Leadership is absent in this once lucky country

Unfathomably, at this time, Anthony Albanese chose to spend six days in China, bowing and scraping to the communist leadership. What a dismal circus of self-harm.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seen with panda Su Xing during a six-day visit to China. Picture: AAP

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These are dangerous and testing times.

We have a government mired in fiscal, strategic and social delusion; an opposition preoccupied with doubt and self-fascination; a business community sniffing the wind (as ever); and a public distracted, polarised and misguided in a digital media malaise.

All this at a time of war in the Middle East and eastern Europe, global trade upheaval, economic duress under record debt levels, and the strategic threat posed by unprecedented Chinese military expansion.

Only strong leadership or good luck can navigate us through these waters. In Australia we are relying on dumb luck. Because the leadership is absent.

It is not only Anthony Albanese’s indolent prime ministership; cast your eyes wider and search for leadership elsewhere in the Labor Party, opposition, other levels of government, business, industry and public debate. There is little vision, action or urgency; we are like frogs in warming water.

Our elites have conspired across two decades to deliver a self-imposed energy crisis in an energy-rich nation. This has undercut our manufacturing industries and threatens the broader economy, while we allow unconstrained immigration to fuel housing and cost-of-living crises. China’s astounding economic rise has turned into a regional and global security threat, yet we have failed to fund and modernise our defence force.

We have made ourselves increasingly dependent on China economically while Beijing has used the economic coercion of trade sanctions against our justifiable foreign policy actions, such as calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic or deciding to boost our US and British alliances through the AUKUS deal that includes nuclear-powered submarines.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China. Source: PMO

Yet at this vulnerable juncture, Albanese has created tensions and uncertainty around the US alliance by rejecting an American request for assistance in the Middle East, splitting from its diplomacy on Israel and sending to Washington as ambassador a former prime minister in Kevin Rudd who has been personally and vindictively critical of President Donald Trump.

The US is reviewing the AUKUS arrangements while another embittered former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is telling anyone who will listen that the deal will fail because the US cannot produce enough vessels to satisfy its own needs, let alone ours. (Turnbull preferred his bizarre plan to reconfigure French nuclear-powered submarines with diesel engines; maybe we could try propellers on a B-2 stealth bomber, too.)

Unfathomably, at this time, Albanese chose to spend six days in China, bowing and scraping to the communist leadership. What a dismal circus of self-harm.

While the mercurial Trump tests allegiances and up-ends free trade agreements, including with friends like us, our Prime Minister is left hanging, failing to secure a meeting with the US President. Little wonder Chinese President Xi Jinping has chosen this moment to become chummy.

Albanese has allowed Australia to be played as a pawn in the superpower jousting between the communist dictator and the leader of the free world.

A Prime Minister who could not manage to spend six hours on the ground in Alice Springs to assess a crime spree and social dislocation has spent almost a full week being duchessed by China, failing to admonish Beijing for a series of trade punishments and military intimidations.

Weakness is provocative. Back home Albanese must await the next taunt from the bully because surely it will come, perhaps over the Port of Darwin.

In Beijing Albanese spoke like a beauty pageant contestant, aspiring to “peace and security in the region” without pointing out the hard reality that this has depended on the US military presence and alliances throughout the post-war era. He was either hiding his views on how to maintain security in the Asia-Pacific or he is ambivalent.

When I worked for foreign minister Alexander Downer in the back half of the Howard government, relations with China were fraught but constantly improving. Beijing was fascinated by our economic success, eager for our resources, mindful of our close security, intelligence and political links with the US, and watchful about our role in the region. Now China is toying with us, publicly listing grievances, punishing us with trade sanctions, intimidating us with spy ships and live-firing exercises and praising Albanese for a “turnaround” in the relationship because he offers minimal protests and even makes excuses for China’s actions.

The Chinese continue to buy our iron ore and our metallurgical coal to turn it into steel; they also buy our gas.

Yet they watch us weaken our economy with an expensive pivot away from fossil fuels, switching to renewable energy driven by turbines, solar panels and converters manufactured mainly in China with our raw materials.

We weaken ourselves while enriching our strategic rivals – genius. This is all done under the guise of reducing carbon emissions when the reality is that they now simply enter the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere rather than south of the equator. (The jobs also move north but stay there.)

Decades of indecision and inadequate spending have left our national defence preparedness below par. Submarine delays, poor drone and missile procurement, and problems with personnel recruitment and retention are key factors.

We have miserly national fuel reserves and increasing problems with electricity security. We have put ourselves precisely where any strategic rival would want us.

Since October 7, 2023, we have experienced an alarming decline in social cohesion with the emergence of violent anti-Semitism, notably among segments of our Muslim population. The Albanese government has been hypercritical of Israel, downgrading our support for the Middle Eastern democracy at the UN, further entrenching our diplomatic divergence from the US.

Albanese declares Australia is not “a central player in this conflict” yet his government has approved 3000 visas for Palestinians fleeing Gaza. This makes Australia a “central player” in resettling Gazans, taking possibly the largest cohort of any nation, apparently without adequate security checks.

Labor has admitted the immigration rate is too high and promised to rein it in, yet the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show permanent arrivals in May were the highest on record for that month. This is happening while the housing crisis escalates (Treasury advises Labor’s pledge to build 1.2 million houses in five years cannot be met) and unemployment is ticking up.

Having taken no substantive economic reform to the election, the Albanese government will now hold a “productivity roundtable” next month that increasingly looks like a forum to thrash out a government, unions and big business consensus on tax increases. There are few, if any, business leaders calling for significant cuts to government spending or eradication of federal-state duplication, much less ending the tortured and costly self-harm of the net-zero agenda.

The opposition under new leader Sussan Ley is conducting a policy, campaigning and organisational review. It is shell-shocked, depleted and unsure about its policies and values.

As a nation we are busy weakening ourselves from within while we are buffeted by external forces that are likely to worsen. There is no clear grasp of our national challenges, let alone the means to overcome them.

Trump is testing the Western world’s security and trade relationships in his transactional and unpredictable way. Xi is supporting malevolent state actors in Russia and Iran, intimidating much of East Asia, yet posing as a more reliable partner than the US.

Yet from Canberra and across the country we get mainly antagonism towards the US, denial about our economic challenges and endless pretence that our energy self-harm can save the planet. Our education standards are in comparative decline, productivity is stagnant, costs are escalating and the national debate is skin-deep.

The Albanese government is starting a fresh three-year term with a thumping majority, no useful plans and no real opposition. If ever we needed to be the lucky country, now is the time.