At the ALP national conference earlier this month, Pat Conroy, Minister for Defence Industry and Minister for International Development and the Pacific, ruffled feathers when he declared that one is either pro-AUKUS or an appeaser of Beijing. This was all the more remarkable because he is from the ALP Left. Left-wing delegates argued that dissent and debate on such an important matter have to be allowed. They do. Whereas in China no one can openly or systematically challenge the dictatorial policies of Xi Jinping, including his alarming militarisation of China’s foreign policy, in Australia there is and should be a lively debate about such things. The latest dissenting contribution to debate about AUKUS and the nuclear submarines is Sam Roggeveen’s The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace, released in late August by Black Inc.

We gain scientific knowledge in different ways and from different starting points. Sometimes it is simply the way information is presented and assimilated that can prompt a change in understanding. In 1977 a campaign was launched to end whaling in Australia. This campaign was the beginning of Greenpeace International and Australia’s first big direct action environmental campaign. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) met in Canberra. I don’t think they expected the vociferous opposition to whaling that awaited them outside the Lakeside Hotel. Nor did they expect to see so many protesters travel all the way to Albany in Western Australia to demand the closing of Cheynes Beach station.

René Descartes’ interests extended to diverse subjects, and one of the most striking subjects he studied was machine thinking. That he was considering this in the early 17th century is remarkable. When Descartes talks of “thinking machines” in the Discourse on Method and of machines in other places in the Cartesian corpus, he shows that he has an artificial intelligence theory. It is a theory that he quickly refutes on the basis that reasoning is a uniquely human characteristic and what ultimately distinguishes us from godless brutes, animals and, by implication, machines. Hence, the possibility of “thinking machines” is considered and promptly discounted.