The US and China are ringing alarm bells. Albanese is hitting the snooze button

History is knocking on Australia’s door. The prime minister is pretending he can’t hear. Donald Trump is vacating America’s traditional place in the world at dizzying speed. At the same time, Xi Jinping is asserting China’s new sphere of influence with all the subtlety of a gunboat.

Dangers for Australia? Yes, but these developments also present opportunities for Anthony Albanese. Or for Peter Dutton, depending on who is more adroit. Call it a leadership opportunity.

Illustration by Joe BenkeCredit:

The world’s intrusion into Australian politics this past fortnight has been very inconvenient for the Labor election campaign, which has yet to be declared officially but is well under way.

This week’s plan was to talk Medicare non-stop, to drive home Albanese’s announcement of improvements to bulk-billing. It was an important commitment, immediately endorsed by Dutton. To Labor’s frustration, reporters kept asking about Trump and China, with no respect for the campaign program. Albanese’s tactic in response was to attempt to suffocate the stories by offering minimal oxygen.

As Trump proceeded with his project of “making the world safe for dictatorship”, to co-opt the title of the 2021 book by Alexander Dukalskis, Albanese allowed himself only a sly contrast, but stuck with the Medicare theme: “We don’t want our health system to be more American. We don’t need to copy the ideologies of any nation.”

And as the People’s Liberation Army Navy conducted “what can only be interpreted as an act of intimidation”, in the words of sinologist Anne-Marie Brady of New Zealand’s University of Canterbury, Albanese tried to minimise it. He tried so hard he tripped himself. Making China’s naval task group seem as harmless as possible, he gave the distinct impression that it had given notice that it was planning a live-firing drill in the path of a busy commercial air travel corridor.

But the evidence of federal officials in Senate estimates committees quickly revealed there had been no such notice. Australia had found out after the drill was under way, and quite by chance when a Virgin Australia pilot relayed a warning.

Dutton pounced on Albanese, naturally, for “either making this up, shooting from the hip, or [being] completely out of his depth”.

Albanese’s deputy, Defence Minister Richard Marles, tried to dismiss Beijing’s gunboat diplomacy by saying it “wasn’t a real incident” and advising the country to “take a deep breath”. The government repeatedly emphasised the Chinese navy’s actions were within international law. This is true yet strategically and politically irrelevant.

Remember how China flared as a hot political issue in 2022 when it sealed a security pact with the Solomon Islands? It was perfectly legal.

Yet it shook the nation because it opened the way for China to build a military base in the same strategic location that Imperial Japan used to choke off Australia’s northern approaches. Dislodging the Japanese in the Battle of Guadalcanal took the US, and allies including Australia, three major land battles, seven naval battles, non-stop aerial warfare and 27,000 dead troops between the two sides.

As Penny Wong said in 2022, when she was shadow foreign minister: “Despite all of his tough talk, on Scott Morrison’s watch our region has become less secure.”

Dutton is now entitled to use the same line against Albanese.

Two of the researchers at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Research Institute puzzled over the timidity of Marles’ commentary this week. Corey Lee Bell and Elana Collinson observed in a research note that he described the Chinese task group’s activities as “not unprecedented but ... an unusual event”.

The researchers commented: “The last use of live fire by a non-allied nation off the coast of Sydney was by Imperial Japanese Navy mini-submarines in 1942.”

Labor’s conduct is absolutely normal for a centre-left party in an election campaign; so is the Coalition’s for a centre-right one. Each side tries to force the dominant themes onto the topical territory that favour its perceived political strengths. For Labor, that’s traditionally the “caring” areas of health, education, workers’ conditions, the environment. For the Liberals, it’s the “protective” functions of national security and economic responsibility.

Labor reckons it can win votes with Medicare promises but not national security ones. This is time-honoured but trite. It’s also inadequate.

A national government has two unique functions in the Commonwealth’s division of labour between federal and state: defence and economic management. This helps explain why, since the party first won government in 1949, the Liberals have dominated the federal level with twice as many years in power as Labor.

Labor doesn’t need to outperform the Coalition on these two essentials, but it needs to demonstrate competence at the very least. Otherwise, it disqualifies itself from federal office.

Kevin Rudd showed Labor the way – by declaring himself an economic “conservative”, for example, and chiding John Howard for reckless spending. He took the fight onto Tory territory, and won.

What can Albanese do? For starters, the Australian leader could do what his British counterpart, Labour’s Keir Starmer, did this week. Speak forthrightly to his nation.

Starmer recalled seeing the Berlin Wall come down in 1989: “If you had told me then, that in my lifetime, we would see Russian tanks rolling into European cities again, I would not have believed you. Yet here we are. In a world where everything has changed.”

And Starmer said he’d meet the threat. “In light of the grave threats that we face” in this “dangerous new era”, he was bringing forward by three years an election pledge to raise Britain’s defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent, which would now be delivered in 2027. Further, it would rise to 3 per cent in the next term of parliament.

This helped shore up Britain’s position with Trump, who warmly welcomed the commitment, and helped stiffen European resolve. Most importantly, it will help Britain avoid the fate it fears most – a Europe dominated by Russia. Politically, it’s a winning move by Starmer.

In Australia’s case, Albanese could make a similar move, accelerating the existing defence program, strengthening Australia and stiffening the resolve of its allies and friends. Albanese earlier promised to lift defence outlays from 2 per cent of GDP to 2.3 by 2033. Australia’s average in the Cold War was 2.7 per cent. Dutton would endorse an acceleration. It would show the electorate that Labor was able to rise to the moment.

No one values a weak ally and we’re currently vulnerable. As ANU’s Jennifer Parker wrote in this masthead this week: “At our most challenging strategic moment since World War II, our current surface combatant fleet is the smallest and oldest we’ve had since 1950.”

As for Trump’s threats to put tariffs on just about everyone, that, too, presents Australia with an opportunity. Australia opposes protectionism. Albanese could announce that he would eliminate Australia’s existing tariffs. His government abolished a bunch already; now get rid of the rest.

Australia’s average tariff is just 2 per cent, essentially a nuisance rather than a tool of industry policy. Abolishing them would lower the cost of imports and, at the margin, help cut inflation and the cost of living. It would cost the government about $2 billion a year, not a major expense in campaign terms. It’d be a cost-of-living winner and, as a bonus, leave Trump without a case against Australia.

How would it leave Labor’s campaign? Albanese’s biggest problem is that no one knows what he stands for, and no one remembers anything he’s done. The world has just changed around us. If the prime minster showed leadership and rose to meet the moment, it could help him with both.

Best of all, it could even help the country. History is knocking. Will he answer?

Peter Hartcher is political editor.