Anthony Albanese talks like John Curtin, but walks like Harold Holt

Genuine question: is Anthony Albanese playing some 4-D chess with News Corp and the hapless Sussan Ley on our relationship with the United States? Or do we just have a very shallow gene pool when it comes to strategic thinking?

On Saturday, the prime minister gave the latest John Curtin Oration to a Labor think tank. It was a fairly anodyne speech lionising the Labor hero, except that Albanese gave some slight — very slight — emphasis to Curtin’s history of foreign policy being dictated by Australian interests. Labor, in Curtin’s words, “had never followed the flags of other lands, or patterned itself on the movements which originated in other places”, Albanese pointed out.

“Our Alliance with the US ought to be remembered as a product of Curtin’s leadership in defence and foreign policy, not the extent of it,” he explained. “We remember Curtin not just because he looked to America. We honour him because he spoke for Australia … We do not seek our inspiration overseas. We find it right here in our people.”

That was enough for one of the resident buffoons at The Australian — the inaptly named American-owned political blog that reflexively prioritises US and Israeli interests over those of Australia — to attack Albanese for upsetting Washington and kowtowing to Beijing.

And in a ridiculous beat-up by the Nine newspapers, Ley — whose media releases still come postmarked as being from Peter Dutton’s office — was pressed into service to attack Albanese for diminishing our influence in Washington and undermining the national interest.

Perhaps Albanese is indeed keen to emphasise his focus on Australia’s interests, rather than making the preservation of good standing with the security establishment in Washington the be-all and end-all of foreign policy. And perhaps that was a priority, given this week he heads to China for important meetings with the leadership of the country that is far more central to Australia’s economic future than the land of the Mad King.

And perhaps he knew that so obsessively pro-American are sections of the Liberal Party and News Corp that the slightest mention of Curtin could be guaranteed to set them off, froth-mouthed — thereby creating the impression among average citizens that his government really is more independent-minded than its predecessors, and indeed might be capable of shifting Australia out of the orbit of an imperial overlord as Curtin had done from Churchill.

If so, well-played Albo and team, because nothing could be further from the truth. Albanese might want to invoke the spirit of Curtin, but it is very much the US orientation of Curtin’s strategic move that is the guiding light of Albanese’s security policy. He might quote Curtin, but his actions are those of Harold Holt and “all the way with LBJ” (or should that be Donald J?)

As Crikey has detailed repeatedly, under Albanese, Australia’s integration into the US military-industrial complex has reached unprecedented levels, not merely in defence but intelligence and foreign policy. We are Airstrip One for the United States in the Asia-Pacific, with our air bases hosting US bombers, our territory used extensively for US training for operations against China, Perth being turned into a home-away-from-home for US submarines and Australia being used as a storage facility for US military supplies intended for use in the case a conflict with China. AUKUS is only one small part of Albanese’s constantly tightening military embrace of the US.

This was confirmed recently when Defence Minister Richard Marles pre-emptively committed Australia to supporting a US war against China in extraordinary remarks that drew a savage rebuke from Paul Keating.

Albanese’s enthusiasm for quoting Curtin is thus the stuff of profound hypocrisy: he and Marles have undermined Australia’s sovereignty at every turn. No wonder he’s eager to let the febrile right create the illusion he is capable of independent strategic thought.

Indeed, so alarming is Labor’s integration of Australia into the US war machine that even some more thoughtful Liberals are asking questions: in dire contrast to Ley’s frothing about undermining our relationship with the US, Andrew Hastie — unlike anyone else in parliament, an actual veteran of the Forever Wars the US has prosecuted so routinely this century — has called for greater transparency over our relationship and what it would mean in the event of a conflict with China. “I think we need to talk about operationalising the alliance, building guard rails for combat operations, and of course defining our sovereignty. And this will make things clearer for us so that we can better preserve our national interest. We’re not just a vassal state, we’re an ally and a partner…”

In saying those things, it is a Liberal shadow minister (who happens to be from Western Australia) who sounds far more like John Curtin than the prime minister or any other Labor MP. We have to look further afield than the current ALP for politicians genuinely interested in preserving our sovereignty.