When Australia imposed sanctions on Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the backlash from Jerusalem was as swift as it was predictable.

It is a sorry spectacle indeed when a man so lionised for his “clarity” of thought cannot bring himself to define the very thing upon which his supposed moral architecture depends.

The White House has endured its share of grotesqueries. It has welcomed warmongers in suits, bible-thumpers with nuclear codes, and bureaucrats with the charisma of drying paint.

There is, before most official gatherings in Australia these days, a moment of solemnity—some brief invocation of land, of people, of time immemorial.

Looking back on the first term of the Albanese government, one may notice the smouldering wreck of Australia's Voice referendum, lying strewn across the national consciousness, a monument to how good ...