{"id":76784,"date":"2022-11-28T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T19:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=76784"},"modified":"2022-11-27T15:44:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T04:44:01","slug":"from-whitlam-to-albanese-portents-and-echoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/from-whitlam-to-albanese-portents-and-echoes\/","title":{"rendered":"From Whitlam to Albanese: portents and echoes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

A new Labor government takes office, threatened by a global recession, seeking a new start with China, and worried by war in a \u2018time of entrenched geopolitical competition and stark divisions<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

A tough menu confronted Gough Whitlam\u2019s government when it won office on 2 December 1972\u2014leaving the Vietnam War as it swiftly exchanged<\/a> diplomatic recognition with Beijing.<\/p>\n

The 50th anniversary of the Whitlam victory on Friday offers echoes and portents for Anthony Albanese\u2019s government, which last week marked six months in office.<\/p>\n

For the first time since Whitlam, Australia\u2019s defence minister is also the deputy prime minister. Indeed, the ministries held by Albanese\u2019s leadership group make it the most internationally focused cohort at the top of an Australian government in 50 years. Labor\u2019s Senate leader is the foreign minister<\/a>, while the Senate deputy leader is the trade minister<\/a>. The Coalition has a similar international orientation\u2014opposition leader Peter Dutton is the former defence minister, while the opposition leader in the Senate is the shadow foreign minister<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The leadership line-ups speak of another time of geopolitical competition and stark divisions.<\/p>\n

Albanese has been overseas in five of the six months he\u2019s been prime minister. The much-travelled Whitlam would have saluted; \u2018Comrade,\u2019 he lamented ironically in 1974, the UN is creating countries \u2018faster than I can visit them\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The China story joins the two governments. Foreign Minister Penny Wong made the comparisons in delivering the 2022 Whitlam Oration<\/a> and in her speech about the 50th anniversary of Australia\u2013China diplomatic relations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whitlam\u2019s embrace of China was supremely optimistic. Wong offers a cautious step-by-step prescription to \u2018stabilise\u2019<\/a> the relationship: \u2018What we want to do is to continue to engage, cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, engage in the national interest, and I think what\u2019s important is we can grow our bilateral relationship alongside upholding our national interests if both countries navigate our differences wisely.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Albanese government\u2019s key talking point has moved from the three-word bumper sticker describing the problem (\u2018China has changed\u2019) to the one-word prescription, \u2018stabilise\u2019.<\/p>\n

In defence<\/a>, the Albanese government pushes to make Australia\u2019s military fit for purpose, fitted with kit<\/a> to meet the purposes we\u2019re likely to face in \u2018a less safe and less stable world\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The defence<\/a> strategic<\/a> review<\/a>, due to report in March, faces big tasks, but it\u2019s an echo in the minor key of defence\u2019s \u2018massive upheaval\u2019<\/a> under Whitlam. Five departments (Defence, Army, Navy, Air and Supply) were merged into one; three services were brought into one Australian Defence Force; and the \u2018diarchy\u2019 was born, making the defence secretary and the ADF chief jointly responsible to the minister.<\/p>\n

Whitlam delivered Australia strategic benefits<\/a> that are still central today. He held on to the US alliance even as he battled Washington. He helped give birth to an understanding that Australia could defend itself, while proclaiming that Australia should find security\u00a0in<\/em>\u00a0Asia<\/a>, not seek security\u00a0from<\/em>\u00a0Asia.<\/p>\n

The Albanese government has embraced the alliance, while Whitlam\u2019s alliance commitment was defined by the right to disagree (the US alliance wasn\u2019t the \u2018be all and end all\u2019 of Australian foreign policy, Gough quipped). Whitlam\u2019s differences with Richard Nixon\u2019s administration are recorded in James Curran\u2019s Unholy fury: Whitlam and Nixon at war<\/em><\/a>; Curran says it was the closest the alliance has come to destruction.<\/p>\n

Whitlam\u2019s focus on Southeast Asia meant Australia became ASEAN\u2019s first dialogue partner. But Whitlam\u2019s effort in his first days in office to create an Asia\u2013Pacific forum was quickly killed off by Indonesia\u2014an early demonstration of the veto ASEAN could wield over regional initiatives from Canberra. Today, Wong says ASEAN is the \u2018foundation\u2019<\/a> of the effort to achieve \u2018strategic equilibrium\u2019 in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n

The Albanese government draws nourishment from Whitlam ideas while avoiding his \u2018crash through or crash\u2019 style. The US ambassador to Canberra, Marshall Green, called Whitlam a\u00a0\u2018whirling dervish\u2019<\/a>. In its rush, the Whitlam government was derided as being in office for a good time not a long time. Albanese aims to get a longer stretch in power, pointing to the model of Bob Hawke\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

One of the quiet tropes of the Hawke government in its early days was to size up a problem by asking: \u2018What would Gough Whitlam have done?\u2019 Then do the opposite. A quiet trope of the Albanese government is to ask, \u2018What would Kevin Rudd have done?\u2019 Then do the opposite.<\/p>\n

Albo embraces Rudd substance while carefully avoiding the frantic style. One aim is to avoid having everyone in the prime minister\u2019s orbit suffering permanent sleep debt.<\/p>\n

During Whitlam\u2019s time, the Canberra bureaucracy united in admiring his ambition while deploring the government\u2019s internal \u2018chaos\u2019. The public service had a similar view of Rudd\u2019s government, although the word for its internal workings was \u2018dysfunctional\u2019.<\/p>\n

Still with the scars of those years, Albanese knows what he wants to avoid as well as what he wants. Six months in, the early public service judgement is \u2018orderly\u2019 and \u2018disciplined\u2019. The press gallery sees something similar in the relatively calm<\/a> workings of parliament.<\/p>\n

No matter how calm and disciplined you are, a dumper wave can still smash you.<\/p>\n

Labor knows Whitlam\u2019s three years in power were bedevilled by the slowing world economy, just as Jim Scullin\u2019s Labor government (1929\u20131931) was hit by the times\u2014taking office two days after the Wall Street crash, to be smashed by the Great Depression and party splits.<\/p>\n

A looming global recession threatens to revisit the three-year hoodoo on Albanese. In the previous two decades, Australia decoupled from America\u2019s economic woes. China lifted Australia over US economic crashes. The scenario may play differently this time if the US tips into recession.<\/p>\n

The rhymes of history darken the dreams of the Albanese government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new Labor government takes office, threatened by a global recession, seeking a new start with China, and worried by war in a \u2018time of entrenched geopolitical competition and stark divisions\u2019. A tough menu confronted …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":76787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3192,17,416,1001,2322],"class_list":["post-76784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-australia","tag-australian-government","tag-gough-whitlam","tag-labor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Whitlam to Albanese: portents and echoes | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/from-whitlam-to-albanese-portents-and-echoes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Whitlam to Albanese: portents and echoes | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new Labor government takes office, threatened by a global recession, seeking a new start with China, and worried by war in a \u2018time of entrenched geopolitical competition and stark divisions\u2019. 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