James Morrow: Labor’s sense of right and wrong is missing in action

The PM and Penny Wong are playing a dangerous game, choosing not to judge enemies of freedom while revving up a moment of volatility with Australia’s closest friend, writes James Morrow.

If anyone happens to find Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s moral compass, could they please return it care of Parliament House, Canberra?

The apparatus has clearly gone missing, perhaps wedged down the back of the seat of a COMCAR.

It might be assumed that in a punch-up between a democracy where women have equal rights and which plays host to one of the biggest Pride parties on earth and, on the other side, a true Handmaid’s Tale theocracy where women are belted in the streets if they don’t cover up and the fate of gays is unspeakable, Wong might choose the democracy.

But, you’d be wrong. On Friday Wong said that the important thing is that both sides of the Israel-Iran conflict engage in “de-escalation, dialogue, and diplomacy … that is what we want to see”.

Wong added that “Iran must come to the table, and it must stop any nuclear weapons program.”

Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Picture: NewsWire/Brenton Edwards

Apparently Wong, who has never been a fan of Israel at the best of times, not only wants to see the conflict end, but for the ayatollahs in Tehran to survive and continue their 46-year record of oppressing their people at home and sponsoring terrorism abroad.

Such leadership.

There was, of course, a time when Labor had a sense of right and wrong and was happy for bad regimes to go, even to the point of helping to push for their end.

Through the 1970s and ’80s the ALP knew precisely where it stood on South Africa’s old apartheid regime. No Labor foreign minister called for the African National Congress to tone things down, even when its resistance activities started to look a lot like terrorism.

Labor, for the most part, was even able to celebrate the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and the end of its socialist paradise (members who had real trouble coping went and joined a support group known as the Greens).

Today that clarity is gone, replaced by rhetoric that seems most concerned with setting us apart from the United States.

Cartoonist Warren Brown’s view.

Sure, Labor says, we want AUKUS and military protection and a break on tariffs and a meeting with Trump … but, not so subtly, we’re also not so keen on the Americans.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent re-election campaign was full of sidelong references to Trump and digs at American divisiveness.

Albanese wasn’t referring to China when he said a fortnight ago: “Australians voted against importing conflicts and ideologies that have no basis in our national culture or character.”

It was a cynical ploy to scratch a longstanding Australian cultural scepticism about the US that has been kicking around just under the surface for decades, long before Donald Trump came along and brought it into full view.

This column can report that an American who emigrated to Australia around the time of 9/11 would have received quite a few free assessments of then-president George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq over a schooner or three.

While hardly the sole feature of the relationship, this scepticism has always been there waiting for some cynical pollie to leverage, and now Albanese has found Trump an irresistible excuse.

But as with playing both sides of Israel and Iran, this attitude also means Labor is letting a dangerous relativism creep into how we manage the rivalry between China and the US.

This relativism, pushed in no small part by Chinese-linked thinktanks and influence operations, suggests that Beijing is rising, Washington is in decline, and we may as well ride the wave no matter what it means for our values, freedoms and way of life.

Scarily, the Lowy Institute recently found Australians were evenly split (45-45) on the question of whether Xi Jinping or Donald Trump was a more reliable partner for Australia.

This is the danger of the double game Albanese and Wong are playing, coming across all “judge not” on genuine enemies of freedom while revving up a moment of volatility with Australia’s closest friend just to win a few votes.

That moral compass sure would come in handy right now.

Originally published as James Morrow: Labor’s sense of right and wrong is missing in action