Election 2022: Post-poll Tokyo dash ‘right thing to do’

Labor leader Anthony Albanese and opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong. Picture: Liam Kidston

Australia’s most respected diplomats don’t envy Anthony Albanese’s potential post-election dash to Tokyo – but they are in no doubt it is the right thing to do.

The agenda of next Tuesday’s meeting of Quad leaders – only the second held in-person in the group’s history – will be packed with issues that will dominate the prime minister of Australia’s 47th parliament.

If Albanese is that prime minister, he would, within hours of being sworn in, have the opportunity to begin establishing personal relationships with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“It’s absolutely the right call to go,” says Richard Maude, the author of Australia’s 2017 foreign affairs white paper.

“It would be an immediate crash course in the interests, preoccupations and world views of the leaders of three of Australia’s most important partners,” says Maude, executive director of the Asia Society Australia.

The leaders will discuss Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the state of the global economy, the Covid pandemic and, the elephant in the room, Xi Jinping’s China.

They will want to review the progress of the banner program of the first in-person Quad meeting: the donation of more than 1.2 billion doses to help vaccinate the Indo-Pacific.

Southeast Asia is one of the main regions for that vaccine pledge. It’s also a priority region for Albanese and his would-be foreign minister, Penny Wong, who will travel with her leader to the Quad meeting if Labor forms government.

Wong recently said China’s new security pact with the Solomons was Australia’s worst foreign policy blunder since World War II.

Biden, Kishida and Modi will be all ears to hear what the government plans to do about it.

“The Quad countries are always very polite about it, but the two parts of the world where they want Australia to make a really substantive difference are in the Pacific and Southeast Asia,” says Maude.

Japan’s ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, this week met in Canberra with the head of Australia’s foreign affairs department Kathryn Campbell to exchange “very candid views” on the upcoming meeting.

Whether it is Scott Morrison or Albanese, the Japanese as hosts will be particularly grateful if the PM gets to Tokyo after the six-week campaign.

“Whoever it is … you don’t envy them flying to this at the end of an election” says Allan Gyngell, honorary professor at ANU’s college of Asia and the Pacific. “It’s a physical commitment which would be noticed.”

If it is Albanese, there will naturally be a lot of attention on the club’s newest member. He will want to do more than just turn up to his first meeting on the international stage as prime minister. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” says Gyngell.