LATIKA M BOURKE: After his mega landslide, Anthony Albanese is showing us his true colours

Anthony Albanese’s response to the election of Donald Trump has ranged from indifference to negligence to baffling to downright risky.

The Prime Minister appears to be willing to squander at best, and jeopardise at worst, our most important alliance.

With AUKUS under review and the threat of 200 per cent tariffs on Australian medicines on top of the 10 per cent expected on all goods and 25 per cent duties on steel, the expected response for any leader would be to travel to Washington, to meet the US President and cut a deal to protect Australian interests.

This is exactly what the Labour Prime minister in the UK Sir Keir Starmer has done.

Instead Mr Albanese is taking a ‘she’ll be right’ approach, telling a business forum last Friday that Trump’s tariffs hadn’t affected exports much, effectively admitting they had given up, or as the Opposition put it, run up the white flag.

Then he went further, moving beyond his seemingly irrational indifference to the changing global context around him to thumbing his nose at America.

Using a left wing platform, he gave a speech invoking war time leader John Curtin, to warn that “our Alliance with the US ought to be remembered as a product of Curtin’s leadership in defence and foreign policy, not the extent of it.”

Mr Albanese likened his stance to that made by John Curtin during World War II, when the wartime Labor leader opposed a British demand to post returning Australian troops to Burma, correctly fearing they’d be needed on home soil.

Curtin was right. But this does not mean Albanese is too.

In 1942, Curtin gave his famous speech to America committing Australia “heart and soul” to “total warfare,” warning the Americans that “Australia is the last bastion between the West Coast of America and the Japanese”.

“It was, therefore, but natural that, within twenty days after Japan’s first treacherous blow, I said on behalf of the Australian Government that we looked to America as the paramount factor on the democracies’ side of the Pacific,” Curtin told the American people in his radio address.

He explained that by looking to the United States to lead in the Pacific, and not Britain — fighting on her own front — this was not a belittling of the Old Country.

“We Australians, with New Zealand, represent Great Britain here in the Pacific — we are her sons — and on us the responsibility falls. I pledge to you my word we will not fail,” Curtin said.

In every way, Albanese is behaving in a way that is completely contrary to Curtin’s war-era leadership and vision.

Instead of grasping the threat picture Australia faces, a collaborating China, Russia, Iran and North Korea and a Chinese President who has openly stated he wants to be ready to take Taiwan by military force from 2027, the Prime Minister refuses to raise defence spending to the level recommended by the authors of his own Defence Strategic Review — 3 per cent of GDP.

And instead of embracing and bolstering a Western alliance, Mr Albanese seems to be going out of his way to show as little interest as possible in adapting to the new United States.

He says he is happy to wait until summit season later in the year to try and catch the US President on the sidelines — because that worked so well at the G7 — Donald Trump cancelled his meetings and went home a day early.

Mr Albanese’s complacency when it comes to the US relationship is in total contrast with his approach to China.

While Mr Albanese is happy to boast that he’s not “subservient” to the United States, he is less forthcoming when it comes to criticising the Chinese government.

After avoiding a White House visit for nine months, he will visit China on Saturday for a six-day visit.

This is his second time to China and fourth meeting with Xi.

If Mr Albanese told the public in 2022 before he was first elected Prime Minister, that stabilising the relationship with China would involve prioritising travelling to Beijing and deprioritising meeting a re-elected President Trump, he might not have been elected.

As opposition leader, he sought to reassure the Australian public that he could stabilise the relationship with China at the same time as adopting a security stance as strong as the Coalition.

It is a line he has tried to walk on AUKUS. He says he supports the deal to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the Americans and then the British, but has few advances on progressing the project to show, as was pointed out by the former US Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who chairs shipbuilder Austal Ltd, on the weekend.

Unlike the British, who reviewed AUKUS and turbocharged the political infrastructure and committed to higher defence spending to build new AUKUS submarines, Albanese has little to no achievements under his AUKUS belt.

Defence Minister Richard Marles could not name a single achievement of the second wing of the project — to build new military capabilities — and claimed any that had been produced were classified.

These are no coincidences. Anthony Albanese’s John Curtin speech was a formalisation of his campaign rhetoric shifting into foreign policy.

This is somewhat ideological. But that is only part of the story.

The Labor leader never thought he could be Prime Minister. He was in the middle of his party’s last attempt at governing that ended in ruins.

Settled in The Lodge he wants two things: Labor to be entrenched as the natural choice of government for the Australian people, and as he revealed to The Nightly on the campaign trail, to be prime minister for at least three terms, possibly longer.

So his position on foreign policy should be viewed through this domestic lens.

Albanese knows the tremendous role Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs and the Opposition’s devastating decision to copy MAGA tactics and policies played in his landslide win.

What has changed between May 2022 and post May 2025 is his 94-seat win. MAGA has given him room to move, to be a little more himself.

In his Curtin speech, the Prime Minister did not mention AUKUS once. And when he spoke about China, it was to praise his own record on “stabilising” the relationship.

In that speech, the Prime Minister continually referenced expanding welfare programs such as the disability insurance scheme, paid parental leave and compulsory superannuation.

Look at the last election campaign, free doctors visits, more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics – you couldn’t prise the PM’s Medicare Card from his grip.

Mr Albanese deduces that to continue expanding his welfare state, and promising more free, or taxpayer-funded services and benefits to voters, he can run eons of scare campaigns warning about Liberal cuts.

But who pays these bills? Certainly not the United States.

Australia’s exports to the US comprise just 5 per cent of total exports compared to China, which bought 37 per cent of Australia’s goods last year.

Last month, China’s Ambassador in Australia Xiao Qian took it upon himself to warn Mr Albanese against raising defence spending, because of the “heavy fiscal burden” it would place on the budget.

This is the same Chinese Communist Party that used economic coercion against Australians when the former Coalition government called for an inquiry into COVID. The CCP showed less concern for Australia’s budget position then.

It also happens that Chinese and Indian voters are huge growing voter blocs that Labor has successfully garnered.

At the last election, Labor recorded swings towards it in several marginal seats that have up to 30 per cent of constituents with Chinese ancestry. These included the seats of Menzies, Aston, and Chisholm in Melbourne and Bennelong and Reid in Sydney.

Similarly, polling by IndianLink showed an overwhelming majority within the Australian-Indian community were poised to vote Labor.

Labor has upended the traditional orthodoxy that migrant aspiration makes them natural Liberal voters and is in the process of cementing the migrant vote as its own.

This is why the Prime Minister hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “the boss” despite the Hindu nationalist leader overseeing a backsliding in India’s democracy.

Mr Albanese’s approach to foreign policy has appeared bewildering and appeared to lack any strategy over time.

But there are explanations for his laxity and rank opportunism — electoral politics.

Mr Albanese should have been more honest with the public before the election and stated that Labor’s Trump-bashing was more than just campaign rhetoric.

It is unfortunate that MAGA’s methods have enabled the Prime Minister to reveal his true colours only after the poll.