CAMERON MILNER: Albanese’s false hope of Hamas surrender gives rise to hollow recognition gesture

Anthony Albanese continued his Tour de Farce this week with the recognition by Australia at the United Nations of a Palestinian state still run by Hamas.

The official recognition by Australia follows a week of failed deals with Vanuatu and PNG due to Chinese interference and Albanese staying mute in the Solomon Islands all while Chinese cops fingerprint every citizen and turn the place into a police state.

Still, he’s in New York now, making a brand new start of it for Hamas.

It was a crowning achievement for Penny Wong too, who also schlepped her way to New York for the moment all those anti-Israel ALP conference motions had trained her for.

No mention of the slaughter of innocents on October 7, just mealy-mouthed platitudes that somehow by Australia abandoning Israel that Hamas would put down their arms and retire from terrorism.

And release the hostages. Stop hijacking UN aid trucks. Stop imposing martial law on Gazans. Stop their leadership living large in five-star villas in Doha while their mates in Iran use Muslim crime gangs in Australia to fire bomb synagogues.

Albanese may well have the Liberals’ measure back in Australia, but his hope that Hamas will give up on Palestine because he asked them to leave is pure fantasy.

It’s the very worst of leftie virtue-signalling. “I made a speech to the UN you know, I did my part for world peace,” will be Albo’s recollection in his soon-to-be-written autobiography – Me, Myself and I.

Australian’s foreign policy compass is currently somewhere in the Bermuda triangle, exactly where you’d expect it to be with Labor’s hard Left in control.

Apparently there needs to be a seat at the UN for a country that hasn’t had an election since 2005, with more than half of it run by one of the world’s very worst terrorist organisations, while the other half is deeply corrupt.

The UN motion is all about Western leaders wanting to appeal to domestic audiences and curry favour with Muslim voting blocks while all secretly hoping Donald Trump continues to use US military might to actually protect their countries.

The Chinese propaganda machine described Albanese as two-faced in recent days and it’s hard to argue. Albanese wants to fail on foreign affairs at every turn and yet still beg for AUKUS to be delivered by Trump.

He will no doubt champion an AUKUS announcement in coming days, but there won’t be a shred of sincerity in his words. He will mouth the words while looking decidedly uncomfortable.

The reality is Australia has chronically underfunded its military while funding the never-ending “care sector” with endless rivers of government debt.

Our Department of Foreign Affairs used to deploy soft power in the Pacific. Now it’s just soft in the face of Chinese bribes and infrastructure spending. While the Solomon Islands once had the AFP in place for security, that nation has now got Chinese cops on the beat.

Back in Australia we have weekly anti-Israel street protests in our capitals and a PM who kept playing tennis in Cottesloe while a synagogue lay smouldering. A synagogue attack we now know was an act of domestic terrorism funded by Iran.

But hey, Albo will just say some words and hey presto it will all be OK. Hamas won’t exist, anti-Semitism in Australia won’t be the worst in a generation and China will stop doing live-fire exercises off the NSW coastline.

Talk about Albo being the king of wishful thinking.

Its time for Albo to stop the tours and get back to work

After New York and maybe a meeting with Trump, but most likely not at the White House, Albanese is continuing his holiday with Jodie, taking her to London and then Dubai.

He’s meeting Sir Keir Starmer to compare notes on how a leader with a crushing parliamentary majority can just 15 months later be so deeply unpopular his own party are looking to roll him.

And then in the UAE, Albanese will no doubt ask lots of questions about why ADNOC — the Emirates’ oil and gas conglomerate — walked away from the $36 billion deal to buy Australia’s worst run oil and gas company, Santos.

The Tour de Farce will see Albanese eventually return to Australia and return to domestic politics.

Albanese is facing real challenges both abroad and at home. China is on the rise in our backyard. Anti-Semitism on our streets is the worst in living memory.

Our economy is hobbled because every good idea of Jim Chalmers is undermined by Albo’s paranoia about his Treasurer’s raw talent and better ideas.

Albanese could’ve used this time to be a Labor leader, made lasting changes for the better of our country. Instead his time in office has been marked by weakness abroad and weakness at home.

His latest move backing in Hamas at the UN isn’t an aberration but rather another proof point of just where he’s happiest for our nation to be on his watch — a weak ally to the US, a very poor friend of Israel.

Bill Shorten put it so eloquently in recent days — Australia has had a holiday from history.

It’s a holiday for Australia’s sake that’s got to finish. Its time for Albo to stop the tours and get back to work, stop the hollow gestures and realise in a hostile world, we need our nation’s long-term friends and allies more than ever.