Out of order
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told Davos today the rules-based international order is dead. Australia is still clinging to the hope it just needs a tune-up.
As Australian politics was consumed by rancour over the government’s legislative response to the Bondi terror attacks — and the now ever-present leadership speculation surrounding Opposition Leader Sussan Ley — further dramatic realignments were unfolding in the Swiss Alps.
In his address to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech announcing nothing less than the end of the global rules-based liberal order.
Well, not quite. Carney admitted this order may never have really existed, and that we’ve all been “living within a lie”.
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false — that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically,” he said. Yet “this fiction was useful”, he added, because it enabled trade, security and a stable financial system.
