OPINION: Penny Wong is professional and diligent, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to change his advisers on China
One of the toughest challenges for new governments is foreign policy. Stuff happens from the day of the election and the prime minister and new ministers are forced to respond.Foreign ministers Penny Wong and Wang Yi met in Bali during a G20 summit.Both the new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have been busy. Not that they have had to deal with crises so far – Russian invaded Ukraine five months ago – nor unexpected events,Wong has begun well.
Labor’s strategy was not to have a crack of light between it and the government on foreign and security policy, so no need to think about these things.For Albanese, there was no need for his advisers to re-type the page, and they didn’t. Australian foreign policy of the past decade can now be seen to have been wanting. It has been left in the dust of great power rivalry.
This was followed by a five-hour meeting of China’s Foreign Minister and US Secretary of State in Bali at the weekend.Strategic competition won’t disappear, but the relationship might become less fractious, more co-operative.The Indo-Pacific as a security system has proved as vacuous as its name implies.
This is not about the micro detail of aid programs, or how many times an Australian prime minister or foreign minister visited the region, or our policies on climate change. It is about great power rivalry.
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