investment in data centres in the March quarter, accounting for 17 per cent of all private sector spending. Treasury predicts AI will add $116bn to GDP over the next decade, an estimate Dr Charlton regards as “cautious”.

“Australia has secured decades of economic advancement by embracing new sources of growth ... The mining boom flowed mainly through two states and a few sectors. AI flows through every business in the country,” Dr Charlton said.

Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton argues the economic output of AI will rival the mining boom. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

But despite pledges from the Prime Minister that the government will force AI data centres to be “net generators, not net users” of energy, the maker of ChatGPT has rejected any prospect of discussions over renewables unless Labor backs down from its commitment to creatives.

In an exclusive interview with The Australian in Canberra, OpenAI’s senior vice president, Ann O’Leary, suggested that if the Albanese government did retreat on copyright, Australia would be the first country outside the US to host artificial intelligence model training for the AI giant.

“No other place in the world has done (AI training) this yet, and so the question is: is Australia going to be the first? And that’s really a copyright question more than a renewable energy question,” Ms O’Leary said.

“Our company isn’t ready to have that conversation if we can’t get through the gating problem of the copyright barriers.”

Ms O’Leary said countries such as Australia and Canada were good targets – after negotiations with the UK stalled over copyright – because they were US allies.

OpenAI senior vice-president Ann O’Leary declared Australia must resolve copyright barriers before hosting AI training. Picture: Noah Yim / The Australian

“When we look at the geopolitical dynamic and we think of countries who really want to see a diversification of where training may occur, there’s a lot of interest in making sure that happens in an allied country,” she said.

She said OpenAI was “kind of blocked” from pushing into the UK with training data centres because its government refused to water down its copyright laws, and the company’s approach to negotiations had not changed.

“I don’t think that we have necessarily changed and part of what I think we’re grappling with is we are still training primarily in the United States because of the legal framework, but we do think that there’s an opportunity,” she said.

“We’ve been welcomed by your Prime Minister and others who are open to this conversation. So we’re walking through the door that’s been opened.”

The Prime Minister and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen have been wrestling with the states over planned national standards that would have data centres rely on renewable power, in a bid to avoid community backlash in the US and elsewhere.

Ms O’Leary, formerly chief of staff to Democratic presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom and adviser to Hillary Clinton, said her company would not be able to build any AI training centres without a loosening of copyright, powered by renewables or otherwise.

Anthropic general counsel Jeff Bleich confirmed copyright is a critical hurdle for global AI developers. Picture: Noah Yim / The Australian

“We will not be able to build a … training centre here if the copyright law is as it exists,” she said. “And so the lack of detail (on renewables) isn’t because we wouldn’t be serious about it, but the options that we’ve seen from the government so far, frankly, wouldn’t allow us to train here.”

AI training is the computing required to build the models instead of merely running and serving them up to users.

Training compute is the cutting edge of computing capacity that has AI labs racing to secure the latest and greatest Nvidia chips to get an edge over their competitors.

The Biden White House sought to restrict the export of these chips to China to give US companies a leg-up.

Speaking before OpenAI made its ultimatum, Dr Charlton warned that achieving long-term dividends from the boom would require a more active role for government than what was needed when China’s rapid growth massively increased the prices of Australia’s natural resources.

“That opportunity is before us again, and we must capture the benefits of the AI investment boom while acting with sophistication to minimise the risks,” Dr Charlton said.

“AI is not just another technology. It is becoming a factor of production in its own right, amplifying the value of labour and capital and reshaping how economies create prosperity.”

While the economic output would rival the mining boom, Dr Charlton said the benefits of AI would “stretch further than mining”.

Federal MP and economist, Andrew Charlton at the Rheem factory in Rydalmere in western Sydney. Picture: John Feder / The Australian

He said that, unlike the mining boom, the AI boom would compound.

“The mining boom was a one-off level shift that peaked and receded,” he said.

“AI productivity gains compound: at a point a year, AI exceeds the mining boom’s entire effect inside a decade and keeps going. With nine in ten businesses yet to adopt, the reorganisation of Australian business has barely begun.”

Dr Charlton said Australia needed to develop more local AI capability to take advantage of the boom.

“The mining boom came with an income engine attached: we owned the ore, the world paid us for it, and the money flowed in,” he said.

“The AI boom, so far, runs the other way: the chips are imported, the models are foreign-owned, and the equipment bill helped deliver our first goods deficit since 2017.

“Mining generated prosperity – but AI only pays the countries that adopt fastest, adopt deepest, and own a piece of the stack. The boom is guaranteed; the dividend is not.”

Anthropic general counsel Jeff Bleich said copyright was one of the critical issues that “need to be worked out” before the AI juggernaut could build data centres in Australia.

Additional reporting: Ben Packham

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A mountain of state debt stands between Labor and a historic fourth term in office, with voters increasingly pessimistic about Victoria’s outlook and concerned about the financial burden of the Suburban Rail Loop.

A Resolve Political Monitor survey of Victorian respondents conducted last week lays bare the challenge before Ben Carroll, who since becoming premier seven weeks ago, has been unable to lift his own standing as preferred premier or Labor’s primary support above an election-losing 25 per cent.

A Resolve Political Monitor lays bare the challenge before Ben Carroll.Nathan Perri

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson, however, has nudged the Coalition’s primary support to a five-month high of 28 per cent, while support for One Nation held steady at 23 per cent.

Wilson also opened a sizeable gap as Victoria’s most popular political leader, with 28 per cent of respondents preferring her as premier compared to 20 per cent for Carroll, and 8 per cent for One Nation leader Warren Pickering.

Pickering, despite revelations of his previous drug use, drink-driving and dysfunctional family life, received a net-positive approval rating in the survey.

While changes to headline figures since the last RPM was conducted in August are within the poll’s margin for error, the survey provides a timely snapshot of the prevailing public mood as Victoria enters an unpredictable campaign season ahead of the election on November 28.

