James Morrow: PM can make use of Dan Andrews fiasco
While Dan Andrews cosied up to Xi Jinping in Beijing, his diplomatic missteps may have handed Anthony Albanese the perfect chance to repair America's trust, writes James Morrow.
Dan Andrews just may be the man who saves the Australian-American alliance.
It sounds like a big call, given the way the former Victorian premier spent the week in Beijing big-noting himself, getting his picture taken with dictators, and backing in the Chinese Communist Party’s rather revisionist view of how World War II was won.
As one X user put it after seeing Andrews posed up with China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, “In complete fairness, if you’re in a foreign country and find yourself at a government organised photo shoot, you aren’t going to have control on who’s going to be in it … that said, Vladimir Putin should have known better.”
Andrews also did a cringe inducing interview with Chinese state-run TV (is there any other kind?) praising the way “win-win” is a “core concept of the Chinese government”. He went so far overboard, many of his previous defenders in politics and the press said this was all too much.
Which brings us to the US alliance, which has lately been the subject of much speculation.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has spent the past six months or so paddling as far as he dared from Washington DC.
During the election campaign he repeatedly made comments about Donald Trump and America that, while not mentioning either by name, indicated he had no time for the style of politics practised on the other side of the Pacific.
He’s also held fast to Australia’s relatively meagre defence spending, saying it’s for us to decide, not America – fair enough, though when the chips are down and if we ever need American help, this becomes very much a two-way street.
More recently he used his John Curtin lecture to rewrite the history of our partnership with the US to win the War in the Pacific, suggesting that it was independence, not co-ordination, wot won it.
All this happened while the Albanese Labor government appeared to be willing to let Australia drift closer to Beijing’s orbit, not only by increasing our trade based exposure to Xi’s whims but by going on a six-day tour of mainland China.
Which is why now, with outrage about Andrews’ trip extending even to segments of the media that defended his crushing of Melbourne’s economy and spirit with world-beating Covid lockdowns, the prime minister has the perfect opportunity.
Albanese has not cut Andrews loose yet and appeared to defend him up to a point on Friday.
Yet with the domestic politics of Andrews’ trip playing like an out of tune Red Army marching band, the prime minister has the opportunity to go further.
Overnight Friday, the prime minister also had another phone call with Trump that is said to have gone well. In anticipation of a possible meeting with Trump in a little over four weeks’ time, this is the chance for the PM to reset and publicly give credit to the president (this will kill him, but that’s why he gets paid the big bucks) while confirming our role in the defence architecture of the Pacific.
This does not mean pre-committing to fighting for Taiwan, but rather using domestic outrage over a former premier’s sucking up to China to undertake a salutary rebalancing back to our old friend that remains the best hope of democracy in a world beset by growling authoritarians.
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Originally published as James Morrow: PM can make use of Dan Andrews fiasco
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