Well, at least Anthony Albanese is showing where his real loyalties lie: he’s getting the knee-pads out for yet another audience with his communist Supreme Leader, while yet to meet with the leader of the free world and Australia’s most important ally. To be fair, President Donald Trump is clearly less than interested in wasting time on Albanese, but that’s a self-inflicted snub. The US president isn’t going to bend over backwards for such a feckless, mendicant ‘ally’. But that doesn’t excuse Albanese bending over forwards for the Communist dictator.
While the government is scrambling to secure a meeting between the US President and Mr Albanese in Washington in the coming weeks, plans for the Beijing trip are well advanced and the prime minister could head to China first.
Well, Albo knows where Labor’s money is coming from, literally: at Labor functions, CCP-linked ‘donors’ hand over shopping bags full of cash. The results speak for themselves. Meanwhile, ‘Airbus Albo’, who normally never misses an excuse for an overseas trip when he can get it on the taxpayer dime, is also conspicuously absent from a meeting of world leaders at this critical juncture in world affairs.
Meanwhile, world leaders have converged on The Hague for the NATO summit, with the NATO “family photo” mirroring the current gulf between the US and Australia on everything from defence spending to Middle East policy.
Hopes of a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and the US President faded after Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba cancelled plans to attend, scuttling a scheduled session with Mr Trump and NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners.
Yet Albanese scurries off to Beijing every southern winter.
Multiple sources familiar with preparations for Mr Albanese’s China visit for the nations’ annual leaders’ talks were still waiting on final confirmation that the prime minister would proceed with the mid-July trip, despite the program having been largely finalised.
Well, he’s got to get his orders for the next 12 months, I suppose.
If those efforts failed and Mr Albanese headed to Beijing before Washington, it would underscore the current difficulties in the Australia-US relationship and potentially complicate his efforts to forge a personal relationship with Mr Trump, who is more hawkish on China than the prime minister.
Mr Trump has taken a hard line with Beijing, hitting it with punishing tariffs, halting semiconductor exports to China, and focusing US military power on preparing for a potential conflict with the Asian superpower.
In other words, he’s treating it exactly as what it is: a communist dictatorship.
In his own way, so is Albanese.
Mr Albanese has met Mr Xi three times since he became prime minister: in November last year at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro; in November 2023 in Beijing; and at an icebreaking meeting in November 2022 at the G20 summit in Bali. It is China’s turn to host the countries’ leaders’ talks after Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited Australia in June last year for the meeting.
He must be getting a sore head from all that kow-towing by now.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace vice-president for studies Evan Feigenbaum warned in a paper this week that a “quiet crisis” was brewing in the Australia-US alliance […]
He said there was also a US expectation that Australia would commit to supporting the US in a potential conflict with China over Taiwan, but there was “no way” Canberra would do so.
Dr Feigenbaum said there were “inherently political” differences between the alliance partners.
Yes: one of them is clear-headed about the threat of the Chinese communist dictatorship and is ready and willing to defend itself.
The other one is Anthony Albanese’s Australia.