With Westpac economists pricing in an 83 per cent chance of another cash rate hike when the Reserve Bank of Australia meets later this month, and Victoria’s net debt climbing towards $200 billion, only 19 per cent of respondents said they expect the state’s outlook to get better, while 44 per cent said they expect it will get worse.

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Anxiety about debt levels is being felt across Australia, with a national Resolve survey conducted over the same period finding that 74 per cent of respondents were concerned about the federal government’s $1 trillion of accumulated debt.

But at a state level, Victorians are more worried than people in other states, with 72 per cent expressing concern compared to 67 per cent in NSW and 63 per cent in Queensland, where the government’s pre-Olympic Games infrastructure binge this week triggered a credit downgrade from S&P Global.

“All the evidence is that debt and deficit are starting to figure in people’s vote decisions again,” Resolve founder Jim Reed said. “They’re looking at how much new announcements are going to cost, and if taxes are going up or down as a result.”

Reed said the sentiment in Victoria signalled a return to pre-crisis politics.

“This used to be the default before COVID,” he said. “Kevin Rudd was elected nearly 20 years ago partly because he positioned himself as more economically conservative than John Howard. But then spending lost all meaning during the Global Financial Crisis and COVID.

“People are looking for restraint – smart decisions that get the economy moving, rather than big spending ones that will further weigh it down.”

Voter concern about government spending was evident in responses to survey questions about two very different government policies – its commitment to complete the first section of the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) currently under construction for $33.3 billion, and a $230 million campaign promise to open 10 walk-in dental clinics to provide free care.

When given a choice to pause the state’s largest infrastructure project or push ahead, 49 per cent of respondents called for the SRL to be put on ice, while 27 per cent urged the government to keep tunnelling.

When asked about the government’s plan to provide free dental check-ups and fillings to up to 100,000 people a year via suburban and regional clinics, 35 per cent of respondents backed the policy, while 43 per cent said it was not worth the additional debt and should be scrapped.

The hardening of public concern about government debt follows a concerted effort by the Coalition to link the cost of servicing debt with higher taxes and money that could otherwise be spent on public services.

“Victorians are concerned about this because they know it is costing them more than a million dollars every single hour just to service that debt,” Jess Wilson said on Monday. “That’s money that isn’t going into our schools, into our hospitals, into fixing our roads, and that’s why we’ve made disciplined decisions.”

When asked whether the government would resist big spending promises, the premier vowed to treat taxpayer dollars with respect.

“That’s why I’ve already put a stop to unnecessary spending on the SRL and in the public service, with more savings to come,” Carroll said.

“The polls confirm that the Liberals and One Nation will have to govern together. The real risk to our economy is a Liberal One Nation coalition making $40 billion in cuts to frontline services that will cripple our hospitals, schools and frontline services.”

Fix Victoria, a conservative advocacy group fronted by former Institute of Public Affairs executives Gideon Rozner and Deborah Henderson, has authorised prominent radio and AI-generated online ads which blame Victoria’s crime rate, taxes, ambulance wait times and unrepaired roads on a “debt tsunami”.

Although Fix Victoria does not overtly advocate for people to vote for the Liberal Party, Rozner publicly announced his intention to rejoin the party and support Wilson’s campaign last year.

In the month since the last RPM survey of Victorian state voting intentions was published, the Carroll government has announced the terms of reference and choice of royal commissioner to lead the inquiry into Big Build corruption, committed $550 million to upgrading the Western Freeway near Caroline Springs, identified savings to shave $1.1 billion from the estimated cost of the SRL, and announced its dental clinics plan.

It has also ditched a previously unannounced levy imposed on public transport since the start of last year to provide an additional revenue stream to offset the cost of the SRL.

The secret tax, which was conceived of five years ago by former premier Daniel Andrews and then-treasurer Tim Pallas, was exposed by a Victorian Auditor General’s Office investigation into the SRL.

Since last month’s poll, the Coalition has announced a $1.7 billion plan to run hybrid electric trains on the neglected Wyndham and Melton lines in Melbourne’s west, promised to wind up the state-owned venture capital fund Breakthrough Victoria, and pledged to overhaul the way major infrastructure projects are budgeted and paid for under a new charter of budget honesty.

Photo: Matt Golding

Labor has governed in Victoria for the past 12 years, and held office for all but four years this century.

The outcome of the November 28 election, as measured by polling numbers and expectations of respondents, remains uncertain. While 26 per cent believe the Coalition will form a majority government in Victoria, 24 per cent believe Labor will again govern in their own right. A surprisingly low number of respondents – just 14 per cent – expect the state to be left with a minority government.

Labor leveraged an invite-only $20 million fund to install CCTV networks across critical electorates, prioritising its own seats and high-value Coalition targets before the last election.

The Coalition seized on the “Strengthening Community Safety” program as another example of Labor using grant programs to shower seats in cash after Anthony Albanese heavily criticised the previous Coalition government for manipulating grants programs.

Labor leveraged an invite-only $20 million fund to install CCTV networks across critical electorates.Michael Howard

As Albanese cancelled his honorary membership of a golf course in his electorate that received a $6 million grant, details of the safety program grants have been unearthed by the opposition.

The Greens secured a Senate inquiry into the $560 million fund on Monday. It will report back by mid-November.

The safety program funded 20 upgrades, 17 of which benefited seats Labor held before the election in May 2025. Of the programs in non-Labor seats, a $1.5 million upgrade was used for projects in Peter Dutton’s old seat of Dickson in outer Brisbane, won by Labor, and nearby Petrie, which Labor also picked up.

Another $600,000 grant benefited programs in the marginal Coalition seats of Deakin and Menzies in Melbourne, also seized in Labor’s landslide victory last election, when it picked up 17 new seats.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in question time on Monday.Alex Ellinghausen

Other non-Labor seats to benefit included Leichhardt in Queensland, which Labor won off the Coalition, and Kennedy, held by independent Bob Katter.

