Grattan on Friday: Albanese falls victim to a Chinese burn

As the Albanese government struggles to stay on its political feet, who would have thought the China issue would suddenly insert itself into the campaign, leaving the prime minister looking, at best, flat-footed?

Improving and stabilising what had become a toxic bilateral relationship under Scott Morrison has been one of the Albanese government’s major pluses in its foreign and trade policy.

China has taken off all of the roughly $20 billion in barriers it had enacted on Australian exports. Australian lobsters are back on Chinese menus. And who can forget the PM’s visit to China, when he was lauded as “a handsome boy”.

But now, almost on the eve of the formal campaign, a Chinese military exercise in the Tasman Sea has not just reminded Australians of Chinese military power, but has left the PM appearing poorly informed. Or not wanting to offend the Chinese.

Of course, China did not set out to force Anthony Albanese into what were publicly misleading comments. That was all his own doing.

The China incident was on the morning of Friday last week, when its navy commenced the live-fire exercise.

Albanese was briefed on Friday afternoon. Later in the day, a reporter asked him about an ABC report of “commercial pilots [being] warned about a potential hazard in airspace” where three Chinese warships had been sailing.

The PM said: “China issued, in accordance with practice, an alert that it would be conducting these activities, including the potential use of live fire”. This told, at best, a sliver of what was a rather alarming story.

The government says the Chinese had acted in accordance with the law but the amount of notice they’d given (which was not provided directly to Australia) was inadequate. Representations about this were made by Foreign Minister Penny Wong to the Chinese.

It took evidence before Senate estimates hearings this week to paint a full picture of what happened.

On Monday, Rob Sharp, CEO of Airservices Australia (the country’s civil air navigation services provider) told senators: “We became aware at two minutes to ten on Friday morning – and it was, in fact, a Virgin Australia aircraft that advised one of our air traffic controllers – that a foreign warship was broadcasting that they were conducting a live firing 300 nautical miles east off our coast. So that’s how we first found out about the issue.”

Initially, “we didn’t know whether it was a potential hoax or real”.

Meanwhile, a number of commercial planes were in the air and some diverted their routes.

On Wednesday, Australian Defence Force Chief David Johnston was asked at another estimates hearing whether Defence was only notified of what was happening from a Virgin flight and Airservices Australia 28 minutes after the Chinese operation firing window commenced. Johnston’s one-word reply was “Yes”.

Australia does not know whether the Chinese ships, which proceeded towards Tasmania, intend to circumnavigate the continent, or whether they have been accompanied by a submarine.

Relations with China won’t be a first-order issue with most voters at this cost-of-living election. But these events play to the Dutton opposition, for whom national security is home-ground territory.

They reinforce the broader impression, which has taken hold, of Albanese being poor with detail.

Dutton said on Sydney radio on Thursday, “I don’t know whether he makes things up, but he seems to get flustered in press conferences. You hear it – the umming and ahing, and at the end of it, you don’t know what he’s actually said.

"But what we do know is that he is at odds with the chief of the Defence force, and he needs to explain why, on such a totemic issue, he either wasn’t briefed, that he’s made up the facts, that he’s got it wrong.”

Wong hit back, “We have been very clear China is going to keep being China, just as Mr Dutton isn’t going to stop being Mr Dutton – the man who once said it was inconceivable we wouldn’t go to war is going to keep beating the drums of war.

"The Labor government will be calm and consistent; not reckless and arrogant.”

There’s one political complication for Dutton in seeking to exploit the China issue. Despite his natural hawkishness, in recent times he has been treading more softly on China, with an eye to the importance of voters of Chinese heritage in some seats.

The Trump administration has dramatically increased the uncertainty of the international outlook that the Australian government, whether Labor or Coalition, will face during the next parliamentary term.

Defence Minister Richard Marles this week talked up the US administration’s policy in the region. “We are very encouraged by the focus that the Trump Administration is giving in terms of its strategic thinking to the Indo Pacific.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who was in Washington lobbying for a tariff exemption was also upbeat, declaring that “the alliance and the economic partnership between Australia and the US is as strong as it’s ever been.”

Whether we get that exemption will be an early indication of where we stand in terms of the special relationship with the US. But who knows what the US might want in return.

A volatile world and perhaps pressure from the US may push Australia into spending more on defence, which on present planning is due to tick past 2% of GDP.

Dutton has already said he would put more funding into defence, although, like most other aspects of opposition policy, the amount is vague. The Coalition says when it produces its costings (which will be in the last days before the election) there will be more precision.

We’ve yet to see how the crucial US-China relationship evolves. That trajectory will have implications for Australia, positive or negative. On the very worst scenario, if China, encouraged by US President Donald Trump’s benign attitude to Russia, moved on Taiwan, the security of which the president has refused to guarantee, that could produce a dire situation in the region.

Australia remains confident of continuing American support for AUKUS. But if Trump becomes even more arbitrary and adventurous, AUKUS could become a lot less popular not in America but in Australia.