In doing so, Albanese has sought to wrap himself in Curtin’s legacy as a strong leader on security, clear-eyed about Australian interests and willing to take a tough line with America. Curtin did all that, but he did so from a position of strength. When the US joined World War II, Australia had already been fighting for two years. We had highly capable fighting men, with rapidly growing defence industries skilled at making munitions, weapons, ships and even aircraft. But without American power, Curtin knew the Pacific theatre would be lost. That’s why he said the Australian government looked to “America as the paramount factor on the democracies’ side of the Pacific”.
However, what we hear in Albanese’s speech is quite different. Amid the usual boilerplate rhetoric about how the alliance is “our most important defence and security partnership” are words about distancing Australia and our security choices from the US. He tells us that back in 1942, Curtin realised our security “couldn’t be outsourced to London or trusted to vague assurances from Britain”. Translation: it now shouldn’t be outsourced or trusted to Washington.
“We need an Australian foreign policy anchored in strategic reality, not bound by tradition,” Albanese said, suggesting that it’s tradition that defines our alliance with the US today and that needs to change – just how, he doesn’t explain.
Wrapping yourself in the mantle of a former great leader is a risky business. The analogy can often come back to haunt you – much like when former US vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy during a debate, only to be told by his opponent “I knew Jack Kennedy, and you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy”. That killed Quayle’s candidacy.
At a time of national and global crisis, Curtin had mobilised Australia’s population and economy to make the nation a significant military power. Even so, he knew Australia needed US power to survive and thrive. He made the case to the American people and to president Franklin Roosevelt in his famous 1942 speech. Curtin’s Australia was working in the closest of partnerships with America and his views were valued.
In contrast, Albanese’s efforts on defence are anaemic and his speech comes across as defining the differences and distances between Canberra and Washington while promising more of them.
But for a leader who doesn’t want to outsource our security, his actions on defence look odd. Albanese’s defence plans are producing a weaker military over the next 10 – perhaps even 20 years – while big projects such as the Hunter frigates and AUKUS nuclear submarines progress and consume the defence budget.
At the same time, the money the Albanese government does plan to put into things other than the frigates and submarines is increasingly going towards buying US systems and weapons. It depends on America’s goodwill in making us a priority customer for scarce military supplies and having large numbers of US forces operate out of Australia.
While it might be a great sound bite to talk about $57bn in new defence funding over the next 10 years, the Americans know this doesn’t make up for the lost purchasing power from inflation that’s affected our defence spending in recent years.
So, far from being proudly independent with our US ally, this combination of policies and actions makes us more dependent than ever on American military power and goodwill.
In sum, Australia wants US nuclear submarines and it wants to keep spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence – not 3.4 or 3.5 per cent like the US and NATO. And yet we have not had a leader-to-leader meeting to set AUKUS and the alliance on a firm course. It therefore comes as a very odd moment to emphasise how different our security choices are likely to be, even without the Trump factor.
In delivering this speech, Albanese may well have three quite different audiences in mind. The first is the obvious domestic one: Australians who dislike Donald Trump and Trump’s America, joined by some long-term, familiar anti-US voices.
The second target looks like Xi Jinping. It’s a long-term goal of China’s government to create splits and fissures between America and its allies. It will have been delighted with Albanese’s distancing from America concerning issues, such as on Israel and China policy.
The third audience is Washington, where the message will look simple, blunt and badly timed. At its most obvious, Albanese seems to be saying Australia isn’t doing a NATO anytime soon; namely, getting pushed into spending more on defence because America says so.
Maybe this is Albanese’s Liberation Day moment. Let’s hope it works better for him and Australia than it did for Trump.
Michael Shoebridge is director of Strategic Analysis Australia.
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Anthony Albanese’s speech on wartime prime minister John Curtin will be regarded as significant in Washington and Beijing – both for its content and its curious timing. In Sydney at the weekend, the Prime Minister used his John Curtin Oration to assert Australia’s independence on national security from the US, right when our relations with Trump’s America and Xi’s China have reached a critical moment.