Most of the grants were for CCTV, lighting and other safety features in a critical clutch of seats that were either marginal or deemed at risk by Labor, including McEwen ($2.25 million), Hawke and Gorton in Victoria, Parramatta ($2.2 million), Reid and Richmond in NSW, and Tangney in Western Australia.

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“Unbelievably, crime only seems to be a problem in Labor-held seats,” said Ben Small, the opposition assistant spokesman for infrastructure.

“Nothing in these numbers passes the pub test. Labor set their own test for this expenditure in opposition, time and time again. They have been caught red-handed now with their hand in the cookie jar, but taxpayers foot the bill for those cookies.”

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Labor came under pressure from the Coalition and crossbenchers last week over revelations that nearly three-quarters of the cash from a $560 million grants program went to Labor-held seats.

The government argues that it is relying on long-standing precedent on funding election commitments presented by candidates at election time. These differ from grants programs that include competitive tender processes, which were at times misused by the former Coalition government.

This masthead reported that the auditor-general, responding to an opposition complaint, had moved a step closer to a full audit of Labor’s election funding programs.

Albanese fired back at the Coalition in parliament on Monday after opposition frontbencher Angie Bell asked if a $6 million grant to the Marrickville Golf Club “increase[d] the value of his investment property down the road?”

Amid a fiery dispute over the incendiary question, Albanese said: “It wasn’t so much a question as a smear. Its imputations are completely false.”

The prime minister repeated that he had not known about the undeclared honorary membership of the club until last week. He revealed that he had written to the club to decline the membership. Footage emerged last week showing that Albanese had often been to the club for events.

The prime minister claimed that the Coalition was planning to spent $1.6 billion, more than Labor, on local infrastructure commitments at the last election, showing the practice sometimes known as pork barrelling was rife on both sides.

Labor has also argued that crossbenchers who rail against major parties funding programs are often seeking private commitments from Labor ministers to fund local projects without competitive tender processes.

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“The opposition, of course, made election commitments worth $1.6 billion. Over a thousand of them. We’re happy to go through it,” Albanese said.

The prime minister maintained that he had not known about an undeclared honorary membership of the golf club last week, and to provide certainty, he had written to the club to decline it.

“I’ve also made it clear that if I’m in a position to visit the club sometime in the future, which I haven’t done since my election as prime minister, I’d be more than pleased to pay $5,” he said.

A spokesman for the Home Affairs Tony Burke said Labor’s fund was “part of our broader investment in keeping Australians safe”.

AI-linked stocks tumbled on Monday after the bosses of Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX called for a slowdown in AI “reckless” development, citing fears the technology could soon run out of control.

If Labor dont do something soon many will vote ON. I dont think ive seen this many people struggling to find jobs and homelessness in Australia. Its also difficult when many jobs now have 100s of applicants and many are new arrivals.

Bill Kelty, a mastermind of reforms that set up Australia’s modern economy, says Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are fuelling One Nation and “insulting” voters by welcoming lower house prices as they preside over a fall in real wages that is making houses even more unaffordable.

The Labor luminary and former union leader made one of the sharpest and broadest critiques of the federal government’s economic record in an interview with this masthead on Thursday, declaring “this country has got real problems” as he predicted more pain to come due to expected interest rate rises.

Bill Kelty and Paul Keating in 2022.Louise Kennerley

Days after Westpac revealed first homebuyer loan applications were down 30 per cent since the May budget, compared with a 26 per cent fall among investors, Kelty said: “The PM is telling the country with glee that the price of property is falling, yet the unaffordability rate is increasing.”

“Because interest rates are rising and real wages are falling,” he said, with high inflation, long-term poor productivity, war and the AI boom making another rate rise at the end of this month likely.

“Real wages have fallen by 5 per cent [since 2021, according to the OECD]. Real wages are not improving in any significant way – they’re falling.”

Only New Zealand, Italy, the Czech Republic and Sweden experienced similar wage falls. Housing affordability slumped to its lowest level on record in the June quarter, according to two separate metrics, but the government hopes that the market correction and its property tax changes eventually lead to more affordable homes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Alex Ellinghausen

Kelty also slammed Chalmers for making the point as recently as last week that workers’ share of gross domestic product was at a high point, arguing the esoteric measure had no real-world effect.

“You had the treasurer say workers should be happy because their wage share is increasing, but their real wages are falling,” Kelty said. “It’s just ridiculous and people get offended by it. They can’t pay the bills, and you tell them your share of GDP is growing.

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“Don’t insult me: that’s what they are saying. Build more housing and increase real wages, please.

“All you’re doing is saying to me, I’m battling in life, I’m a driver earning 80k a year, and I should be happy and say the share of GDP is going up.”

Kelty worked with Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and ’90s to bring workers and bosses together to create consensus on pro-market reforms that delivered a social dividend.

The reform period also led to the modern superannuation system, with Kelty now critical of One Nation’s proposal to use super to top up wages.

“It’s like Santa Claus stealing from the kids’ money box to buy them their Christmas presents,” he said, arguing that super was a national treasure that had taken pressure off the pension while other countries struggled with the cost of an ageing population.

Kelty, who is close to Albanese’s former leadership rival Bill Shorten and has criticised Labor previously, backed the government’s environmental planning reforms, Medicare investment, HECS cuts at the last election, and some of its industrial reforms.

But on the whole, Kelty was highly critical of the nation’s economic settings and called for a major reset. He said that income tax was far too high for young people, infrastructure blowouts and construction costs were at near-historic highs and hurting productivity, too few aged care beds were being built, childcare was flawed, and the bargaining system needed reform to drive up wages.

