China cannot change who we are
Under Labor, “a stable and constructive relationship with China” is serving Australia’s interest, the Prime Minister says. But while he has played up trade and cultural ties over green steel, medical technology, tennis and tourism, there is no denying that China is pulling away from Australia’s biggest export commodity, iron ore, with its Simandou mine in Guinea, in West Africa, to open later in the year.
After four meetings with Xi Jinping, Mr Albanese has yet to meet Donald Trump even once after Mr Trump’s election eight months ago. Had Mr Albanese made a flying visit to Washington to meet Mr Trump shortly after the November 2024 poll, allowing them to establish an early rapport, much of the disquiet over this week’s China visit would have been avoidable.
The new parliamentary term starting next week should allow Mr Albanese to focus on the nation’s most important relationship, with the US. A visit to Mr Trump in Washington is a must, as is increasing Australia’s defence budget beyond its current inadequate 2 per cent, rising to 2.4 per cent of GDP in 2033-34.
Australians want to hear more about the plans of Mr Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Jim Chalmers to spend more on missiles, drones, frigates and nuclear submarine facilities, reported by The Australian in late June. Ignoring China’s military build-up would be deeply irresponsible.
But Mr Albanese’s six-day visit to China, Alan Dupont writes on our website, has heightened concerns that Australia is “slowly drifting away from the US under the centrifugal pull of an increasingly powerful and ruthlessly focused China”. Now and in coming years is the time to prove otherwise.
As we reported on Friday, Chinese interests have invested in two commercial properties within precincts at the Port Kembla and Newcastle ports in NSW earmarked for AUKUS submarine bases. In China, Mr Albanese was firm in rejecting Chinese company Landbridge’s ownership of the Port of Darwin, as he has been for years. He also defended the need for AUKUS. The government must be similarly resolute as regards investments by Chinese interests in port land parcels close to potential AUKUS bases.
As former Defence Department analyst and critic of the AUKUS agreement Hugh White tells Paul Kelly in Inquirer, China’s strategic ambitions in Asia are fundamentally different from Australia’s view about how the region should be. Our vision is that the US should remain the primary player, or a primary player. “But China’s fundamental ambition is to push the US out of Asia and take its place,” Professor White said.
Regardless of Australia’s current warmer relationship with China, that vision is not one the nation can ever share. ANZUS, AUKUS and defence ties with the US remain the bedrock of our security.
Energy transition that is becoming an end unto itself
High costs and inefficiency are the opposite of productivity. But there’s a growing danger that an overly ambitious net-zero transition will become the key performance indicator for government.
Bring out the Lions’ inner tabbies
The concept of one country taking on four in rugby union is so intensely compelling for a nation that loves to win, and often does at most games. The Wallabies’ encounter with the British & Irish Lions on Saturday will be monumental.
The implications of Scott Morrison’s warning that Beijing has moved from a strategy of “bullying” Canberra for its desired outcomes to “charming and flattering” the Albanese government while isolating it from the US needs to be considered. Anthony Albanese says the Coalition, under his predecessor, did not manage “a phone conversation between a single minister in Australia and our major trading partner”. But that was China’s fault; it flatly rejected Mr Morrison’s sensible call for an inquiry about the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan.