Death of TPP can be laid at Barack Obama’s feet

The deal to resettle refugees now on Nauru, and perhaps some on Manus, in the US demonstrates the ongoing centrality of Washington to every international problem we face.

It also underlines the continuing benefits to Australia of the US alliance.

We can solve the Nauru and Manus problem because of our ­intimate relationship with the US.

At every level the US relationship furnishes options, benefits and leverage to Australia and it is extremely foolish to put it at risk, as Bill Shorten does with the continued self indulgence of his rhetoric against Donald Trump.

If the Opposition Leader had won Australia’s recent election he would have been trying, in Australia’s national interests, to ring and do business with a man he recently described as “barking mad”.

Being the alternative prime minister is different from being a political commentator. It carries some responsibility. Intelligent leaders will be trying to constructively engage the new administration in Washington as well as keeping domestic support for the alliance strong.

Continued abuse of Trump sends the wrong message.

Judge Trump now on what he does after the election. Shorten should watch out. Mark Latham engaged in foul abuse of George W. Bush, a leader, like Trump, unpopular in Australia. It just convinced Australians Latham was not to be trusted with the US ­alliance and national security.

Similarly, Shorten should pass the government’s legislation enacting a lifetime ban on people coming to Australia who ever tried to get here illegally by boat.

This is because the chief danger in solving the Nauru and Manus humanitarian problem is that it will encourage people-smugglers and their clients to see it as a weakening of Australian political will, and confirm in them their long held view that if you wait Canberra out, you get to Australia, or in this case America, eventually.

If that view takes hold, expect the flow of boats, the needless drownings and the challenge to Australian sovereignty to start over again. Shorten is playing with fire here for dubious political purposes.

At the same time the formal death of the Obama administration’s sponsorship of the Trans- ­Pacific Partnership, announced at the weekend, underlines the dismal failure in foreign policy of the second Obama administration.

The effective death of the TPP is the first, big, real-world result of the Trump-Clinton presidential election.

It gravely undermines the US position in Asia and throws into doubt any prospect for large-scale trade liberalisation.

Both Trump and Clinton ­opposed the TPP. However, the death of the TPP is primarily the fault of Barack Obama.

In all the years he had carriage of the TPP Obama never advocated for it in America generally, or in the congress specifically.

There were no media orgasms and postmodern photo-ops available to Obama from the TPP — it was just good policy — so basically he never said a word about it.

At every level Obama’s second term was a dismal failure, but most especially in Asia policy.

Obama virtually never made a speech nor had a public conversation about Asia in America. He made some speeches about Asia on those occasions when he visited Asia, but he had nothing to say to the American people about it.

He invested absolutely no ­political capital at all in the TPP.

Instead he had a typical too-smart-by-half strategy to get ratification of the TPP through the lame duck session of congress and hand it to Hillary Clinton before her inauguration. Like all of Obama’s foreign policy plans, it turned to dust.

Washington loses three things with the death of the TPP.

One, real trade liberalisation by Asian economies which would have benefited US, and incidentally Australian, business immensely.

Two, a template for the future which would draw Asia-Pacific and North American economies into an ever more fruitful economic integration.

And three, a demonstration of US economic leadership in Asia, which is now in tatters.

Meanwhile, John Kerry, the most ineffective Secretary of State in modern times, a man at home in the concert halls of Europe but not in the corridors of power in Asia, is in New Zealand on a glorified holiday involving a trip to Antarctica.

And this is after Kerry refused point-blank to come to Australia for the scheduled AUSMIN meeting because he had such pressing matters to deal with.

He refused all the dates the two relevant Australian ministers, Julie Bishop and Marise Payne, ­offered for holding AUSMIN in ­either Hawaii or Washington, and then finally offered one part of one afternoon, in Washington, weeks after the presidential election, on a parliamentary sitting day when he knew it would be almost impossible for Bishop to attend.