Australians are clear on our biggest threats. But our leaders don’t want to discuss it

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As the pincers of Australia’s geopolitical position continue to close in on the Complacent Country, our leadership would rather not talk about it.

On one side, we prepare for the economic pain that Donald Trump is about to inflict on Australia in round three of his tariffs – while he refuses to take a phone call from the Australian prime minister.

Illustration by Joe Benke

On the other, Xi Jinping advances his plans for domination of Australia’s near approaches with a survey ship following on from China’s naval task force tour of intimidation. This is not only unfriendly. It’s positively rude. Don’t these leaders know that there’s an election campaign under way in Australia?

The government is reluctant to discuss these realities. It prefers to conduct a campaign in a parallel universe where the only danger is Peter Dutton.

When the government is confronted unavoidably by the inconvenient intrusions from the world’s two greatest powers, it has two responses. One is to downplay the problems.

Richard Marles on Monday was asked by the ABC’s James Glenday about the Trump administration’s claims on the territories of its allies, Canada and Denmark: “This is our closest military ally, and they’re talking about annexing bits of land. I mean, that seems like something we should be paying a bit of attention to and be maybe even concerned about?”

Marles deflected by talking about Australia’s “very close relationship with the US”. He said that “the alliance is the cornerstone of our national security” and “we feel confident about how that will play under the Trump administration”.

He volunteered that he’d had a “really good meeting” with Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, but declined to comment on the fact that Hegseth and other top US officials had been caught co-ordinating military strikes on a messaging app rather than secure channels, so-called Signalgate.

Richard Marles said he’d had a “really good meeting” with Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth in Washington.Credit: Getty

The great ally has become a predator on its allies and deals recklessly with its military secrets, but let’s focus on the “really good meeting”.

On the same day, a reporter asked Anthony Albanese about a Malcolm Turnbull comment: “Malcolm Turnbull says Donald Trump plainly doesn’t believe in the international rules-based order and his world view actually aligns with Vladimir Putin more than our own. Given Trump’s in the last few months spoken openly about taking over and controlling Gaza and annexing Canada and controlling Greenland by any means, why is Malcolm Turnbull wrong?”

Albanese, too, pulled up the doona: “Malcolm Turnbull can speak for himself. I’m not going to comment on all of the views of former prime ministers. I speak for Australia and the Australian government’s position is that we continue to enjoy a strong relationship with the US.”

It’s plain that they’re tiptoeing in terror of provoking the bully, but Trump is applying coercive tariffs on Australia regardless of the Australia-US free trade agreement, regardless of the military alliance, and regardless of how carefully the Australian leadership tiptoes around him. Trump is set to announce the next wave of tariffs on all countries on Wednesday, Australian time.

The second tactic employed by the government is not to talk about Trump but to try to conflate Trump with Dutton.

Penny Wong on Monday was asked on 5AA whether Australia needed to get “a little bit more Canadian” – suddenly a term synonymous with toughness and defiance – in confronting potential Trump threats to Australia’s PBS and farm exports?

Wong: “We do have a different position to Peter Dutton. Peter Dutton is very clear in that he wanted to do a deal [with Trump], there’s no question he wants to do a deal – and I think the question always is, what are you prepared to give away for it? The government’s not prepared to give away, Labor’s not prepared to give away things that matter so greatly to Australia, like our healthcare system and our Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme.”

No one had mentioned Dutton. But it turns out that Dutton is the risk, not Trump at all.

And then there’s the Chinese survey vessel which has turned up off Australia’s coast. It wasn’t the government that disclosed this fact, incidentally. That was done by Sky News.

The ship, after conducting hydrographic work in co-operation with New Zealand, reportedly has taken the opportunity to survey the seabed in an area where Australian undersea fibre optic cables are laid. Such details are of vital importance to a power that might one day want to isolate Australia. It’s already suspected of cutting the undersea cables connecting Taiwan while Russia does the same in the Baltic Sea.

Once again, Albanese downplayed the situation. In fact, he sought to normalise it. Another Chinese survey vessel had visited in 2020, he pointed out. “We live in circumstances where, just as Australia has vessels in the South China Sea and vessels in the Taiwan Strait and a range of areas, this vessel is there”.

But we shouldn’t doubt his sincerity when he conceded that he “would prefer that it wasn’t there”. Or, more exactly, prefer that we didn’t have to talk about it. Former ambassador to China Geoff Raby describes China as “the 500-kilogram panda in the room” that everyone wants to talk about except our leaders.

The Coalition is only marginally more prepared to talk about Australia’s strategic squeeze. Dutton has promised to announce a more ambitious defence spending plan, something Labor is resisting resolutely.

The great irony is that, while the political leadership doesn’t want to talk openly to the public about Australia’s increasingly vulnerable position, the people are only too aware.

Six in 10 Australians believe that the advent of Trump is bad for Australia, according to the Resolve Political Monitor commissioned by this masthead.

Asked to nominate the greatest threat to Australia, while China still is rated No.1 by 31 per cent of respondents, the US is named by 17 per cent. Russia runs a distant third at 4 per cent.

Australians want to know what the contenders for the prime ministership will do to protect the national interest. Neither Albanese nor Dutton so far have any answers for them.

The reason that Turnbull had been discussing Trump? The former prime minister was so frustrated with the political evasion that, to his great credit, he convened his own conference in the National Press Club on Monday to discuss the issues.

Turnbull concluded one session with a timeless quote from Thucydides about the forlorn position of hope unaccompanied by action: “Hope is danger’s comforter.”

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

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