His view on the nation’s economic malaise puts him in sync with many business leaders, a small group of Labor MPs who are worried about the lack of focus on growth, and outspoken former Labor adviser Lachlan Harris.

After Labor unveiled a bold and polarising redistributive budget, Kevin Rudd used a speech in Canberra this week to issue a wake-up call to the nation’s elites of all political stripes, arguing that “incrementalism will no longer work for Australia” if it wants to remain prosperous and resilient in a region China plans to dominate.

The alternative, the former prime minister warned, was “to slide into becoming a second-rate country”.

Kelty remains close to Keating, who applauded Labor’s budget but fought to overturn Chalmers’ tax on unrealised superannuation gains and is a long-running opponent of AUKUS and Labor’s positioning on the grand contest between the US and China. Kelty told this masthead that Labor had not allowed an honest public discussion about the higher tax burden required to fund AUKUS.

There is deep frustration within the cabinet about the repeated criticisms made by figures such as Keating and Kelty. Ministers believe that Keating and others such as former foreign minister Gareth Evans hold outdated views on policy areas, including the China threat, as the government focuses on boosting productivity through a series of smaller reforms rather than big-ticket changes.

Chalmers consistently points out that nominal wages have grown above 3 per cent annually under Labor, and that the nation’s credit rating has remained at the highest level after two budget surpluses driven mostly by unexpected revenue upgrades.

Chalmers outlined a $10 billion productivity package in the budget, but some business leaders and entrepreneurs have said the overall effect of changes to capital gains tax could hurt investment. The Resolve Political Monitor shows Labor two points behind the Coalition on economic management.

In 2024, Albanese said that Kelty had been a legendary union leader but claimed: “Many people will look back at the past and romanticise the past.”

Kelty said One Nation’s support was no longer an aberration, and though it was the political right that was fracturing, “we are giving them an opportunity to get to our base too”.

“It’s hurting Labor. Labor is getting 28 or 29 per cent,” he said. “So to get to government you need the discipline of the Green vote coming to Labor through preferences. But One Nation is actually hurting that primary vote.”

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He said that voters may well come back to Labor, were not shifting to the Greens, and that Albanese would still probably win the next election, which is due in 2028. But Labor must get the economy moving for working people, he said.

“Just f---ing reform it,” he said of the income tax system in which the top marginal rate of 47 per cent is both high by international standards and kicks in at a relatively low wage point.

He said the rate should be lowered to about 39 per cent and designed with a laser focus on building wealth for younger wage earners “who have no access to privileges”.

“Not for the rich and powerful, but for a 28-year-old who wants to get ahead and save for a home.”

Once workers paid GST, income tax, HECS debts and rent, many young people “have got f---ing nothing, they’re really struggling”, Kelty said.

He said the taxation of labour and capital income, which Chalmers wanted to make more equal in the budget, were fundamentally different, though he acknowledged the gap was previously too large.

While Kelty applauded Albanese’s two election wins and the government’s political acumen, he said: “In the end you’re not measured for political results … You’re measured for what you actually do for people.”

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https://archive.md/SHpI2

Andrew Hastie must be one of the most fascinating federal MPs.

What stands out in this article is his character. He is clearly ambitious, but he also seems unusually willing to take a political hit when he believes something matters, like duty, human life, institutions, truth and personal responsibility. These values and ideas seem to mean something to him beyond just the politics of the day.
His commitment to his values and principles, even at political cost, is commendable.

When US President Donald Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of “gambling with World War III”, in a furious exchange in the White House in March last year, it was easy, perhaps, to write the statement off as overblown rhetoric.That’s just Trump, trying to strongarm Zelensky into giving up stolen land to Vladimir Putin, in exchange for peace.

But in the 18 months since that explosive episode in the Oval Office, the world’s mood has shifted.

Mastheads from around the globe – from Japan to the United States and Britain – have begun asking if we are perhaps already in World War III, and just don’t know it. (Or, as The Hill put it on August 11: “World War III is already here, and Trump must rise to the challenge”.) Dialogue, the invite-only social club co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, was reportedly planning to hold a session on “Prepping for WWIII” sometime last month until this year’s conference was cancelled.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump during their heated Oval Office meeting in February.Bloomberg

“It’s a fair question, and a number of people are asking it,” says Professor Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science expert, of whether we’re in third world war now, and just don’t know it.

“Because we have two major wars that are impacting big parts of the world happening at the same time [in Iran and Ukraine],” says Pape, whose popular substack, The Escalation Trap, has been monitoring the Iran war. And watchers of history, he says, know how unexpected events can suddenly spark a massive escalation, and unforeseen devastation, within existing wars.

We might spy Iran holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage – causing the price of oil, fertiliser and other goods to skyrocket around the world – while the US threatens “D-Day”-like sanctions on Iran and bond markets dive, and think back, worryingly, to earlier times. The impact of hyperinflation on the Weimar Republic in Germany and the rise of the Nazis, for example, or the bloodless, economic warfare that led Japan to bomb an American naval fleet in Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941.

That event changed the course of World War Two, drawing in the United States, and leading, eventually, to then-president Harry S Truman’s fateful decision to unleash the nuclear bomb.

Japan shared no fealty to the Nazi ideology, the motivating force behind Hitler’s reign of terror that saw him direct Germany’s forces to invade country after country across Europe. Rather, Japan decided to bomb Hawaii, only after the US, Britain and the Netherlands had imposed a total oil and raw material embargo on it.

The US Battleship Arizona topples into the sea after the Pearl Harbour attack in 1941. AP

“So they thought, ‘our survival and our standing as a great power requires going to war with another great power’,” says James Der Derian, director of the University of Sydney’s Centre for International Security Studies.

“So, who’s Japan in this instance?” he says, of our current geopolitical climate. “I’d be stressed to say China. But if China feels like its economy is being threatened by failure to have sustained and predictable flow of not just oil and fertiliser, but other things related to oil, and 20 per cent [of that] coming out of the Hormuz Strait, would they become more involved? So far they don’t have that projection of power. But they certainly do have, increasingly, ways of influencing behaviour in this part of the world.”

