Donald Trump's military abandonment of Ukraine and his blanket tariffs against Australia have gifted Anthony Albanese the chance to chart a more independent course for Australia.
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He would have the backing of an Australian public who now see Donald Trump as a threat to our security on a par with authoritarians Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, according to Australia Institute research. But will the Prime Minister seize it?
For too long Australia's national security, trade and foreign policies have been marked by lazy, unquestioning bipartisanship; it's time to democratise our approach. And Donald Trump may have just handed Anthony Albanese a golden opportunity to do so, ahead of the federal election.
At best, Australians can see the Trump administration is an unreliable partner. Australia's much vaunted free trade agreement with the United States, for example, has proven it's not worth the paper it's written on.
At worst? Well, who knows how bad the Trump administration at its worst will prove to be.
Trump wants to expand the United States' territory. He wants the United States to take over Greenland (with force if necessary), to seize control of the Panama Canal, and to annex Canada - raising not only tariffs against the United States' friendly neighbour but also raising plans to challenge or abandon border agreements between the two countries.
The New York Times and the Financial Times reported that in bilateral discussions, Trump officials had even raised the idea of excluding Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network which includes the UK, New Zealand and Australia. "What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that'll make it easier to annex us," said outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
However, it is Trump's brutal decision to stop all military aid and intelligence to Ukraine, even as Russian bombs were falling on Ukrainian citizens, that will most concern Australians, who have long seen the United States as a kind of guarantor for our security.
Trump's "nice country you have here, shame if something happened to it" tactics are those of a mafia boss, not a democratic leader.
Australia Institute research shows around half (48 per cent) of all Australians are not confident that Trump would defend Australia and Australia's interests if were we threatened.
And that national survey was conducted before Trump effectively switched to Russia's side of the Ukraine war. It is clear Australians understand what so much of the national security establishment refuse to even acknowledge: Donald Trump is a threat to Australia's security.
In this context, Scott Morrison's unilateral decision to cancel Australia's French submarine contract to pursue a fanciful $368 billion nuclear submarine deal with the USA and the UK will surely go down as one of the worst political decisions in Australia's history.
AUKUS is the perfect demonstration of why lazy bipartisanship is bad not just for our national security, but for our democracy.
The AUKUS deal had obvious flaws and risks that deserved deep scrutiny and interrogation.
From the start, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, criticised the deal saying, "I do not believe we will ever get any nuclear submarines from the Americans ...The American legislation says before any submarine can be sold to Australia, the US president has to certify that their navy doesn't need it."
Such concerns from Turnbull and other critics were largely dismissed. But now, Trump nominees to the Pentagon are publicly casting the same doubts about the deal, saying they're worried that selling submarines to Australia "could leave US sailors vulnerable".
Time has proven the critics were right about AUKUS all along. But Labor's decision to give bipartisan agreement to AUKUS to avoid being politically wedged on national security effectively stifled the debate, not just for the Labor party, but for the Australian public.
Australians generally think bipartisanship is a good thing. And it can be. But there also needs to be more room for dissent and disagreement. It is extraordinary how little our political leaders talk the differences in their approach to defence and security issues. As Dr Andrew Carr pointed out during the first Trump administration, a default approach of bipartisanship restricts policy creativity and accountability, reduces public engagement with critical issues and saps national unity.
"When politicians take even small steps to offer contrasting views or challenge received wisdom, a phalanx of journalists, academics and ex-officials march out to condemn them and demand they 'keep politics out of it'. The pressure to remain within the national security consensus is intense."
In reality, bipartisanship often means that one party (usually Labor) backs a policy to avoid being wedged politically, rather than because the policy has any particular merits.
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The fact is, national security and foreign policy are contentious issues that require and deserve robust debate and interrogation from the whole Parliament, in the same way that economic, health and education policies receive such scrutiny. It's too important to leave to just Labor and the Coalition, when crossbenchers like former intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie and former barrister David Shoebridge could lend their expertise and diverse perspectives.
To take just one example, parliamentary oversight of Australia's intelligence agencies is weak compared to others in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance. Australia's parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security (PJCIS) has limited powers to conduct its own inquiries. Unlike other Five Eyes countries, Australia's parliamentary committee cannot review any intelligence operations (past, current or planned) and minor parties and independents are excluded from even sitting on the committee. Labor has recommended allowing crossbench MPs and senators to join the committee, but it hasn't happened yet.
Mindless bipartisanship has left Australia less secure. Scott Morrison hitched Australia's security wagon to the unstable and unreliable Trump administration, with Labor's support. But it's not too late for Prime Minister Albanese to start unhitching us from Trump and charting a more independent path for Australia. At the very least, Australians deserve allies that make us feel more secure, not like we could be their next target.
- Ebony Bennett is deputy director of the Australia Institute.
