Getting the Labor Government back in line with Labor history

Labor’s great foreign policy leaders put Australian sovereignty first. The ALP National Conference is a chance to revive that tradition and confront AUKUS.

Ahead of the ALP National Conference, which will be held from 23-25 July, Labor’s Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy at the National Press Club tried to persuade his colleagues that the Albanese government’s foreign and defence policies are in line with previous Labor government policies.

To illustrate his point, he named seven previous Labor prime ministers and very briefly outlined their contribution. His brevity hides how very different the policy position of the predecessors were to those of today’s government.

Going back more than a century, Conroy credited Andrew Fisher with establishing the Royal Australian Navy and leading Australia in the First World War. John Curtin, he noted, led Australia in the Second World War.

But Curtin’s contribution was not simply that he led Australia during the Second World War. If you’re trying to prove that your government is marching in step with previous Labor governments you have to recall more than this simple fact.

Curtin’s major contribution was that he prioritised Australia, not Britain.

He publicly rejected UK Prime Minister, Winston Churchill’s demands to divert Australian troops to Burma and in a stinging cable to Australia’s Representative in the UK, Sir Earle Page, bluntly declared that no location east of Suez was more important to Australia than Australia itself.

Curtin did not view Australia as merely an outpost of the British Empire. Australia was a sovereign nation and he spoke as its leader.

Conroy next tells us that Whitlam created the modern Department of Defence. Again, this is a trivial summary point compared with what the Whitlam government actually did.

Whitlam’s policy positions stand in sharp contrast to the craven Morrison government’s AUKUS policy that the Albanese government adopted. This is now the policy Conroy would like Labor’s national conference to endorse.

Contrast the adoption of this coalition policy with Whitlam’s action when elected to Government in December 1972. In the late 1960s and 1970s the Coalition government was as one with the US, having entered the war on Vietnam with Prime Minister Menzies falsely claiming that the US invasion sought to stop a downward thrust through Southeast Asia by Communist China.

The US and Australian Coalition governments refused to recognise the Communist government in Beijing as the government of China, choosing instead the Kuomintang nationalists in Taiwan as the government of the country.

In this environment, in July 1971, Whitlam, as Opposition Leader, took the courageous step of visiting Beijing. He was immediately accused of threatening Australia’s relationship with the US. But just as his delegation was leaving Beijing, it was revealed that US National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, was arriving to arrange a visit to China by US President Richard Nixon.

When elected to government later that year, Whitlam went one step further. At his first press conference following the election, he announced plans to recognise the Communist government in Beijing. Two weeks later the Labor government formally recognised the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China.

So in summary: Whitlam’s Labor government rejected the Coalition’s slavish devotion to US foreign policy, viewing Australia as a sovereign nation with an independent foreign policy; the Albanese government has adopted the Coalition’s position of Australia as a US vassal state.

The Albanese government’s foreign and defence policies accept the US position that China is a threat. China may be a rival and a threat to the US, but not to us. Nevertheless, we are pouring billions of dollars into AUKUS to help the Americans and the British build submarines that will – if they’re ever delivered to us – be well and truly obsolete by the time they arrive.

Curtin recognised that we could no longer rely on Britain for our defence. But the Albanese government apparently believes the Empire still exists.

AUKUS, Conroy tells us, is the greatest industrial project “we” have ever undertaken and is fundamentally about sovereign manufacturing and making the subs here. In fact, Australian sovereignty is nowhere to be seen. And nor will “we” live to see the Australian-built subs.

Under the revised timeline that you can be sure will be revised many times into the future, Australia is scheduled to get three second-hand US subs in the 2030s. The first SSN-AUKUS sub is scheduled to be built in Australia between 2043 and 2073.

Think about this: 2043 is 17 years into the future, 2073 is 47 years away. Think how much technology – not least military technology – will change in that time. The Ukraine war of the last four years revealed a dramatic change in land warfare with sophisticated and expensive tanks being blown out of existence by cheap drones.

How much will naval warfare change over the next 17 years, never mind 47?

The US Virginia class submarine is a big boat that can sail in the vast ocean depths. The AUKUS submarine being designed in the UK for delivery to Australia is a giant that supposedly will be deployed in the South China Sea.

According to a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the AUKUS sub will have a displacement of more than 10,000 tonnes, making it thrice the size of our Collins-class subs and 3,000 tonnes larger than the current US Virginia class attack submarine.

How detectable will that sub be? China is currently building an undersea sensor network – the “Blue Ocean Information Network” – comprising five interconnected layers spanning from the seabed to space.

Already in operation are helicopters with detectors that sense changes in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by large metallic objects moving in the water. And China has tested a drone-mounted quantum sensor system that can detect the tiniest changes in the earth’s magnetic field.

In his history lesson, Conroy goes on to tell us that Hawke and Keating built the Collins Class submarines and ANZAC frigates. This is a strange reminder.

The Hawke government followed on from Whitlam in continuing to develop Australia’s relationship with China, developing trade relationships and de-emphasising conflict. In 1984 – a year after Hawke was elected – an agreement was signed in Canberra to undertake a feasibility study into a China/Australia joint venture iron ore mine at Mt Channar in the Pilbara. The following year, Hawke escorted China’s Communist Party Secretary General, Hu Yaobang around the Pilbara, where they visited the potential mine site. The next year, Hawke and Hu flew around China together and formed a close relationship. And in 1987, Rio Tinto and Sinosteel signed the Channar joint venture agreement, China’s first major overseas investment in an Australian iron ore mine.

In 1984 China was Australia’s tenth biggest trading partner. The following year, it was our fifth biggest with our iron ore and concentrate exports worth a mere $179 million. Today China is by far our largest trading partner.

And it’s no secret what former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating thinks. He has clearly stated that there is no threat from China, in any strategic sense and argues that self-reliance and self-help should be the keynote of our foreign policy.

On his election, Albanese moved to repair the damage done to our relationship with China by the Coalition, especially the Morrison government’s comments during the COVID outbreak. But he and his minister then slipped back to the Menzies-era China bogyman foreign policy, with its essential ingredient of subservience to US foreign policy.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was pioneering earlier this year when he said that the old world order was over and proposed that, in the new world order, middle powers must act together “because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”.

Conroy calls the dish he has put on the US table “progressive patriotism.”

As it faces One Nation and its populist nationalist agenda, the Albanese Labor government might do well to consider taking the path of previous Labor leaders like Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating and developing a narrative of Australia as a strong, upright, sovereign middle power, joining others to present independent views to the world. Such policies might attract or inspire members to a party that is both shrinking in membership and failing to inspire the electorate.

The ALP National Conference could be an avenue to take the party in a new direction. Finding a way to extract the country from the costly and doomed AUKUS deal would be a start. Many Labor-leaning voters are opposed to AUKUS, as are many members in the branches. But having observed a number of conferences, and knowing how things are stitched up in advance, I’m not optimistic.