Anthony Albanese is now dangerously at odds with the government and the weight of public opinion on China and the economy — the two enduring issues for the nation in the post-COVID world.
So far, the Labor leader is offering no alternative solutions. And his decision to volte-face on the unity ticket he signed up to on Monday following the fake war-crime meme has now left Labor dangerously isolated on China.
It is hard to imagine there would be strong community sympathy for the Opposition Leader’s claim that it is Scott Morrison who has poisoned the well. Very few world leaders believe it either.
The US State Department on Wednesday issued a strongly worded defence of Australia, stating: “The CCP’s latest attack on Australia is another example of its unchecked use of disinformation and coercive diplomacy. Its hypocrisy is obvious to all.”
That hypocrisy refers to its poor record on human rights. But it could easily extend to its other questionable practices, including reports of its recent use of an electromagnetic weapon to “microwave” India’s border troops.
Through Beijing’s own actions, other countries have now begun to join the dots between its list of 14 grievances against Australia, its trade tactics and its coercive diplomacy. Any legitimacy that China may have tried to claim in its arbitrary and punitive actions against selected Australian exports has gone. The motivations have been exposed, even if the strategy and end game still remain obscure.
Albanese, however, has chosen to take a different path in his assessment of what is going on, choosing to blame Morrison, which would at best seem inconsistent with the mounting nationalism in Australia that Beijing itself has stoked.
At the same time, there appears to be no coherent or cohesive Labor message. On Monday morning, three members of Albanese’s team hit the airwaves to denounce Morrison’s handling of China in the wake of Beijing’s decision to impose a 212 per cent tariff on wine, blaming him for the deterioration in the relationship.
It was an ill-timed attack, considering only several hours later the offending meme popped up on Twitter. Not that they could have known, but it signalled where Labor thought it had a row to hoe. The next day, Labor defence spokesman Richard Marles was at pains to point out that the opposition stood with the government.
“I think it’s important there is unanimity at this moment between the parties of government in Australia in response to what I think you rightly just described then as a cheap and offensive shot, because that’s exactly what it was,” he said. “And I think it was really important that the country spoke with one voice yesterday in its condemnation of this tweet.”
Now, having briefly stood shoulder to shoulder with Morrison, Albanese has returned to politics as usual, ending what some may have seen as a facade of temporary bipartisanship.
“This government seems to have presided over a complete breakdown of relationships,” he said. “The fact that ministers can’t pick up the phone to each other, I find that extraordinary. When I was a minister, Chinese ministers visited Australia and I visited there in our national interest about promoting Australian jobs.”
Albanese knows that when he was a minister, China was behaving in a very different way. Morrison’s view would be that it is China that has changed, not Australia.
This is even the view of Kevin Rudd, who said Morrison had a harder job of managing the relationship than his predecessors, and through little fault of his own.
But it all appears to be an elaborate plan by Albanese to link the China troubles to the economic recovery through an overarching theme of jobs in a bid to target pockets of electoral discontent.
He is relying on the public to join another set of dots suggesting that Morrison killed the China relationship when the economy needed it the most. But this will be a very difficult message to sell.
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