At some point in most prime ministerships, there’s a moment where everything is going perfectly for the incumbent. They’re seeing it like a beachball, their opponents are scattered and inept, they wield unquestioned authority and real-world events conspire to deliver boundless opportunity.
That’s how it is now for Anthony Albanese. It won’t get any better than this: a colossal majority, the removal from parliament of both opposing leaders, the sundering of the federal Coalition, the Reserve Bank cutting interest rates, and a rapid and successful trip to Indonesia, Europe and Singapore that involved catching up with several key leaders and a pope along the way. In international terms, Albanese is no longer the new kid on the block — he’s been around longer than Prabowo Subianto, Keir Starmer, Mark Carney, Friedrich Merz and Lawrence Wong of Singapore. And at this stage, he’ll be around for some time yet.
But where to spend his now-huge political capital? Everywhere he turns, there will be people urging him to adopt a more aggressive and ambitious agenda. And that’s the true Labor way: Paul Keating’s view was always that political capital was there to be spent on pursuing difficult reform. After he put John Hewson and the Liberals to flight in 1993, did Keating slow down the pace of reform and preserve his political capital? No fear — he upped the pace of reform, pursuing more industrial relations changes, national competition policy and compulsory super.
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As everyone knows, of course, Albanese isn’t one for boldness. And especially not after blowing much of his electoral goodwill and political capital in his first term trying to win a referendum. But he faces a challenge in that there are multiple opportunities presenting themselves that are historical in nature and which will require some boldness to seize, lest they pass Australia by. And all of them arise from the chaos and disruption caused by Donald Trump.
The first is China, which has responded to Trump’s tariffs and the deepening dislike of the United States engendered by Trump across the world with a charm offensive designed to make China look like a stable global power committed to free trade and a rules-based international order — and one without imperial designs of the kind Trump routinely muses about. China has offered to “join hands” with Australia and other countries “to jointly respond to the changes of the world”, less than six months after removing the last of its wolf warrior-era trade sanctions on Australia.
Labor’s resident representative of American military interests, Richard Marles, dismissed that offer during the election campaign, but wiser heads have prevailed since, with Albanese now committed to visiting China later in the year. As Crikey pointed out during the campaign, China will only join hands for as long as it is convenient to do so. No deal we thrash out as part of “joining hands” will ever be binding on a great power. But with that caveat, there are still potential economic and perhaps even security benefits to be gained from talking with the Xi regime.
Albanese seems less enthusiastic about the other strategic opportunity served up on a plate during his recent trip: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urging Albanese to “broaden this strategic partnership” between Europe and Australia. Just to be clear, she went further to say Europe wanted “a security and defence partnership” of the kind it already has with South Korea, Japan and the UK.
It’s a natural request: in the age of Trump, Europe is rearming rapidly and reaching out for non-US partners to work with on security. Albanese committed to considering Australian involvement in a European solution to ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Australia is already a strategic partner of NATO.
But as some defence figures pointed out regarding any Australian role in Ukraine, the unspoken issue beneath this is Australia’s military capability, or lack thereof. A genuine security partnership with Europe would invite real questions about Australia’s capacity to meaningfully contribute beyond intelligence from our part of the world. And with Labor’s slow increase of the defence budget mainly about pumping money into the AUKUS disaster — a program aimed at helping the United States sink Chinese vessels and enable US naval support for Taiwan in the event of conflict — rather than deployable land and air assets and a worthwhile surface fleet, a partnership with Europe would involve writing cheques we can’t cash.
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Labor under Albanese is still in business-as-usual, it-will-all-blow-over mode about Trump. And while the Mad King has pulled back from trying to economically annex most of Ukraine and hand the rest to Putin — or invade Canada — the watchword for the age of Trump is “chaos”, with the world only ever one orange-thatched brain-fart or lunatic MAGA influencer away from another crisis or breakdown of global order. Extra defence spending will require some expenditure of political capital, but it’s a necessary spend now.
At least on the flip side of extra defence spending, greater regional engagement and partnerships with neighbours in the Pacific and South East Asia, Albanese has a better track record, especially in the Pacific, where Australia finally “stepped up” in the way the Morrison government promised to. Albanese, by making his first post-election priority to visit Indonesia, and repeating Keating’s declaration that no country is more important to us, then visiting regional ally Singapore, is showing signs of building the kinds of stronger relationships with regional partners — who are among the most savagely hit by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs — that the new era requires. The challenge is to keep building on that across the region, while strengthening links with South Korea and Japan, the two US-allied countries in exactly the same boat as us.
Albanese has the authority, the majority, and the political capital. Does he have the strategic judgment, or will he remain the timid Albanese of his first term?
Who should Australia look to for new security and defence partnerships?
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