Albanese reaches for Keating’s Asian mantle
In a speech that canvassed all the issues on his foreign policy plate, there was one section that stood out.
The prime minister’s major foreign policy speech in Sydney on Tuesday night placed a capstone on his government’s approach to the world since it came to office in May last year.
It was also probably his most emphatic articulation yet of the Labor tradition in foreign policy and its grounding in Australia’s history and position in Asia.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the Lowy Institute. Flavio Brancaleone
In a speech that canvassed in mostly methodical fashion all the issues on his foreign policy plate, there was one section that stood out.
Anthony Albanese refuted the notion that a government reduce its activity to a series of “unconnected responses” to world events that “look no further than the end of the day”. The world instead was one of “relentless complexity”. That’s as much a riposte to the government’s critics as it is a statement of reality.
Decoded, he wants to be known for having a coherent and long-term view about Australia’s global and regional role. “Our actions,” he said, “have to be anchored in a strategic framework and shaped by an overarching vision for Australia’s future and our place in the world.”
To do so, Albanese plunged back into the history books as well as his government’s recent record.
John Curtin’s enunciation of the “Battle for Australia” in World War II was the baptismal font, for “that anchoring of Australian strategic policy in our region has been a core tenet of Labor defence and foreign policy ever since”, Albanese proclaimed.
He quoted former prime minister Paul Keating’s line about Australia finding its “security in Asia, not from it” and duly grafted it onto his own agenda – crafting constructive relations with Joko Widodo’s Indonesia, including progress towards a defence co-operation agreement; reaching out to and shoring up ties with Pacific neighbours; drawing attention to rapid economic growth and investment opportunity for Australian businesses in South-East Asia; stabilising relations with China; and having a relationship with the United States which, though grounded in history, was primarily looking to the future.
The speech took listeners on a guided tour through the pantheon of Labor’s past, as if the prime minister was walking metaphorically alongside the busts of former leaders, reading the honour roll of their regional achievements.
He rendered homage to Whitlam’s founding of relations with China and the partnership with ASEAN; the Hawke-Keating creating of APEC and Keating’s elevation of that grouping to a leaders-level meeting encompassing the whole of the Pacific Rim. There was a nod, too, to Kevin Rudd’s expansion of the East Asia Summit.
But it was the 1980s and ’90s that continues to occupy the hallowed niche in the party tabernacle – the period, he added, when Labor “established the enduring geopolitical architecture of the region”.
“It was a mighty achievement for a middle power,” he said.
This was an important reaffirmation of Asia’s central relevance in Australia’s international personality. And it is language we have not heard from an Australian prime minister since the days of the Keating government. Foreign policy, said Albanese, should never be “just a catalogue of things that happen to us”. He was making a point about Australian agency in a messy world.
His remarks had their silences, as all speeches of this kind do. The prime minister continues to look at India through rose-coloured glasses. And he is clearly growing in confidence that the AUKUS agreement on nuclear-powered submarines will deliver for Australia. Safe, though, in the knowledge that if it doesn’t – and there continues to be grounds for real scepticism that the Virginia class submarines will ever be delivered – he will be long gone from The Lodge.
Introducing your Newsfeed
Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.
Find out moreRead More
Latest In Foreign affairs & security
Fetching latest articles