Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shown himself to be very adept at playing politics. Who can blame him? After the Labor party tore itself apart in the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years, he learned the importance of controlling the factions. Yet it has come at a terrible cost to Australia’s foreign and domestic policies.

We can see this in the lead-up to Labor’s national conference, to be held in a fortnight. Party elder Paul Keating has repeatedly attacked Aukus and downplayed the military threat posed by China, pretending that it is the United States that is destabilising the Asia-Pacific region.

This pro-China view enjoys enough support at conference that the government has found it easier to neglect defence spending, leaving Australia woefully unprepared as China runs its own arms race.

With the launch of the latest ballistic missile, it is clear that China intends to throw its weight around. The reverberations of the test were felt around the world. Unsurprisingly, Moscow trumpeted its support for Beijing’s ‘sovereign right’ to the test missiles that were no threat to anyone.

It underscores the urgent need for Australia to build its bilateral security treaties in the South Pacific into a region-wide security pact. We also need to strengthen our own military preparedness and our strategic partnerships with Japan and, above all, the United States, the only power capable of pushing back against Beijing.

We see the same tendency of the Albanese government to allow factional powerbrokers to dictate foreign policy when it comes to Israel.

It was bad enough last year when the government recklessly moved to unilaterally recognise the State of Palestine, but at least it insisted that the disarmament of Hamas and the reform of the corrupt Palestinian Authority were non-negotiable prerequisites.

Yet the draft ALP National Platform has dropped explicit calls for Hamas to disarm and for the Palestinian Authority – which continues to pay salaries to the families of terrorists and to incite violence – to reform. It has also dropped calls for guarantees of Israel’s security.

It is a painful reminder of just how far the Albanese government has been prepared to travel away from the traditional bipartisan support for a negotiated two-state solution. It is increasingly clear that Labor prefers peace at its national conference to peace in the Middle East.

What’s in a name?

What has become of the groves of Academe? James Cook University is debating whether to change its name, an exercise in Western self-loathing that it is estimated would cost some $12 million.

The case for change apparently includes the claim that some international students are misled by the name into thinking the university is an institute for culinary arts. If such students exist, perhaps they would be more suited to culinary endeavours.

It seems more likely that the case for change is being driven by activists, for whom Cook’s arrival symbolises the beginning of ‘colonisation and the profound dispossession, violence and disruption that followed’.

In the real world, Cook was a brilliant and courageous navigator, and his voyage embodied the spirit of scientific inquiry and exploration.

As if this weren’t bad enough, this week brought the equally depressing spectacle of Associate Professor Matthew Champion of the University of Melbourne, who is being pressured by activists to return his share of the Dan David Prize, the world’s richest history prize, simply because it is administered through Tel Aviv University. Attacking an academic – or a scholarly prize – because it is connected to Israel is antisemitism. That this campaign is being waged by people who call themselves academics is an alarming measure of the depths to which higher education has sunk.