Canadian PM Mark Carney addresses parliament, Labor’s FOI bill ditched in Senate

Earlier today, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a rare address to the Australian parliament, saying that middle powers such as Canada and Australia would be overrun by increasingly assertive global superpowers unless they worked together on defence, trade and technology.

Carney revealed in an address to a joint sitting of parliament that Australia would join a critical minerals alliance run by the G7, a collection of the democratic world’s most advanced economies, in a bid to ensure China cannot dominate this crucial sector.

Carney used his parliamentary address to expand on the themes of his breakout speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he declared an end to the “fantasy” of the post-World War II rules-based order.

“In a post-rupture world, the nations that are trusted and can work together will be quicker to the punch, more effective in their responses, more proactive in shaping outcomes, and ultimately more secure and prosperous,” Carney said on Thursday.

You can read the full story from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s foreign affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Knott here.