By Alan Kohler, Australian ABC News Correspondent.

Australia is heading towards minority government at a turning point in world history as the world is in freefall while Australia heads into another small, dreary cost-of-living election.

This is a time when clear political vision and decisive leadership is called for, when the stakes for Tuesday’s federal budget and the coming election couldn’t be higher. Not that you would know it from the grubby squabbles that pass for national debate these days.

America’s democracy is under attack from an autocratic cabal of political extremists and billionaires; Europe and China are frantically trying to Trump-proof themselves; Russia and Israel are carrying out brutal assaults and refuse to stop; the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last year was the largest in history, and the global temperature was the hottest; and an automation and robotics revolution is in the midst of a great leap forward towards … what? No one knows.

Challenges facing Australia could not be greater

Lenin’s quote that “there are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen” is getting a solid workout these days, but last week there was a single day on which decades happened. It was Tuesday, March 18.

Here’s what happened on that day:

• Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, voted to end 80 years of fiscal shackles and constraints on military spending, to Trump-proof its and Europe’s economy, changing the course of European history.
• China launched its own fiscal stimulus program for the same reason, potentially changing the course of its own history, although it has much less fiscal room to move than Germany.
• In a phone call with US President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin refused a 30-day ceasefire, and started bombarding Ukraine again.
• Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza, warning that the “gates of hell” would open if hostages weren’t released.
• The US Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold but pivoted towards easing policy, saying the impact of tariffs was likely to be “transitory”, prompting markets to rise sharply.
• Trump described the judge who blocked the deportation of more than 200 men under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a “radical left lunatic” and said he should be impeached, escalating his administration’s war with the American judiciary.
• Trump fired two commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission, even though courts have established that it’s illegal for the president to remove officials of agencies created by Congress.
• AI computer-chip maker Nvidia unveiled the next generation of its artificial intelligence products, in an attempt to combat the Chinese firm DeepSeek, which is producing AI models at a fraction of the cost of Nvidia.
• China’s advanced humanoid robot, Unitree G1, performed the world’s first robot side flip.
• Microsoft and a Swiss company called inait announced they were collaborating to commercialise inait’s digital brain technology.

The last of these could end up being the most significant, although there’s stiff competition, especially from the assault on American democracy.

The Trump regime is now openly, vehemently defying the two other arms of US government — the judiciary and Congress — and there is no longer any doubt about what they are doing: that is, an autocratic takeover of the country. They’re not even trying to hide it any more.

The challenge this will present for whoever is running the Australian government over the next three years could not be greater: even if the ANZUS treaty holds in theory, can the US be relied upon anymore? And what will be the economic impact of three years of trade war?