The approach is not doctrinal, but is about speaking frankly to both Washington and Beijing.

Here is a foreign minister speaking about Australia’s China debate: “We Australians tend to have a habit, a cast of mind, which seeks for simplicity, and is uneasy with complexity, in foreign policy. We tend to see issues in terms of simple dichotomies – black or white, either-or, all or nothing.

“It is apparent in the ways we have traditionally debated foreign policy: imperialism or isolationism; alliance or independence; regionalism or internationalism; forward defence or fortress Australia, as if these were clear, unambiguous and exhaustive choices.

“It springs from a compulsion to simplify and exaggerate, to ignore questions of degree and qualifications, to sloganise.”

The result? Policy rendered in “schoolboy terms”.

That minister was Andrew Peacock, speaking almost 50 years ago. He was referring to reactions to then-prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s trip to Beijing in June 1976, where some believed the leader got too close to the Chinese leadership. Indeed, heads were still being scratched then about how a conservative prime minister could possibly visit China and Japan before Britain and the US. Fraser’s retort to that barb was curt: “The world changes.”

In his talks with then-Chinese premier Hua Guofeng, Fraser had proposed the formation of a quadrilateral pact — comprising China, the US, Japan and Australia — to hedge against Soviet ambitions in the Pacific and Indian oceans. It never eventuated. But the point was that an Australian leader had proposed an independent initiative without checking with Washington first.

The Sydney Sun newspaper thought Fraser had gone “all the way with Hua” and The Financial Review frowned on the prime minister for calling into question “our dealings with traditional connections in Washington, London and Europe”.

Half a century later and precious little has changed in terms of how these visits are discussed.

But to fall into the trap Peacock identified in August 1976 is to miss the new Australian diplomacy that is evolving with a re-elected Labor Government. It is not doctrinal, nor is it a sharp discontinuity from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first term, but it is about speaking frankly to both the US and China.

It might be called the “Australian straddle”: an approach we may see emerge from Japan, too.

To Washington, the prime minister has sent a reminder of that tradition in Australian foreign policy where Canberra, knowing that great powers often play fast and loose with this country’s interests, can express its independence both within and without the alliance. So Albanese stands firm on American demands for greater defence spending, just as Trade Minister Don Farrell is emphatic on Australia wanting to do “more, not less” business with China.

To Beijing, while going in measured terms beyond the policy of stabilisation into the realm of wholehearted but selective engagement, the prime minister stood firm on foreign investment rules, ownership of Darwin Port and raising the live-firing exercises conducted by the Chinese navy earlier in the year. Albanese was clear: Australia has differences with China, but these should not define the relationship.

The prime minister knows that today’s world is not some kind of cartoonish game. He knows that most, if not all, countries in the region are still balancing in some kind of way: wary of China, leery of US President Donald Trump. Though Australian officials would no doubt have briefed their Five Eyes counterparts and Japan prior to the China visit, Canberra does not need to seek permission to run its own foreign policy either, nor apologise for growing its biggest market.

But it appears that the alternative being demanded by some critics, such as  John Lee, Greg Sheridan and Peter Jennings, is a return to the “drums of war” rhetoric characteristic of the Morrison years. The catastrophising over Albanese’s lack of a meeting with Trump and the fretting over his private lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping betrays the very mindset Peacock critiqued.

The Australian straddle is by nature a delicate balancing act — especially when the Albanese Government is trying to calculate Trump’s next moves — but it is designed to have a more distant, but still close, relationship with the US and a warmer relationship with China. It has been imposed by the Trump administration’s new and callous approach to allies, bringing the realisation that Trump may drag Australia into actions against China that are self-harming in trade, economic and strategic terms.

One hopes it continues to be carried out with guile, the ultimate objective being to prevent war in East Asia. War between the US and China is demonstrably being calculated in Washington, and China’s military build-up indicates the risks are being contemplated in Beijing.

This straddle will also be expensive. To maintain the US relationship Australia has already posted US$1 billion to Washington and now flourishes a 50-year treaty with the UK to help support the illusion that Australia will acquire nuclear submarines by the early 2030s. It is to be hoped that the treaty has a get-out clause, as the UK and the US have in the existing AUKUS agreement.

The Albanese Government will have to handle the inevitable risks of this new diplomacy, including managing tensions that will arise with the US. The prime minister’s increased political confidence has brought him to this course, one that is also dictated by domestic politics. But he has the backing of the Australian people and is under no serious pressure from the opposition, some of whom appear to forget the clear electoral fallout from the “China threat” hot talk of the Morrison years.

Republished from Australian Financial Review, 27 July 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.