Show us respect, Andrew Robb tells Barack Obama

TRADE and Investment Minister Andrew Robb made two big but justified calls yesterday — he publicly censured the US President in a way sure to anger the White House and he intensified the push for Australia to join China’s regional infrastructure bank.

With Australia-US relations now in a state of delicate tension, Robb has sent Barack Obama a sharp return-fire message: that Australia expects to be treated with respect — not insulted — and that the President’s remarks in Brisbane were wrong, misinformed and unnecessary.

It is many years since a senior Australian minister has spoken in such terms about a US president. Robb went far beyond the remarks late last week of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who said “there was an issue” with Obama’s comments about the Great Barrier Reef.

The Robb remarks are both an honest expression of sentiment in much of the Abbott cabinet and a useful message to the Obama White House about the President’s gratuitous intervention in Australian politics against the Abbott government.

The question now is whether the White House retaliates and whether the damage can be contained. At stake are two testing issues — did the White House misjudge the impact arising from the Obama speech or was the intention to embarrass the Abbott government over its climate change policy?

Robb told Sky News’s Australian Agenda program yesterday he was “surprised” by Obama’s speech, he believed the President was “not informed” about Australia’s climate change policy, that his “content was wrong”, that Australia’s 2020 targets were “roughly comparable” to those of the US and other nations, that his speech gave “no sense” to government efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef and that his remarks were “misinformed” and “unnecessary”.

In short, Robb dumped all over Obama. Such a reply, sooner or later, was probably inevitable and healthy given the unnecessarily provocative stance of the President.

Mr Robb also intensified pressure within the government to alter its position and join the China regional infrastructure bank, playing down the security factors that led cabinet’s National Security Committee to reject membership at this time.

The Obama administration lobbied the Abbott government heavily to stay aloof from the bank, with Ms Bishop winning a cabinet struggle against the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, who is keen for Australia to participate.

Robb said the Chinese had told him the bank would operate on “world-class governance standards”.

He saw the bank playing a “significant” role in meeting the $750 billion infrastructure deficit in Asia and that Australia would be a “big beneficiary” of its operations. Taking Tony Abbott at his word, Robb said he was “certain” the Prime Minister would join if the Chinese ensured the governance conditions were appropriate. The reality, however, is that the NSC decision went beyond governance.

It felt that security factors precluded Australia’s involvement. But since then Abbott’s public position has created the impression of flexibility.

Robb left no doubt about the depth of his sentiments.

“It’s a great thing,” he said.

“It can be seen as a Chinese initiative but it needs to operate in a way that reflects all of the membership’s desires.”