Australia depends on global shipping, but Albo has left us all at sea amid Red Sea crisis
Asked by Washington to help out by sending just one warship to the Red Sea the Albanese government says “no, we’re going to sign on to a strong statement instead”. That’ll show ’em.
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ANALYISIS
It looks like Anthony Albanese has taken the old saying that “the pen is mightier than the sword” a little too much to heart.
Consider: Australia, more than almost any other nation on the planet, is entirely dependent on the world’s shipping lanes remaining free and open, a situation that has for the past several decades been guaranteed by the good offices of the US Navy.
Yet when asked by Washington to help out by sending just one warship to the Red Sea where America is leading a campaign to protect global shipping from Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the Albanese government says, “no, we’re going to sign on to a strong statement instead”.
“The undersigned condemn Houthi interference with navigational rights and freedoms in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Red Sea,” the document read in part.
Well, that’ll show ‘em.
On every conceivable level, this is a terrible outcome.
Australia relies on the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to trade goods back and forth with Europe – everything from wine to autos.
This is one of the world’s most vital sea lanes: An estimated US$10 billion worth of trade passes through the Suez Canal at the north end of the Red Sea every day.
When the canal was briefly blocked in 2021 by a ship that ran aground, the price of oil spiked and global trade declined.
As an island nation, our security and prosperity is absolutely reliant on a rules based order where ships can get from A to B without being hijacked or shot at.
This is all at risk thanks to the Houthi campaign against Red Sea shipping, which is part of Iran’s broader campaign against Israel.
Shipping industry analysts Xeneta say that ocean freight shipping rates have gone up by 20 per cent since the crisis developed.
As ships are re-routed around the bottom of Africa as many as ten days and $1 million is added to the time and cost of a journey from the Pacific to Northern Europe.
Put aside our claims to be a good global citizen, does the Australian economy – hello, inflation! – really need the added drag?
Yet at the Lowy Institute lecture Tuesday night, the PM spoke of a refocusing of interest on the Indo-Pacific.
But as many have pointed out, just because we are focusing more on our own patch in the region doesn’t mean our interests stop at some arbitrary line on a map.
The messages the Albanese government’s decision sends and the questions it raises are incalculably bad.
Is the Albanese government now so afraid of upsetting Muslim voters in outer suburban electorates and hard-left Greens in the cities that it won’t join a mission to keep shipping safe from Iran-backed troublemakers, lest it be seen as taking sides with Israel?
Does the unwillingness to help signal something more worrisome?
Has our Navy been allowed to run down to the point where we are unable to project sea power?
Or are all our expensive weapons (this is a problem all sophisticated powers must now grapple with) no match for swarms of cheap, modified, off the shelf drones?
By the way, this is not a one-off blunder.
The Albanese government came to power on an implied promise that its foreign and defence policy would not be much different than the Coalition.
Yet since the failure of the Voice referendum and the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, it has taken a hard left turn on international affairs.
Albanese and Wong’s greatest foreign policy success has inarguably been to stabilise our relationship with Beijing.
Yet even that has been replete with humiliations, including the Chinese’s Navy’s blasting our divers with dangerous sonar pings in international waters earlier this year.
At the same time they have broken from the US by signing on to a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza that didn’t even mention Hamas.
The PM eagerly went to China, but he and his senior ministers have been MIA when it comes to Israel (while US president Joe Biden, to his great credit, hopped on a plane as soon as he could).
The White House has already quietly registered the Albanese government’s confusion over Israel.
Is the Albanese government now fully committed to an undergraduate foreign policy that makes cheesing off the US the mark of its success?
Lord help us all if that is the case.
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Originally published as Australia depends on global shipping, but Albo has left us all at sea amid Red Sea crisis
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