Letter from Australia

Australia is fighting battles on several fronts just now.

The war with Covid has gone remarkably well for the various States – at the time of writing there are only 39 known cases in the whole country and almost all of them are from overseas. Furthermore, the economy which briefly dipped into recession is soaring back – largely thanks to the price of iron ore and the wealth of Australians now being spent in Australia, rather than on overseas trips.

The battle with China is hotting up. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are furious with Australia, first of all for calling for an inquiry into the start of Covid, then for challenging the way that the CCP infiltrates Western societies – through buying up companies, media and academic influence. The reliance of Australia’s universities on Chinese students (pre-Covid Sydney had 30,000) has only proved the point that ‘you should not put all your eggs in one basket’. There is a very real Chinese military threat in the Pacific as well – Hong Kong has now been subjugated, and there is little doubt that Taiwan is next.