‘Airbus Albo’ has forgotten he has his own plane

This week snapped Australia back to a half-century-long debate about its very identity in the world – are we forever to be a former British colony, or can we adapt to the reality of our location in Asia?

The immediate decision before the Albanese government was how to deal with two important heads of state asking for attention at almost exactly the same time. The prime minister had a long-standing invitation to the inauguration of the new president of Indonesia in Jakarta on Sunday, and a request for a visit by the British monarch to begin on the same weekend.

Illustration: Dionne Gain

From a technical constitutional position, Charles would have to take precedence, because while he may be king of the UK, he has a separate constitutional identity as King of Australia. That makes him our head of state. But the constitutional reality is that, as a constitutional monarch, he only acts on the advice of his prime minister, and any visit is subject to negotiation with the prime minister’s office.

On a philosophical level, the tension between the two requests recalls the categorisation of Australia by the American scholar Samuel Huntington as a “torn country” in his famous 1996 work The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. Why torn? Because Australians were “divided over whether their society belongs to one civilisation or another”, torn between the West and Asia.

In the same year, Chinese academic Tang Guanghui likened Australia to the forsaken figure of the bat in an Aesop fable, a creature that is neither bird nor beast, doomed to flit forever between East and West. The moral of the tale: “He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends.”

On an ethno-political level, it recalls the fixation of Malaysia’s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who did his best to shut Australia out of regional groupings, saying “They are Europeans, they can never be Asians.”

And, on a political level, it recalls the competing visions of Paul Keating and John Howard. Keating proposed the referendum on an Australian republic; Howard campaigned to keep the monarchy. Keating famously described Australia’s mission as “finding security in Asia, not from Asia”. Howard’s riposte was that “Australia does not have to choose between its history and its geography.”

What did Albanese do? He publicly told the Indonesian president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, that he would accept the invitation to his inauguration. Then Albanese withdrew, citing the forthcoming visit by King Charles. Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, went to Jakarta instead.

The Australian opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs, Simon Birmingham, was unimpressed: “The Albanese government should have been able to work through scheduling plans with the palace that enabled the PM to treat the royal visit with respect, as well as our largest near neighbour.”

Birmingham is right. Albanese should have done both. He informally welcomed Charles to Australia on Friday then flew to Perth to join a prominent annual fundraising telethon for children’s medical research on Saturday. All well and good.

The flying time from Perth to Jakarta is five hours. And the PM has his own plane. It wouldn’t have been a leisurely visit but Albanese could have made the trip to the Sunday inauguration and returned to Canberra in good time formally to receive Charles on Monday.

In Howard’s frame of reference – choosing between Australia’s history and its geography – he chose its history. It’s a shame when he had the option of choosing both.

But Albanese had another factor in mind – domestic politics. He wanted to be seen to be home, paying full deference to the head of state, and being part of the pageantry, part of his remedial post-Voice effort to persuade the electorate that he does, in fact, identify with the Australian mainstream.

But above and beyond Albanese, something has shifted in Australia’s strategic position to give London new weight. A few years ago, Australia’s relationship with the UK was reduced to little more than one of residual goodwill and friendly cricket banter. But AUKUS transformed it. This pact immediately made London an important factor in Australia’s strategic future. At a stroke, Britain went from the museum of Australia’s past to the colosseum of its future, where nations that value their own sovereignty will need to band together against the fast-hardening “axis of autocracies”, the so-called CRINKs countries of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

As part of this new reality, Australia’s strategic relationship with Britain now has a priority it hasn’t enjoyed since World War II.

Not that Indonesia is any less important. Indeed, as a threshold state standing between the South China Sea and the Australian continent, that vast democratic archipelago is likely to be more important to Australian security than at any time since World War II.

To Albanese’s credit, and particularly to the credit of Richard Marles, Australia has just struck a new defence co-operation agreement with Indonesia. The pact is remarkable because it provides for each nation to be able to use the military bases of the other. This is not a privilege that Indonesia allows any other nation. It’s an extraordinary mark of trust by a country proud of its tradition as co-leader, with India, of the Non-Aligned Movement.

And it was the incoming president, Prabowo, in his previous post of defence minister, who negotiated this agreement with Marles; he flew to Canberra to sign it in August. Neither country spoke it out loud, but both understand that its potency is as a factor to complicate any military adventurism by Xi Jinping’s China. He would not have been offended to see Marles at his inauguration.

So Australia finds itself in the fortunate position of being able to draw on both its history and its geography, forming intensified strategic arrangements with both Britain and Indonesia, simultaneously. Not torn in two directions, but strengthened by each.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.