One of the many traits that inept political leaders share is their frequent invoking of a great predecessor. Praise them and their legacy enough, and eventually the incumbent will be seen as the political reincarnation of the statesman concerned.
Or so they hope. More often than not irony frustrates this exercise in illusion. Take for example Anthony Albanese’s speech at the John Curtin Oration last week.
Hailing Curtin for overriding British prime minister’s Winston Churchill’s directive to divert home-bound Australian troops to Burma, Albanese referred to that official communique.
It was “a study in the power of plain speaking,” he proclaimed.
No argument there but just consider what Albanese said in the same speech regarding foreign alliances and the defence of this country.
This would consist of “Investing in our capabilities – and investing in our relationships,” he said.
“We are links in a long chain – but we are not shackled to our past,” he added.
Our “inspiration” is not “overseas”, but “right here in our people,” he pontificated. We “carry it with us, in the way we engage with the world”.
This was anything but direct language, but this waffling was not without a message. Albanese went on to conceptualise an “international rules-based order” as the stabilising factor in the Indo-Pacific as opposed to a “great power peace”.
A prime ministerial ignorance of realpolitik is bad enough, but this message was more foreboding. Albanese publicly implied on the eve of his visit to Beijing that Australia’s alliance with the US called for a reassessment. In plain speak, his strategy appeared more about appeasing the panda than it did reinforcing ties with our closest ally.
Notably, Albanese made no mention of AUKUS. Given a sceptical Trump administration is reviewing that agreement, now would have been the time to stress Australia’s commitment. This raises two possibilities. Either Albanese fears an adverse decision and he is already softening us up for the news with his “we will decide” narrative. Or is his government, which is the most left-wing since Gough Whitlam’s, deliberately undermining AUKUS?
Asking Albanese about the future of AUKUS is pointless. As we know all too well, his standard “We haven’t changed our position” response only adds to speculation.
Whatever his answer, he would still insist that ultimately defence decisions are a sovereign matter, hence his Curtin analogy. But as stressed in this masthead, Albanese’s lionising of Curtin as leading the “Battle for Australia” is parochially revisionist.
Nonetheless his claim to continue Curtin’s legacy invites some parallels, although not the kind Albanese would welcome. As opposition leader in the months leading to the outbreak of the Second World War, Curtin maintained a pacifist stance that was dangerously naive.
In May 1939, in what was clearly an ill-disguised dig at Churchill (then a backbencher), Curtin complained the “efforts of the British government in its negotiations for peace were to some extent made difficult by the partisan activities of those who are more concerned, as it were, with fighting Hitler than with establishing peace”.
And in April 1938, Curtin decried the Lyons government for framing a “greatly enlarged policy for national defence,” asking rhetorically if there were “any prospective developments in Europe to justify war hysteria in Australia out of which the war profiteers will reap a harvest”.
In that same speech he played down the looming danger in the Pacific.
“If not in Europe, where else does the danger lie,” he said dismissively.
And while approving the move by the Lyons government to seek closer ties with the US, Curtin declared “those negotiations might be a more valuable contribution towards Australian safety than would be the expenditure of millions of pounds on defence”.
That was too much for treasurer Richard Casey, a Gallipoli veteran and later governor-general.
“Leaning upon someone else,” he snorted in disgust. Sound familiar?
Albanese did not mention these aspects. That said, I doubt he even knew of them.
As for his statement that Australia’s alliance with the US “ought to be remembered as a product of Curtin’s leadership in defence and foreign policy,” that greatly exaggerates the standing of the Curtin government with the Roosevelt administration.
A far more insightful and sober account is found in the late Philip Ayres’s biography of former High Court chief justice Owen Dixon, who served as Australia’s Minister to the US throughout 1942-44. Upon arriving at his posting, he quickly ascertained the government he represented was not respected.
“In fact the key people in Washington had become fed up with Australia’s incessant demands and with what they saw as its extraordinary myopia – as if other countries were not equally imperilled by the Axis,” wrote Ayres.
And this insufferable neediness gave way to adventurism of the most dangerous kind. In July 1942, US Army chief of staff George C. Marshall confided to Dixon an appalling secret.
“He set out the history of the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, saying that at one stage the Australian government had nearly destroyed Australia because they had said publicly that the Japanese forces had congregated in the Marshall Islands.”
As Marshall explained, the enemy’s location could only have been known through the Allied breaking of Japanese codes. The consequences of the Japanese discovering this were dire.
“Repeatedly the Australian government had broken necessary secrecy,” wrote Ayres. Marshall was “very frightened of them, knowing he could not tell them anything with safety”.
By April 1943, well after the likelihood of a Japanese invasion of Australia had been ruled out, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt had tired of Curtin’s constant dissent over Allied strategy. He no longer answered the prime minister’s messages himself, instead delegating the responsibility.
Curtin had unnecessarily expended political capital, thus weakening his influence. Not only Roosevelt but also the president’s service chiefs were disdainful of his protests, their response best summarised by Dixon.
“When will he (Curtin) take a wider view of Allied strategy,” he lamented.
Albanese was right to extol Curtin for his selfless devotion as a wartime prime minister. But he exaggerates his achievements in foreign diplomacy. And disconcertingly, Albanese has learned nothing from Curtin’s mistakes.
Still, Curtin was a great Australian. He had humility, he was tenacious (particularly in overcoming his party’s bitter opposition to sending conscripts to fight outside Australia), and he never relinquished his leadership, even though he knew that persisting in the role would cost him his life. To this day he is still admired.
No wonder Albanese wants to be associated with his memory. In fairness to him, he shares at least two things with Curtin.
First, both have held the office of prime minister. And second, both have lived in the Lodge.
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