The subtext of Anthony Albanese’s speech to the National Press Club could not have been louder if he had screamed it from the podium: the biggest threat to Australia is the contagion of American ideas. It was summed up in this sentence: “Australians voted against importing conflicts and ideologies that have no basis in our national culture or character.”
Importing what conflicts and ideologies? From where? The religious hatred Iran and its proxies mobilise across the Middle East and export here? The tyrannical ideologies that China and Russia want to normalise and impose on this nation and the world?
No. This statement was aimed squarely at the ideas the Prime Minister says Australians rejected at the election, the ones the Coalition stands accused of smuggling in from the US: culture wars and small government.
“Australians voted against mass sackings in the public service and the damage that would do to our social safety net,” Albanese said. Here you are invited to conjure a crazy billionaire running amok with a chainsaw in Centrelink. This is apparently what the Coalition intended with its modest, botched, proposal that the number of federal public servants should be reduced through natural attrition and that the rest should be required to work from work.
Labor successfully poisoned this well by broadening the threat from federal employees to the entire workforce.
“Australians overwhelmingly rejected policies designed to drive down wages, undermine job security and take flexibility away from working families,” Albanese said.
Typically, the Coalition reacted like a kangaroo caught in the headlights of a road train. In the end, the only trace of the policy was a bloody smear on the tarmac and flyblown meat on the bull bar. The result? Everyone in politics now apparently agrees the federal public service carries no fat and the highest-paid bureaucrats on earth should never be pressed to ply their trade from the vast, expensive, purpose-built empty offices that litter Canberra.
Seriously, if the Liberal Party cannot campaign for smaller government at future elections, then maybe it is time to fold the tent.
But I digress.
Albanese’s theme was clear: Labor saved Australia from becoming a colonial outpost of Trumpian America. Albanese knows there are rich political fields to be ploughed here and all available evidence supports him.
An extract from the latest Lowy Institute Poll records Australians’ trust in the US fell by 20 points in a year, “with only 36 per cent of the public expressing any level of trust, a new low in two decades of Lowy Institute polling. Almost two-thirds of the public (64 per cent) say they hold ‘not very much’ trust (32 per cent) or no trust ‘at all’ (32 per cent) in the United States to act responsibly.”
This is an astounding vote of no confidence in our major ally, and the fault lies entirely with Donald Trump. But what is intriguing are the signals that Labor sees enduring opportunity in highlighting differences with the US for domestic political profit.
When challenged by the US Defence Secretary to lift defence spending, Albanese channelled his inner John Howard: “We’ll determine our defence policy.” When Australia joined four other nations in sanctioning two Israeli ministers for “inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank”, the Prime Minister described the furious response from Washington and Israel as “predictable, frankly”. In announcing the sanctions Foreign Minister Penny Wong made the perfectly reasonable observation that Australia and the US did not always walk in lock-step.
“The alliance is an alliance that is strong and that has stood the test of time through administrations and prime ministers, governments of different political persuasions,” she said. “From time to time we have differences of views.”
There are good reasons Canberra should differ with Washington, but with a president as mercurial and transactional as Trump this is a highwire act.
There is also a hazard in dog-whistling disdain for the US President while downplaying the real and present danger posed by China’s Xi Jinping.
Observers in Washington might have noted the tone Albanese adopted when asked whether he thought China was a national security threat. “I think that our engagement with the region and the world needs to be diplomatic, needs to be mature and needs to avoid the, you know, attempts to simplify what are a complex set of relationships,” Albanese said.
Here the Prime Minister was at pains to de-escalate language, refusing to endorse the word “threat” when discussing Beijing. He turns strategic competition into constructive engagement, the opposite of the tone he applies to American populist ideological contagion. This jars with the 2023 Defence Strategic Review his government commissioned and endorsed. It clearly defines China as a threat and it is driving the government’s claimed step-up in military spending.
Six days before the prime ministerial address, Australia’s Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, hammered the point home. “Perhaps finally we are having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat operations,” Johnston said.
It’s a fair bet the defence chief was not talking about manning the domestic barricades against the US. In every conversation about defence the subtext always screams China. So the distance between this statement and the Prime Minister’s happy talk is the gap between a loaded gun and a diplomatic cable. And, in passing, if we are to be consistent about sanctioning governments for mistreating Muslims, when will Canberra target Chinese ministers for the state-sponsored terror campaign against the Uighurs? The parliaments of Canada and Britain call it genocide. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights calls it a possible crime against humanity.
Canberra chides Washington, soothes Beijing and hopes America will cover the yawning gap between our rhetoric and our defences. This Janus-faced divide could become awkward as Albanese tries to arrange his first meeting with Trump. It will be an interesting week.
Right now Australia cannot defend itself without American support. The Lowy poll shows the public still appreciates that. So does Albanese, which is why he and his ministers stress the enduring value of the alliance. But alliances come with costs as well as benefits, so it is time we faced some tough choices. Canberra words and deeds need to be brought back into alignment. If the Albanese government truly believes China is not a threat and finds the American alliance politically uncomfortable, it can abandon costly nuclear-powered submarines, spend the money on welfare and distance itself from Washington.
If it thinks China is a threat and America is a worry, it should be preparing for the worst and pumping money into defence based on Australia’s needs, not Trump’s demands. That has to begin with the Prime Minister levelling with the Australian people and echoing the urgency of the language of his defence force chief. This means annoying Beijing.
At present Labor is doing neither. It talks up defence as capability shrinks while gambling that America will rescue us. That is no longer a safe bet.
Right now we are speaking softly out both sides of our mouth and carrying a very small stick. We may soon discover that doublespeak is no substitute for straight talk and hard power.
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