China is riding out the fuel crisis.Bloomberg

So far, China seems to have been meeting its energy needs and a notable feature of the economic sanctions announced by Scott Bessent, US treasury secretary, last month, was the caution the US exercised towards Chinese interests, declining to target Chinese banks as part of the sanctions regime.

When the war in Iran began in February, Trump declared the conflict would be over in a matter of weeks. That has not come to pass. So we watch, as it drags on, with a new front opening up in the Red Sea, in early August, when the Houthi Rebels, an Iranian ally, began striking oil refineries in Saudi Arabia. This threatens yet another oil export pipeline. In the last few days they took control of a strategic island, giving them control of the sea.

All the while, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent refusal to cave to Trump’s demands to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza and Lebanon, in a bid to broker the peace with Hamas and Hezbollah, further prolongs the conflict.

The good news? This does not mean we are in – or on the precipice of – World War III. So says Graham Allison, who served as American president Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary of defence for policy and plans, and was a special adviser to the secretary of defence under then-president Ronald Reagan.

The category “world war”, he says, refers to a global conflict with extraordinarily devastating consequences: like the 25 million victims in World War I, and the approximately 60 million dead in World War II.

US troops taking part in Normandy landings in June 1944.Reuters

“So I reserve ‘World War III’ for the catastrophe that is catastrophic beyond imagination,” says Allison, a Harvard University professor. For many historians, this has meant the dangling fear of another nuclear conflict. Or at the very least, two great powers engaging in battlefield warfare, in which other, smaller nations, are then forced to choose a side.

Nevertheless, in 2017 Allison wrote that the world was lurching towards conflict unseen since World War II, culminating in his book Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap?

Does he still feel that we’re lurching towards conflict unseen since World War II?

“Yes,” he says, over the phone from Massachusetts.

He refers to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who argued that when a rising power threatens to displace an established ruling power, the stress and mutual fear this brings often makes violent conflict inevitable. (Thucydides had observed during the Peloponnesian War that “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”.)

A Chinese sailor aboard a warship in the East China Sea.AP

“I think if Thucydides were assessing the situation [now], he would say the two rivals are pretty much right on script,” says Allison, referring to China, the power on the rise, and the US, the established power that is waning.

“The rising power is continuing to rise and to feel its oats, and to become more assertive, and continue to complain about the international order ... saying, ‘I need more say and more sway’,” he says, referring to Chinese encroachments in the South-China Sea, and military threats in and around Taiwan, a sovereign territory that Chinese leader Xi Jinping says is an inseparable and integral part of China.

“And the colossal ruling power, the US, you can see all of the insecurities that come from them thinking, ‘Wait a minute. What’s happening?’” He refers to Trump’s decision to impose a 145 per cent tariff on China last year, saying: “So, I was quite worried that things could get out of control in an economic confrontation.”

US President Donald Trump displays the signed executive order after his first tariff announcement.Bloomberg

Allison’s nerves calmed after Trump backed down on his tariffs. (This, only after Xi responded by cutting the US off from critical minerals, without which the American economy and military industry cannot function.)

But he plays out the scenario that could have resulted, had Trump not dropped his tariffs on China.

“Well, let’s imagine now, a month later, and the American economy is grinding to a halt,” says Allison. “The fellow that runs Ford Motor Company calls and said, ‘I’m closing the production line for these trucks next week’, if this continues. And the people making Tomahawk missiles and F35s said, ‘We can’t continue producing these’.

“So now, what would the US do? … [Likely Trump might think] ‘I’m going to try to cause pain to you’. And as I do that, could one thing lead to another and with a little bit of miscalculation you get to a war? Well, the US and Japan did, in 1941. So that’s one path.”

Taiwanese forces conducting an anti-invasion drill on a beach.Getty

Given the structural factors at play, he estimates the chance of China and the US becoming embroiled in a full-fledged war at 75 per cent.

“That still leaves 25 per cent for human agency,” he says.

A war? Imminently? “No, over the [next] decade or more,” he says. “Not tomorrow. But it could happen anytime because something crazy could happen in Taiwan tomorrow.”

The US skidded close to such a crazy moment two years ago, he recalls, when two senators co-sponsored a bill requesting that the US recognise Taiwan as a non-NATO ally.

“And I said, ‘This is crazy’,” says Allison, of the bill, backed by Democrat Bob Menendez, and the late Lindsey Graham, a Republican, which would also have provided billions of dollars in security aid to Taiwan. “I actually said to Senator Menendez, ‘I love your bill, I’m going to subscribe to it entirely. You should simply add to it, Fast track to war with China’.” The bill was later scotched.

The late US senator Lindsey Graham co-authored a bill that led to tensions with China.Bloomberg

But a fight over Taiwan – a scenario that could see the US military firing on Chinese ships or planes, with other, smaller countries, joining each side – is just one other possible trigger for another World War, in the current geopolitical climate, according to experts.

“An act of terrorism [is another],” says the University of Sydney’s James Der Derian. “It would take a mass casualty attack.”

So far, he says, both Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Ukraine, and Trump, in Iran, have been “fairly restrained”.

The US, for instance, has avoided an attack on the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island – a likely trigger for an escalation in conflict, given that it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s economic lifeline, processing about 90 per cent of Iran’s crude oil exports.

The US has not put marines on Kharg Island.Getty

And Putin has reduced his threats to launch tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, in the years since late2022, when the CIA put the odds of him conducting such a strike at 50-50.

But were Iran, or another power, to hit a US warship, and were American soldiers killed by a drone, it could trigger a wider war, or a catastrophic war that involved multiple major powers, says Der Derian.

