When, in his first term as US president, Donald Trump confronted European NATO members, his message was clear: pull your weight or America walks. We’re taking our money, tanks, planes and people with us. Europe will be on its own.
Europe got the message. Most NATO countries lifted their defence spending, many meeting their treaty obligations for the first time in decades.
Australia’s political class aren’t nearly so quick on the uptake. Even after the bluntest possible warning from Washington, Canberra is still welching on defence.
We’re in danger of missing the historic significance of what happened at the Shangri-La security dialogue involving US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles and, back home, Anthony Albanese. Historians may well look back on this moment as a pivot point in Australian history.
The message is clear: the free ride under the American umbrella is over. Allies who won’t pull their weight will be left behind.
Hegseth had two historically important messages. Marles claimed to hear them. Albanese treated both with contempt.
Indeed, Albanese flatly rejected the call. You can be sure that Donald Trump is well aware of the Australian PM’s fecklessness.
Hegseth is a complete Trump loyalist and it can only be that these messages to Beijing are fully authorised by Donald Trump.
And we can be fairly certain that Albanese’s are fully authorised by Xi Jinping. After all, his defence minister has admitted that he had speeches vetted by Chinese Communist Party officials.
Who seem to be the only people the Albanese government listens to on defence. As well as arrogantly dismissing Hegseth’s warning, the PM attacks the government’s own specialist, bipartisan defence think tank.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute last week issued a sober, rigorous, conscientious report in which it said the current defence budget was wholly inadequate to the strategic tasks. Albanese abused ASPI for this, accused them of being politically partisan and said they needed to take a good look at themselves.
Yet every single person the Albanese government itself has officially appointed for guidance on defence policy says the same thing as ASPI. Former defence force chief Angus Houston, whom Albanese tapped to lead the Defence Strategic Review, says we need at least 3 per cent of GDP. So does Peter Dean, the lead author of the DSR. So does Dennis Richardson, former head of defence. So does Kim Beazley, the last Labor defence minister of any real consequence. Do these men also need to take a good look at themselves?
The grim fact is that, at a time when almost every serious thinker acknowledges that we are facing the most perilous strategic environment since WWII, Albanese is leading us down the road to disaster. By alienating our most important ally, Australia has everything to lose from Albanese’s arrogance and incompetence. If America walks away from the alliance, it would lose little but a useful base in the South Pacific. Australia, on the other hand, would be utterly helpless.
Albanese has decided not to take Australian security seriously. The Trump administration is right to call him out over it. Albanese has weakened the alliance, and our security.
In blunt terms, it’s little short of a betrayal of the nation. Don’t just take my word for it.
Anthony Albanese has been warned by a former army chief that the government risks “abrogating its responsibility” to the public and those in uniform by failing to increase military funding, as the co-author of the defence strategic review called for spending to be lifted to between 3 and 3.5 per cent of GDP […]
Former chief of army Peter Leahy said Labor must take urgent action to moderate increasing global risks being exacerbated by the US-China trade war and called for “significantly more funding for defence now and well into the future” […]
“This is an abrogation of the primary responsibility of our elected representatives to provide for the defence and security of the nation and the safety of our servicemen and women.”
But entirely in tune with what we could be forgiven for suspecting Albanese’s first loyalty: to Beijing
Of course, I could be completely wrong. Maybe Albanese and the rest of the Labor Party aren’t in thrall to the Chinese Communist Party, who have, after all, poured so much money into their re-election finances. Maybe they aren’t the quislings of the 21st century.
But if they were: what would they be doing differently?
