In the second on our Rethinking Foreign Policy series Kym Davey says Labor’s foreign policy platform is out of step with current realities – clinging to US alliance settings while ignoring its own commitment to self-reliance and the opportunities of the Asia-Pacific.

In July the Australian Labor Party will hold its 50th National Conference in Adelaide. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles will be expecting a tame, media friendly and lifeless event. Their objective will be to administer a strong dose of policy futility to Labor’s delegates and supporters.

By contrast, the efforts of delegates will be critical to Australia’s future on an issue that most voters are allowed to ignore – Australia’s foreign policy. Central to those concerns is the absurdity of Labor’s international relations. At Chapter 7, Australia’s Place in a Changing World, three clauses standout in the current 2023 platform. The first describes the United States as Australia’s “enduring partner” and asserts that America is our closest security ally “formalised through the ANZUS Treaty”.

Only fools and the uninformed would consider the US an “enduring partner” in the Trump era. Displaying his malignant narcissism, Trump’s cowardly bombing campaign and his threat to obliterate the entire civilisation of 93 million Iranian people leaves America now accused of waging aggressive war. This is the “supreme international crime” condemned by the judgement of Nazis at Nuremberg in 1946. Those proceedings bequeathed the rules based order that Labor leaders love to cite.

In this age of fickle alliances, Labor continues to emphasise the security of ANZUS. The NZUS component lapsed in 1986 over the issue of non-declared US nuclear armed ships visiting New Zealand ports. It has been reworked as a bilateral defence and security agreement only. But Australia still clings to the 1951 agreement, although it merely requires consultation between the US and Australia in the event of a foreign act of aggression.

As the war in Ukraine and the treatment of NATO and other allies have shown, America no longer sees itself bound by the security commitments it made after 1945. Citing ANZUS as a protective treaty is a distortion promoted to encourage herd think. It’s a fake security blanket for incurious Australians. It should be called out for what it is not and consigned to an exhibit in the National Museum of Australia.

The second commitment in the 2023 ALP National Platform identifies our relationship with China as one “of great importance to Australia, to our region and to the world”. This, of course, is undeniable because our prosperity and the major drivers of our economy depend on China’s status as our largest trading partner. China purchases one-third of all Australian exports, supports some 570,000 Australian jobs and generates bilateral trade worth over $200 billion annually.

Despite its importance, Penny Wong reduces the relationship to a smug slogan, repeated ad nauseam: “We will cooperate with China where we can, disagree when we must, and engage in the national interest.”

If we in Labor see ourselves as realists dealing with the world as it is, we would at least apply the same “cooperate where we can, disagree where we must” principle to all our foreign policy relationships, including the US. We don’t. In 2026 we should. And, as Paul Keating and many eminent Australians have said for years, we know we can forge goodwill in Asia and use diplomacy and statecraft to make our security the region where we live.

The third commitment deserves to be known much more widely by the Australian people. Under the heading, Self-reliant defence and peacemaking, the ALP Platform states, unambiguously:

Labor’s defence policy is founded on the principle of self-reliance. Australia’s armed forces need to be able to defend against credible threats without relying on the combat forces and capabilities of other countries.

That declaration deserves scrutiny in the current climate of muddle and maladministration in Australia’s defence policy. Where, one might ask, does the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear powered submarine project fit within the parameters of armed forces self-reliance? AUKUS thoroughly enmeshes Australia into American military systems via asset procurement, joint training and shared technology platforms. Add to that Pine Gap, the Tindal RAAF base, US Marines in Darwin and the HMAS Stirling naval base. All of this is deep “reliance on the combat forces and capabilities” of another country.

A prominent example of one domestic alternative is Sam Roggeveen’s ‘ _Echidna Strategy_’. It’s a defensive military capability that would utilise technologies to make our maritime approaches inaccessible by deploying advanced underwater sensors, submarines, missiles and cyber defences. The approach proposes a move to a non-aligned foreign policy, working collaboratively in our region to reduce the threat of armed conflict, especially between the US and China. It also involves cultivating closer cultural and security ties with neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. These are the elements that should underpin urgent foreign policy reform in Australia.

Paradoxically, the failure of the Voice referendum in 2023, again denying justice to First Nations Australians, suggests a reason for our historical reluctance to seriously engage with Asia. Writing about how the Australian nation invented itself after 1788, Dr Peta Stevenson relates the fascinating hidden details of Australia’s Indigenous-Asian history. In The Outsiders Within, she documents the stories we are told and what has been left out of the nation’s official narrative. Her thesis is that “presumed membership of a privileged national community is not self-evidently good”.

Anyone who has travelled extensively or lived in Asia will know how we are still regarded as an island of white privilege walking in the shadow of the United States of America. Stevenson makes a sobering observation about those attitudes, noting that the 21st century “invaders”, the objects of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation racism, are now identified as migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Their demonisation is, she says, entirely logical given the refusal of white Australia to confront its original theft of Aboriginal land. That in turn creates anxiety that we might also become the victim of theft by our neighbours. Hence our deep historical paranoia about invasion from Asia.

Ironically, it is those same neighbours we have turned to now when our economy is under direct strain from the effects of Trump’s war in Iran. We have always been wary of our great near neighbour, the mostly Muslim peoples of Indonesia. Yet it is Indonesia that has moved first to offer fertilisers and urea to support our agricultural sector. And that other great historical nemesis, China, is assisting us in keeping supplies of aviation fuel flowing to our transport sector. Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Brunei and Japan have all given us supply assurances for the refined petroleum products we depend on to sustain modern life. In turn, Australia is offering a secure supply of LPG to Singapore and others. Prime Minister Albanese is now lauding the merits of regional cooperation with Asia.

Surely the scales are beginning to fall from Australian eyes. Diminishing US military advantage, geopolitical overreach and a shift in the moral, social and rational behaviour of the declining American empire are now obvious. It is reasonable to conclude that the rampant militarism of America poses manifest risks to our national security. Any Australian who is not seriously sceptical about the “enduring partnership” with the US is in denial.

It’s time Labor recognised the truth and transformed our foreign policy to reflect the new realities of the world. Our future is in the Asia-Pacific. As the Prime Minister said recently, “we won’t find our future security in the past”.

The 2026 ALP National Conference in Adelaide is the opportunity for the Labor rank and file to demand a fit-for-purpose defence and foreign policy.

Next in Policy Foreign Rethink is Geoff Raby.