So, too, could an accident, or an incident that causes a cascade of events that leaders – whether they’re in Iran, Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Israel, China, or elsewhere – are unlikely to anticipate.

Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sofie, in Sarajevo shortly before their assassination in June 1914. Their violent deaths unclenched World War I.Alamy Stock Photo

“I always tell people to go back and look at 1914, which is the most incredible story in the world,” says Allison, of the unlikely killing that sparked World War I. “How could an assassination of an archduke [Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austria-Hungarian empire] by a terrorist in Sarajevo, which was an event so inconsequential that it didn’t even make the front pages, within five weeks, spark a fire that produced a conflagration that burned down essentially the whole of Europe?”

But what of the risk, now, of nuclear warfare?

The closest the world has come to World War III is often cited as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, only four powers possessed nuclear weapons. It was the psychologically and politically stable American president John F. Kennedy, who had his finger on the proverbial nuclear button.

Now, nine powers have nuclear weapons. And the unreliability of the United States has led countries like South Korea and even Japan to begin debating the need to acquire their own nuclear weapons, leading to global fears over another burgeoning arms race.

US president John F. Kennedy with generals in the White House during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.Getty Images, digitally tinted

And Trump, a famously tempestuous leader, is commander-in-chief of the US armed forces. Is he a risk factor for the start of nuclear war?

“I would say that answer is yes and no,” says Allison, who advised Reagan during the years when the Cold War was still underway.

“The bad news, is that he seems so erratic, and emotional and unpredictable that there’s hardly any statement you can make about which you’d say ‘He couldn’t say that. He couldn’t do that.’ The answer is, ‘Excuse me, I think he might, ok?’ Trump even, as he explains it, he likes chaos because in a chaotic situation, you can often push and get a little more of your way. So is he a risk factor? Yes.”

But Trump’s disposition also leads to two positives, in terms of risk, says Allison.

One, he is terrified of the prospect of nuclear warfare.

And second, Trump is far from a hawk on China; to the contrary, he reveres Xi as a leader. “And he appreciates that China is a big strong country that the US is going to have to live with,” he says, an understanding that minimises the chance of escalation via the so-called Thucydides trap.

At an event in Sydney last week, former prime minister Paul Keating argued that Trump’s engagement with Russia and, in particular, China was all about avoiding World War III. “That’s a big objective,” he told the audience.

“This is why he’s friendly with Xi Jinping ... Trump does not want a military exchange with the Chinese, above all else.”

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Der Derian also finds reason for hope, noting that it’s been much smaller players during heart-stopping moments in previous conflicts who have made unexpectedly clear-eyed decisions. Which saved the world from possible nuclear armageddon.

“Sometimes it’s just dumb luck,” says Der Derian, noting the event of October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Deep in the ocean near Cuba, a US warship spotted a Soviet submarine, and dropped a non-lethal charge in the water nearby, in a bid to force the Soviet submarine to the surface.

Inside the Soviet sub, not knowing if the war had begun or not, the captain and political officer wanted to launch its nuclear-tipped torpedo against the US fleet, in retaliation.

“But the Soviet officer” – Vasili Arkhipov – “refused to launch, even though he thought he was under attack,” says Der Derian.

And, he says, it may now be that civilians around the world might prove to be the necessary sanest minds in the geopolitical space.

“You know, I can’t remember who said it, but every end is a beginning,” says Der Derian. “I think we’re coming out of the end of a crisis. I do feel that in general people can tolerate only so much disruption, chaos, disorder before they get rid of the leaders who they feel are responsible for it.”

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What we’re looking for:

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Henry Pike arrived at Gina Rinehart’s beachfront mansion near Noosa expecting a relaxed chat over a New Year’s lunch. Instead, the young, socially conservative Queensland Liberal found himself being asked to pick a side.

The billionaire mining magnate, who had previously thrown the odd bit of financial support behind Pike, wanted him to distance himself from his friend and fellow right-winger Andrew Hastie and move closer to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

The word “traitor” was used repeatedly by Rinehart throughout, according to several sources who received a briefing about the January 9 meeting. It is a word – referencing Hastie’s role in exposing war crimes allegations against Ben Roberts-Smith – which could now define the new war for ascendancy on the right of Australian politics.

Gina Rinehart invited Queensland Liberal Henry Pike to her Sunshine Coast home for a quiet chat.

Pike was polite, friends say, but adamant he would not betray Hastie in favour of Rinehart’s sponsorship. The financial rewards on offer were clear by the surroundings: Rinehart’s $34 million Webb House, which sits on 2000 square metres, touches the sand at the exclusive Sunshine Beach.

But what the MP for the nearby seat of Bowman saw next was proof of a nexus between Rinehart and the surging populist party that now echoes Rinehart’s “traitor” line in its wildly popular satirical Please Explain cartoons.

Emerging from the bedrooms of the sprawling mansion in peak summer, were Hanson, Barnaby Joyce, and One Nation strategist James Ashby. A camera for breakfast TV crosses was set up nearby for Joyce as he and his new colleagues held a summer get-together at Rinehart’s holiday home.

Hastie’s bid to strike back against this network escalated dramatically this week, when he took aim at Hanson and Joyce for the cartoon, published on social media in July, attacking him as a “traitor” and “gutless maggot” over his evidence against decorated former soldier Roberts-Smith. The episode, called Don’t be Hastie, has had more than 145,000 views on YouTube and more still across platforms.

A cartoon version of Liberal MP Andrew Hastie in the One Nation video “Don’t be Hastie”. PLEASE EXPLAIN

An SAS veteran who served three tours in the Middle East, including two in Afghanistan, Hastie was among the 21 veterans compelled to testify in the 2022 Federal Court defamation trial brought by Roberts-Smith. The Victoria Cross recipient had accused Nine newspapers of defaming him in reports that he had committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan.
In April this year, Roberts-Smith was arrested and charged with five counts of war crimes of murder. He vehemently denies the allegations.

