A good friend in troubled seas: Why Albanese’s Singapore visit matters

Singapore: In the past week, Anthony Albanese has taken in a papal inauguration, Indonesian military pageantry of the highest order and quality face-time with some of the most consequential leaders of a rattled free world.

Amid such headlines, backdrops and notables, it was enough to make Tuesday’s brief pass-through in Singapore to meet freshly elected Prime Minister Lawrence Wong seem a little … ho-hum?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese departs Rome on Monday for his flight to Singapore.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Such a view, if one held it, is a testament to Singapore’s stability, pragmatism and predictability more than anything else.

Australia and Singapore have a mature and steady friendship. There are no major spats or tempestuous personalities in the mix. And this is good, as the relationship is one of Australia’s most important.

“It’s such a different environment now, and no one can tell how it’s developing, but it’s quite clear it’s not going to go back to what it used to be. We are in a world of flux,” Wong said in a brief moment before the TV cameras, clearly referencing the global uncertainty emanating from the Trump administration’s great-power rivalry with China.

“I think the partnerships we have become much more important, and we share a very common strategic perspective of the world, Australia and Singapore. We want it to be free [and with] open trade rules based on strong multilateral partnerships.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong greet each other ahead of a meeting over afternoon tea.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Singapore, with a marginally bigger population than Sydney, is not only Australia’s biggest two-way trading partner in booming South-East Asia, but the sixth-biggest overall.

This is just short of India, with its 1.5 billion people, and above both the United Kingdom and Germany. It is also well above Indonesia, which Albanese repeatedly declared last week to be Australia’s most important foreign relationship.

Singapore loves Australia’s natural gas, gold and crude petroleum. It refines the latter and exports it back to Australia in multibillion-dollar quantities.

You can barely pick up a bag of fruit or a carton of milk at a Singapore supermarket without reading “product of Australia”.

If the massive SunCable project works out, the two nations will also be connected by a 4300-kilometre underwater cable sending Northern Territory sunlight to Singapore in the form of green electricity from 2035.

More broadly, Singapore’s geography at the juncture of strategic waters is as significant now, if not more so in these unpredictable times, as it was when Sir Stamford Raffles set up shop more than 200 years ago.

Playing a smart, middle-power role, Singapore maintains good relationships with China and the US, and has long been a beacon of stability among its regional neighbours, which are troubled with coups, corruption and crisis.

Anthony Albanese and Lawrence Wong were both returned to office on May 3.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It is a good friend to have in troubled seas.

“I think that middle powers in the context of the turbulence in the world have to step up,” Albanese said to Wong in similarly brief remarks to the cameras.

Australia and Singapore have escaped the worst of Trump’s tariff calls, with a 10 per cent flat rate. Still, global trade is Singapore’s heartbeat, and any disruption to the pre-Trump status quo will be keenly felt here.

Wong, who is paid a salary of $2.6 million, is still little known outside his homeland. But he seems considered and mild-mannered. Like Australia, he did not retaliate with further tariffs on the US. And like Albanese, he has previously said the tariffs were “not actions one does to a close friend”.

As a politician, he also played on the US economic threat to keep voters in the arms of the party they’ve always known.

The two prime ministers have at least several years of clear electoral air to build their personal relationship and strategies for dulling the unwieldy Trumpian knife.

Albanese and Wong were both elected on May 3. It was Wong’s first election since taking the job from Lee Hsien Loong last year. With a strong showing (Wong’s People’s Action Party, PAP, won about 65 per cent of the popular vote), the prime ministership is now essentially his for as long as he wants it and the party lets him stay.

Wong, 52, is only Singapore’s fourth prime minister in six decades of independence. Lee held the post for 20 years, long enough for Australia to cycle through seven prime ministers.

Both nations’ open economies are deeply wedded to international norms, but the styles of democracy are vastly different. Singapore is dominated by the undefeated PAP – the product, in part, of its good track record, expert gerrymandering, a compliant mainstream media and the party’s suppression of free speech and protests. Wong has shown no inclination to mess with the winning formula.

The main opposition party fielded only 26 candidates for 97 seats in parliament in the May 3 election. It won 10. Again, the PAP will be able to do as it pleases.

Albanese wouldn’t have referenced any of this, even behind closed doors. But he did point out that Australia was among the first nations to establish diplomatic ties with Singapore when it separated from Malaysia 60 years ago.

In that time, “the little red dot” has grown into a wealthy nation of influence, one of the world’s great financial hubs and ports.

Singapore and Australia are awash in bilateral and joint multilateral agreements ranging from free trade to defence. One of them, the Australia-Singapore Military Training Initiative, will have at its peak 14,000 Singaporean troops training for more than four months of the year in Queensland.

Another deal, the comprehensive strategic partnership, is due to be renewed this year and could have been the subject of discussion on Tuesday.

A little boring? Maybe. Important? Definitely.

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