“The Chinese – having failed to gain consensus for their latest proposal – will fold their tents and redirect their expansionist ambitions to other more easily infatuated areas of the globe,” says columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

THE Albanese government’s response to the Chinese courting of our Pacific neighbours is pretty much on the money. 

It’s focused on the new government’s climate-change policy. And it leaves open new immigration measures to increase islanders to temporary and permanent employment in a country crying out for people to fill a range of desperately needed skills.

Add to that a program to raise islanders’ education standards at home and in Australia. Co-ordinate the policy with Jacinta Ardern’s NZ, and the Chinese – having failed to gain consensus for their latest proposal – would eventually fold their tents and redirect their expansionist ambitions to other more easily infatuated areas of the globe.

It won’t be easy and there will be speed bumps along the way – such as the provision of yet more housing in a market stretched to breaking point; and a trade union movement seeking to raise wages at a time of growing inflation.

But the real test will be to continue to compete with China in an arena where behind the goal posts at one end is the Defence Establishment – captained by Drum Major Dutton – barracking for battle. While in the press box the Murdoch media is firing up the fans in the cheap seats to wave the flags of combat. And as usual, the old generals will be fighting the last Pacific war.

That’s when my old boss, John McEwen as External Affairs Minister in 1940, organised a coup against the Vichy French administration of New Caledonia with their links to Japan, replaced them with Free French volunteers, and carted the Vichy folk off to Vietnam in a Norwegian freighter. This denied the Japanese an air base at Noumea and an American general later told him it shortened the war by six months. 

The parallels are obvious, the more so since Albo clearly established an immediate chummy relationship with Joe Biden at the Quad meeting in Japan. 

But let’s not forget the smoke and mirrors that cloak all such demonstrations of eternal friendship and diplomatic loyalty.

One corner of the Quad, India’s Narendra Modi is a democrat in name only. Every instinct of the man is taking him down the path to Hindu autocracy.

His administration is utterly corrupt and riven with the lunacy of caste. He refuses to condemn Putin’s war on Ukraine, let alone join in the West’s support for the defenders. 

At another corner, Joe Biden is facing a disaster in the mid-term elections that will lose him the House of Reps and the Senate; and with the Supreme Court already in Republican hands, he’ll be a doddery lame duck even if he’s around to run for a second term in 2024. And since V-P Kamala Harris has lost all the support she briefly enjoyed and the rest of the Democrat cupboard is bare, either Donald Trump or his equally scary Florida governor Ron DeSantis will rumble into the Oval Office. And neither would give a hoot for the South Pacific, the climate “hoax”, or Joe’s pal Down Under.

This is not necessarily bad news. But it does mean that we shouldn’t depend on Quads or ANZUS Treaties – and especially not AUKUS where Britain and the US are just in it for the money – in the form of a submarine fleet. 

However, there is an obvious alternative: we could finally accept our geographic reality and have the good sense and maturity to develop our own independent foreign policy, one that incorporates an accord with the South Pacific, Indonesia and south-east Asia. We could seek our security not from Asia but in Asia? Or did someone else say that already?

robert@robertmacklin.com