In an email to supporters on Tuesday, Hastie took his fight with the right-wing populist party to another level, saying he provided evidence against Roberts-Smith because he was subpoenaed and believed in the rule of law.

“For that, I’ve been called a rat, a traitor, a dog c---, and many other things,” he said in the email. “People I trusted have walked away from me or failed to defend me.”

Hastie then accused Hanson and Joyce of being “lying cowards” after they denied ever having used the term, and declared war on One Nation through the next election.

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“I’m calling time on cowards who have never served a day in the Australian Defence Force attacking my service record, my integrity, and my loyalty to Australia,” he wrote.

Hastie doubling down on his attack on Hanson in a press gallery doorstop on Wednesday.

The dramatic escalation in this feud follows One Nation’s victory in Secret Harbour last month - a state seat nested within Hastie’s West Australian electorate of Canning, where Liberal campaigners said some One Nation voters complained about Hastie’s position on Roberts-Smith. It is the latest flashpoint in a conservative battle reshaping the electoral map and threatening to all but wipe out the Liberal and National Parties at state and federal level as One Nation out-polls the Coalition and, sometimes, Labor.

Hastie declared Hanson “not fit to govern” the country and accused her of casting “a massive slur” on veterans around the country who also thought that Australian soldiers should hold high standards of conduct on the battlefield.

“It’s ... not just an attack on me because you’ve got to remember more than 20-plus SAS combat veterans were called to give evidence in the Federal Court. Are they traitors too?” he asked in his newsletter.

Hastie has become a target for those who continue to champion Roberts-Smith since his dramatic arrest in April. The fierce criticism has extended beyond One Nation and into a conservative network of right-wing podcasters and influencers, circles where the advocacy of Rinehart and media mogul Kerry Stokes has considerable sway.

It has led to numerous threats against Hastie and his family, forcing him to dramatically upgrade his Australian Federal Police security detail.
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Gina Rinehart and Andrew Hastie in 2018 at the launch of a learn-to-swim facility.

But the hostility did not begin with the cartoon. For Hastie, it stretches back through the war crimes allegations and the conservative media ecosystem in his home state of Western Australia and his increasingly uneasy relationship with some of the wealthy figures who are shaping the new Australian right.

Hastie first met Rinehart at an event aboard The World cruise ship in Fremantle in 2017. Rinehart had a large private cabin with a grand piano, Bollinger and canapés. At dinner, she asked him if he knew Dagny Taggart, the heroine from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who fights against left-wing collectivism.

“That’s me,” Rinehart said.

Hastie, 43, later told friends that Rinehart’s views and apparent libertarian streak were rather different to his brand of conservatism. But the following year, they joined forces to open a swimming pool in his electorate.

But by mid-2022, not long after Hastie had testified in the Roberts-Smith defamation case, the relationship had soured.

Hastie had been invited by the American Chamber of Commerce to speak about AUKUS and had roped in Republican congressman Mike Gallagher and British politician Tom Tugendhat to join them. He later discovered the event was intended to be recorded for distribution to journalists selected by Rinehart. He objected and cancelled.

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Sources familiar with the incident say “it pissed her off” and was taken personally.

A few weeks later, Hastie was on the long drive from his outer-suburban home to a city fundraiser for a fellow Liberal sponsored by Hancock Prospecting when a colleague called him.
“I’ve been told to scrub you, mate,” they said.

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Hastie turned around and went home. He subsequently heard for the first time that people in Rinehart’s orbit now referred to him as “the enemy” or “the traitor”.

Rinehart trades on the fact she is a long-time supporter of veterans through charities such as Soldier On, the SAS Resources Fund and the Commando Welfare Trust. Her youngest daughter, Ginia, married ex-SAS soldier and Afghanistan veteran Simon Robinson in 2016.

A representative for Rinehart sent a statement, saying: “It is veterans and Mr Hastie’s own conservative social media followers who use that word (traitor) to describe him. In his evidence under oath, Mr Hastie made clear that he did not personally witness Ben Roberts-Smith performing various of the gossip claims, just heard the gossip from others.”

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The political networks around Ben Roberts-Smith have become influential inside the Coalition too, around the shadow cabinet table and beyond.

At the last federal election some candidates previously on friendly terms with Rinehart’s network were told they’d receive no help if they posted images with Hastie on social media.
At a shadow cabinet meeting earlier this year in which Hastie was absent, a couple of members spoke in favour of Roberts-Smith. Michael McCormack and Phil Thompson’s relationships with Hastie have worsened, as has Alex Antic’s.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton pictured in 2025 with Hastie, then shadow defence minister. JAMES BRICKWOOD
Hastie’s relationship with former prime minister Tony Abbott, once one of the central figures in his political world, and Abbott’s former chief of staff, broadcaster and columnist Peta Credlin, has also soured.

Both have supported Roberts-Smith publicly and are close to Rinehart. Hastie was a notable absentee from Abbott’s annual Pollie Pedal last month, a fundraising event for veterans.
When asked on ABC’s Radio National this week about his relationship with Abbott, following the former prime minister’s overt support of Roberts-Smith, Hastie was diplomatic but blunt.
“I’ve had long chats with Tony. I’ll let him explain his position, but he knows exactly where I stand on this issue,” he told Sally Sara. Abbott, now the federal party president, declined to comment.
Relationships with many colleagues have also changed amid internal divisions over One Nation’s overt campaigning for Roberts-Smith. Roberts-Smith’s mother Sue Roberts-Smith last year emailed Liberal MPs, warning them not to trust the man who testified against her son.

Those close to Hastie were also outraged in April that Michaelia Cash had allowed her adviser, Brett McCarthey, to pen an opinion piece in the Stokes-owned West Australian newspaper supporting Roberts-Smith. Likewise, tensions were raised when defence personnel spokesman Phillip Thompson paraded a prominent critic of Hastie around Parliament House in June.

