For a while there, not being Scott Morrison was one of Anthony Albanese’s greatest assets.
It helped the new prime minister bank early wins, especially on the world stage.
More ambition on climate change was a welcome sight for the Americans and Europeans, both of whom had long wanted Australia to aim higher on the climate front.
There was a particular added bonus about not being Morrison when it came to the French, whose president famously accused him of lying. Macron really sought to rub Morrison’s nose in it with an effusive welcome of Albanese at the Elysee Palace mere weeks after the election.
The final piece of this geopolitical puzzle starts falling into place today, when Albanese touches down in China.
The relationship between the two countries is a far cry from what was hoped a decade ago when then PM Julia Gillard landed an unprecedented agreement with China’s leaders.
It was agreed there’d be annual face-to-face formal leaders’ meetings, beating other Western nations to land such a deal.
It was a different world in 2013. Back then, it was a world in which an Australian prime minister could foreshadow the prospect of greater defence co-operation, including trilateral military exercises with the US. The mere mention of such a thing today seems laughable.
The closeness wasn’t to last and by 2016, Malcolm Turnbull would become the last Australian prime minister to visit the country.
Much has changed since Julia Gillard’s visit. Australia would ban Chinese tech company Huawei from the rollout of the 5G network and later call for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. In China, Xi Jinping was further embracing his authoritarian instincts, appointing himself leader for life, and feeling under siege from a western world keen to counter his country’s expansion.
His retaliation against Australia was widespread, most noticeably with tens of billions of dollars worth of trade sanctions, threats on journalists and the indefinite detention of citizens.
But the May 2022 election brought with it a circuit breaker.
When he gets off the plane in China, not being Morrison will help Albanese. Some will argue this is a visit Morrison was unlikely to have been offered. But not being Morrison will only go some way in stabilising relations in the long-term.
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Saving face for all
Both sides have offered ground, while ensuring the other saves face in the process.
China has dropped, or is in the process of dropping, $19 billion in trade sanctions, in each case pointing to “reviews” of decisions rather than conceding it was wrong to have imposed the bans in the first place.
The Australian journalist Cheng Lei wasn’t released because it was a barrier to Albanese’s visits, it was because she had served her sentence, Chinese officials argue, shamelessly ignoring she barely touched the sides of the expected sentence for the crime she’s alleged to have committed — not that any Australian leader is willing to say that publicly either.
A week after Cheng’s release, Australia confirmed it wouldn’t cancel a Chinese company’s 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin.
Each side has been keen to bank a win, without seeking to publicly exploit the outcome.
The government insists Albanese heads to China with no plans of returning to 2013. This trip is about forging a new-world order for Australia-China relations. It’s about opening “dialogues”, and being “patient, calibrated and deliberate”.
The PM likes to repeat that the relationship will be one where the two countries “cooperate where we can, and disagree where we must”. Joe Biden, at a press conference with Albanese in Washington a week ago, cautioned the PM against putting too much trust in China.
Each side wants more from the other. For Australia, it wants the complete abolition of trade barriers and the release of detained Australians. For China, it wants Australia’s support to join an 11-nation Pacific trade deal.
Neither are likely to be resolved this weekend. This trip isn’t the end, it’s the beginning of a new journey together.
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How much is too much travel?
Australia has learned much about itself in the past three years.
It’s always been the junior party in its relationship with its largest trading partner.
And yet the recent years have reminded Australian leaders of the importance of their country to China.
Scott Morrison’s government was resolute in holding the line with China on the trade war. It proved a unity ticket with Labor. Anthony Albanese’s government seamlessly carried on that mantle and what resulted was China giving ground first.
It’s been a timely reminder about the importance of raw Australian resources to the country’s continued growth.
In ending the diplomatic freeze and welcoming Albanese, Xi, himself under pressure amid an economic downturn (the extent of which though will likely never be known to the outside world), can signal to the Western world a willingness to re-engage.
Carrying out this trip a week after a high-profile visit to the US has Albanese in the middle of a high-wire act, walking a fine line between Australia’s economic and security interests.
Success in DC got him halfway, achieving the same in Beijing will get him to the other side. But the dismount might prove the most consequential back home.
There is no doubt Albanese is conscious of how much international travel he’s currently undertaking at a time when inflation is up the wazoo and smashing household budgets from coast to coast.
The PM spent his week between trips barnstorming the country, telling all who will listen that he hears their pain and has a treatment plan for the diagnosis.
Albanese’s government, fresh of a Voice defeat, has a Reserve Bank considering another rate hike and is receiving increasingly ominous weather warnings about the summer ahead.
The US and China trips are essential for an Australian Prime Minister. So too is the Pacific trip that Albanese will make after he leaves Beijing next week.
It won’t be his last trip abroad for the year and that in itself is a risky prospect amid drying days and warming temperatures.
Prime ministers, famously, don’t hold the hose, but they can face political backlash for being abroad when there’s strife back home. Just ask Scott Morrison how that can turn out.