Warm welcome to the Prime Ministerial Taiwan Gaffe Club

Anthony Albanese enters the APEC economic leaders retreat in Bangkok on Friday. Picture: Getty Images

Mistakes happen. Indeed, when it comes to speaking about Taiwan, howlers are almost a rite of passage for an Australian prime minister.

Anthony Albanese was inducted into the Prime Ministerial Taiwan Gaffe Club on Friday.

Asked on the sidelines of the APEC conference in Bangkok whether his government supported Taiwan’s entry into the CPTPP trade pact, the Prime Minister came up with this:

“And of course the CPTPP is a relationship between nation states that are recognised. Taiwan is represented here … as an economy. And there is bipartisan support for the One China policy … we don’t want to see any unilateral action, which alters that status quo.”

Was he suggesting that supporting the dynamic Taiwanese economy into a trade pact Australia had been pivotal in creating might upend the Taiwan Strait?

It sure sounded that way in his unsettling formulation.

Taipei has been braced for bad news from the new Labor government. That’s partly a function of the liberal democracy’s tortured position in an international system in which only 13 states, plus the Holy See, officially recognise it as a nation.

Thanks to Gough Whitlam, Australia isn’t one of them.

In my meetings with officials with President Tsai Ing-wen’s government before and after the federal election, it has been clear Paul Keating, one of the current PM’s political heroes, has unnerved many with his commentary on their future.

Pessimism can run deep.

“I’m a Taiwanese official, I always have low expectations,” one recently explained to me when talking about the future of Australia-Taiwan relations.

It is not as if the Labor Party has a monopoly on letting Taiwan down. Not once during the Abbott, Turnbull or Morrison governments did a minister visit.

The last Australian minister to come to Taiwan was then trade minister Craig Emerson in 2012 — a decade-long absence keenly felt in Taipei.

It was only 18 months ago that Scott Morrison, in an earlier prime ministerial howler, said Taiwan was governed by a “one country, two systems” model.

Xi Jinping dreams that was the case, but it is Hong Kong that is ruled by the “one country, two systems” formulation, which is an anathema to the majority of Taiwan’s 24 million citizens.

To his credit, our current Prime Minister visited Taiwan on a parliamentary delegation a few years ago. Not enough politicians in Canberra have.

Senior government sources have since clarified that Albanese misspoke on Friday. It’s welcome that this has been cleared up.

Now the PM should consider fixing a much more substantial mistake in Australia’s Taiwan policy: he should send Trade Minister Don Farrell for a visit. It is a trip long overdue.