For the foreign minister’s National Press Club speech this week, we need to thank the interventions of former prime minister Paul Keating. Australia is at last having the foreign policy debate it has needed to have for a long time.

Whatever one’s views on Keating’s interventions, he has achieved his primary objective, which was to cut through the wilful silence around Australia and the region as we seek to navigate the greatest geopolitical contest since the end of the Cold War. If nothing else, Keating is the master of the cut-through.