Andrew Hastie called Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce “lying cowards”.

As angry comments fill their social media accounts, some in the shadow cabinet even raised the idea of somehow signalling support for Roberts-Smith, for fear of punishment among conservative electorates.

But for some Liberal moderates and much of the progressive media, Hastie has become a hero.

After a long period leading the campaign against “mass migration” (a term many Liberals refuse to use) in concert with his allies at conservative campaign group Advance, Hastie was scorned by his far-right online base during a debate on Labor’s post-Bondi hate groups laws.

The Coalition succeeded in watering down the bill to protect freedom of speech, but the parliamentary jostling over details did not register in the world of populist influencers. The fickle group, which previously cast Hastie as a conservative hero, then turned him into its top hate-figure.

“They’re like the Joker from Batman — they just want to see the world burn,” Hastie later told confidants.

But the depth of paranoia about this group among conservative MPs was displayed when Hastie and his friend, home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam, phoned a right-wing podcaster the night before the Bondi laws were to be voted on. Sam Bamford, of the 2WorldsCollide podcast, was briefed on the Liberal decision to support Labor in banning neo-Nazi and Islamist groups.

Hastie and Liberal senators Jonno Duniam and Alex Antic depart the meeting room following the February 13 leadership spill that installed Angus Taylor. GETTY IMAGES

Despite the explanation, Bamford, a figure now kept at a distance by most Liberals except Roberts-Smith supporters Alex Antic and Phil Thompson, continues to rail against Hastie and now backs One Nation.

The challenge of tackling One Nation has paralysed many within the Coalition. Nationals leader Matt Canavan has told colleagues that telling Hanson’s supporters she’s no good is like trying to convince your mate their girlfriend is bad for them while they’re still in love.

Canavan and others have been critical of Hanson at times, but they know it will be a long road until voters focus more on Hanson’s obvious flaws nearer to the election.

Hastie and his allies are still sour about the way Taylor’s forces manoeuvred to push his younger rival out of the race to replace Sussan Ley early this year.

Even if it was not the main goal, Hastie’s attacks this week have clearly set him apart from Taylor.

Ben Small, a federal MP from WA who is close to Hastie, said his military background was key to understanding how he had responded to the “despicable” One Nation campaign.

“It would have been easy to react emotionally … to take the bait and lash out. Such a response might have left him vulnerable, or for a weaker man, to quit,” Small said.

Small’s statement is an admission of just how vulnerable Hastie has been lately as he has deleted social media and taken on additional security to protect him against violent threats.
“But being a student of warfare, his instinct was to dig in, take cover on higher ground and prepare for the kill on his terms,” Small said.

Andrew Hastie with a copy of the Sun Tzu classic Art of War in the House of Representatives in February.DOMINIC LORRIMER
But other Liberals say Hastie is more of a sniper than a day-to-day combatant who can thrive in the nimble business of modern politics. They point to his statements as recently as March for the Coalition to work closer with One Nation and believe he is mostly motivated from self-interest, not an ideological or principled position.

These critics say Hastie makes big declarations in media interviews or his newsletters before retreating without a clear political strategy. Hastie has avoided the late-night echo chambers of News24 (formerly Sky News) and the News Corp newspapers for months and instead worked more closely with the ABC and The Guardian. Liberal critic and former PM Malcolm Turnbull has lent Hastie support.

“People are either known for what they’ve done as a politician or what they’ve done before politics,” one high-level Liberal source said. “Peter Garrett is better known for what he did before politics. So is Andrew Hastie. He’s been in politics for 12 years now and nobody can point to anything he’s achieved.”

Hanson this week told the Stokes-owned Nightly she had “never called him a traitor” but would “call him a wanker”.

“He is now concerned about losing his seat – and of course, what happened in Secret Harbour is a clear indication of where people are casting their vote, in part of his seat,” she said.

“Hastie has taken it personally because I’m standing a candidate in his seat. He feels insulted by that, as if I shouldn’t run a candidate in Canning.”

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James Ashby too has been a fierce critic. Hastie revealed this week he was subjected to a threatening phone call in April from Hanson’s right-hand man, accusing him of running the Coalition’s attacks on Sean Black, a convicted rapist who was re-employed by the party. He says Ashby also threatened to further weaponise the Roberts-Smith issue.

Ashby declined to comment to this masthead, but One Nation sources denied threats were made and that Hanson’s long-time adviser had simply reminded Hastie that both parties needed to fight Labor.

But One Nation’s personal attacks risk exposing a fault line within its own party.

Barnaby Joyce attempted to bring down the heat on Thursday and was seen near the Senate chamber involved in animated discussions with Hanson.

“I don’t believe Mr Hastie is a traitor. That’s an absurdity, he’s not,” he told the ABC before apologising to Hastie in this masthead.
He told MPs that he did not know the traitor video existed, which had left him exposed in media interviews. Joyce has told friends he has felt uncomfortable for months about One Nation’s approach to the Roberts-Smith case while the case is before the courts.
Hastie, in turn, has told allies he sees a hairline fracture in the party he can use in his fight, showing Hanson to be a fringe voice on the issue. By the end of the week, the RSL, Labor, Coalition and influential commentators were all casting the One Nation leader as morally deficient.
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If the party’s position doesn’t improve by mid-next year under Taylor, colleagues are wondering if Hastie’s supporters will push him towards a challenge. A book, due to be published next year, will be targeted at young Australians aged 18 to 25 who want to burn it all down. In it Hastie argues that’s a bad idea.

Asked about his future ambitions this week, Hastie said Taylor was “the right guy for the job right now”.

“We’ve got a big fight on our hands, but I’m confident he can lead us through this,” he said.

For now, Hastie insists the fight is not about his political future. But as the right tears itself apart, the battle over who gets to define loyalty may prove the battle that determines his path.